If you’re an arts organisation, well any organisation really, what you need for long term planning is assured funding either from profits or taxes. Creative New Zealand has been working on a revamp of its multiyear funding of arts organizations for some time. It has dumped its old Recurrent Funding Programmes and come up with two new ways of slicing the same old cake. It’s a wood theme, Totara offering funding for two to five years and Kahikatea (Pine) for six months to two years. Good news for Team Totora who (you guessed it) are mostly involved in the performing arts.
No organisation was given the to-die-for five year funding but three years, as any party in Government will tell you, is better than nothing. And in ‘category visual arts’ that’s what Artspace finally scored as did Objectspace, The Physics Room and the Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust. You can check out who got what here including the slimmer pickings for the Pine people.
