Living with the arts “strategy without strategy”
Provided
Dancer and choreographer Lucy Marinkovich in Strasbourg 1518, which has been performed at the most prestigious festivals in Aotearoa.
Lucy Marinkovich is a Pōneke-based dancer and choreographer. She co-directs Borderline Arts Ensemble with Lucien Johnson. She is an artist awarded by the Tu Tumu Toi Arts Foundation.
Fact: No one likes to be rejected. As a professional artist, it is inevitable that you will cultivate an intimate relationship with rejection. I recently received an email that resulted in the ultimate breaking line: “It’s not you, it’s me.” I’m usually quick at self-mockery, but for once I believed them.
I am one of many caught up in the whirlwind of Aotearoa’s arts funding crisis. A storm of neglect that has been brewing for decades, whose waves of judgment began to peak long before the pandemic hit.
Recently I applied to Creative New Zealand for an annual arts grant on behalf of Borderline Arts Ensemble. We have presented Strasbourg 1518 and Lobsters at the most prestigious festivals in Aotearoa, undertaken commissions and international residencies. Past recipients of this fund, we have come up with a bold new program that includes multi-city theater seasons as well as corporate mentorship support.
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Our proposal was rejected, which stung how any “no” will do when your heart was hoping for a “yes.” The comments and high ratings from the peer reviewers broke our hearts in a different way. They spoke of the excellence of our work and the rigor of our budgets and our plans. We were told we weren’t going to receive funding because CNZ just didn’t have the money.
With an operating budget of less than 0.01% of core Crown expenditure, CNZ is not credibly funded by government to support the professional arts. Our story is the same as that of other established arts professionals. CNZ does not fund amateurs. They have rigorous accountability, peer review and reporting systems. But their pie can only be cut into so many slices. Why then, is the arts portfolio within budget margins?
There are two loud and popular arguments against public funding for the arts, and it appears to be fear of these small, vocal factions that is impeding meaningful progress for increased support. First: the publicly funded arts are something of an exercise in grand larceny. I can only assume that this position is held by those who fundamentally misunderstand artistic professionalism. The economic and societal benefits of the arts, as elucidated by data from countless international studies, place the arts firmly at the center of a Venn diagram supporting economic growth and improved social outcomes.
The arts are a laboratory for innovation, collaboration, conflict resolution and emotional intelligence. Artists are expert communicators and we need visionary thinkers to help us make sense of the contemporary world. An Australian study found that each artist had the impact of creating six other jobs in other industries. Financially, there are more reasons to increase funding for the arts than to abolish it. “Strategy without strategy” leaves the arts hungry for the bare minimum.
The second argument is expressed in the form of a form of Darwinian economics: “I pay for the music, television and films that I want to broadcast, so if your performance is not commercially viable, it is because nobody wants it.” Imposing a consumer theory on the Hunger Games is problematic. The true value of art cannot be quantified on a profit and loss sheet. Good things take time, and time takes investment. Without a rich ecology of creative voices, we’ll find ourselves wading through an uncomfortably narrow bric-a-brac of commercial pop songs and endless prequels to movie franchises.
I ask why our creative visionaries should not expect to have flourishing careers as those in the public sector or the fields of science and sport expect.
A civil servant recently asked me (who didn’t seem to think about his own salary as a culture administrator) why I thought the government should pay people to make art. The idea of salaried artists is anathema to some, and our government tends to awkwardly tango with such inflammatory issues rather than adopt possibly unpopular positions. This may explain how – adjusted for inflation – Creative NZ received more funding in 2006/2007 than in 2022, and why no political party has a strong, articulated arts policy on their website.
Without increased funding, our brilliant visionary artists will leave the industry or move overseas. Artists are not entitled to it, we consider it a privilege to be supported to contribute to our work to improve the vibrancy and well-being of our communities. But at 0.01%, that relationship doesn’t work for us either.