Friday, March 15, 2013

Fund and games


The latest Creative NZ funding round has been released. CNZ promised the Quick Response grants would be announced at 5 PM today and a reader tells us they were definitely up at 5.05 PM. That means we owe CNZ an abject apology for giving it the you-are-late stick earlier last night. The fact is CNZ publishing funding round results to a pre-announced schedule is a big and welcome step forward. 

So how did it go? This lot of grants are max $7,000 so while they’re not major they are certainly enough to help fund artists into overseas projects and that’s what 56 percent of the visual art funding went to.  In terms of funding going direct to individual artists it was 40 percent for visual arts. As this funding level is so low it’s probably time to cut out the middle men and give it all to artists direct. The visual arts got 24 percent of the total Arts Board funding of $284,198 and if you add Craft/Object funding (which includes artists like Joe Sheehan) it comes closer to 33 percent.

Total funding for this round totalled $379,171 of which the Arts Board got 75 percent, Pacific Arts 7.4 percent and Te Waka Toi 17.6 percent. 

Grants to the visual arts in this round have dropped 50 percent from those given in the same funding round last year.