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What is it that Creative NZ is trying to hide away in its announcements of funding round results? We’ve posted before about how it has removed comparative charts and the ability to easily access results in different categories like the Visual Arts. While these were both useful tools in supporting informed advocacy and any debate around Creative NZ’s performance, we’re another step along. Now the total amount funded has been taken off the introductory information for the latest Quick Response grants. While we all do have calculators and can do the sums, it’s not a helpful or user-friendly development. Even more problematically though, the total number of applicants has been removed something we flagged earlier this year. For tax payers near enough is good enough. It’s been replaced with the comment that ‘typically one in four or five applications gets funded.’
For the record then, and in the same near-enough spirit: around 360 to 450 applications were received and just over $470,000 was allocated to between 20 and 25 percent of them.
So how did the visual arts make out? They received just under $82,000 representing around 17.5 percent of the total. Of these, a whopping 77 percent went to projects outside New Zealand.
Image: OTN’s Statistics Unit working its way through Creative NZ figures
Creative NZ is looking for some new peer reviewers to advise it on who should get funding. Anyone thinking about putting up their hand (you can get up to $40 an hour but the hours are tightly limited) may wonder what they're getting into, so some background.
Over the past decade Creative NZ has professionalised. There have been some positive results (e.g. clearer accountability and priorities) but also some negative ones. Its processes are more complex for users, it's more risk averse, and it's become remarkably protective of any information it receives. Confidentiality agreements are used to control outsiders working with them and to side step what we would consider the intent of the Official Information Act.
This is not just a problem with Creative NZ, of course, it's endemic throughout the public service. Ask any journalist. We had our own experience of it when we asked who had applied for the Venice Biennale gig for 2015. We weren't asking for the discussions or the opinions or the minutes of the meeting, just who had applied. We took it to the Ombudsman but Creative NZ was way ahead of us. All outsiders involved had been tied up with confidentiality agreements from the outset so we got zip.
So you have to ask why anyone would to sign up to be a peer reviewer when they have to agree in writing:
• to keep confidential all information supplied by Creative New Zealand and any information relating to the assessment of an application (including assessment panel discussions) and to only use this information for the purpose of assessing an application. This means that applications cannot be discussed.
• to ensure that all such information is stored securely and that it will be accessible to no one but me for the sole purpose of assessment and that electronic material is deleted at the end of the decision making process and any hard copy material is returned to Creative New Zealand.
• not to discuss or write articles, including social media, on the assessment panel’s recommendations.
• not to report back to other organisations on the work of the assessment panel.
• To bite down hard on the green capsule provided should they be detained or questioned outside CNZ premises
As Agent J of The Men in Black said, 'Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.'
Image: Secret Squirrel
If you’ve followed Creative New Zealand’s handling of the Venice Biennale you'll know it's hard to keep up with how the selection of artists to represent NZ is made. Given that it costs close to a million dollars that's probably not a good thing. For the last two outings the selections seemed to be a fait accompli but the efforts to find the representative for 2015 have taken a formal line as in: send-us-an-expression-of-interest-and-if-we-think-you’re-up-to-it-we-will-call-for-a-proposal-which-our-panel-will-judge.
Now, the Venice Biennale is by far the largest single chunk of public money that goes to the Visual Arts (it's around 15 percent of the visual arts annual total) so it matters how it is spent. The only way to see what CNZ is trying to achieve at Venice is to understand the rationale for the selection so we can have an informed discussion not just a reaction. It’s a power thing. The difficulty is that even when there is a selection process in place, as there is this time around, it's impossible to judge the quality of the decision unless you know who threw which hat in the ring.
CNZ issued an 11 page call for expressions of interest (you can read it here) to be in no later than 12 August so we asked for the names of the curators who have expressed interest and the artists they want to work with. No, said CNZ. We asked again as a matter of urgency under the provisions of the Official Information Act. We got a standard go-away letter.
“Creative New Zealand is aware of a number of people who are interested in and eligible to make proposals.” Of course they are, CNZ would have had all expressions of interest since the deadline of 12 August and sent them all emails on or about 16 August. Word is that all the proposals were accepted to go through to the next stage so that’s a lot of proposal writing to be done between now and the deadline of 16 September.
More from CNZ:
“Creative New Zealand’s decision is made on the basis that all applications are submitted to us in confidence…” Say what? Confidentiality is not mentioned anywhere in the CNZ call for proposals and why would it be a problem for artists or for curators if people knew they'd applied? This is the sort of attitude that encourages an unhelpful winner-takes-all culture. As one senior curator said to us, “why not just release them. It's kudos for the artist, not a shaming.”
“Making application material available during the funding decision making process would prejudice the provision of free and frank opinions to us in applications” Hey back up the bus we didn’t ever ask for material in the applications, only the names of the people who put in proposals. And besides we would be perfectly happy to have the names after the proposals have been written and sent in to CNZ which would seem to sort out free and frank.
So there you go. What we did was to ask for a list of people that at least 50 people will know already and that most of us will have worked out in a few weeks, and that’s what you get. You can read the two CNZ responses here.
Our next step will be to ask the Ombudsman to reverse CNZ’s decision, but having to do this for such a simple request feels like overkill and a waste of public money. Why can’t we all just get along.
