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MAM premiered at the NZ Festival, one of the organisations which will be affected by Covid-19. Photo: Ros Kavanagh.
MAM premiered at the NZ Festival, one of the organisations which will be affected by Covid-19. Photo: Ros Kavanagh.

SocietyMarch 26, 2020

What artists need to know about Creative New Zealand’s new support package

Contributing writer
MAM premiered at the NZ Festival, one of the organisations which will be affected by Covid-19. Photo: Ros Kavanagh.
MAM premiered at the NZ Festival, one of the organisations which will be affected by Covid-19. Photo: Ros Kavanagh.

On Tuesday, Creative New Zealand announced the details of their $16 million Emergency Response Package addressing the impacts of Covid-19. Here are the specifics of it, along with some added clarity from CNZ CEO Stephen Wainwright.

Over the past two weeks, the arts community has been devastated by Covid-19. Shows, gigs, exhibitions, and concerts have all been cancelled for the foreseeable future. Entire incomes have been decimated. And while some sole traders have been able to access the wage subsidy scheme, a substantial amount of our artists and arts organisations are left facing an uncertain future.

On Friday, Creative New Zealand announced the creation of an Emergency Response Package, tailored to help artists from independent practitioners right through to their 83 investment clients, who get multi-year funding under existing schemes. More details were announced on Tuesday clarifying the package, and how the $16 million would be used to support the arts through the upcoming months, if not years.

The Spinoff spoke to CNZ CEO Stephen Wainwright about the purpose and extent of the response. Below, we’ve outlined the details of the package, how it will be actioned, and who will be able to access it.

What is in the package? 

The Emergency Response Package consists of an initial $16 million investment, which includes a $4.5 million injection of new money, and $11.5 million repurposed from other funding. This funding opens on 14 April, and will be distributed through to 30 June. A second phase of funding in this package, which will provide support beyond 30 June, will be explored at a future Arts Council meeting.

It is, as Wainwright says, the biggest crisis that he’s seen in his career in the arts, and “an extraordinary set of circumstances demands an extraordinary response”.

“The first response is to acknowledge right up front that all of these businesses’ incomes have essentially completely disappeared. And secondly, we’ve tried to pull out all the stops we can to respond in a matter of great urgency to a situation which has gone from alert level two to national emergency in a very short period of time.”

This funding has been broken up into two programs initially:

  • Resilience Grants, which are for eligible artists, arts practitioners, arts groups and arts organisations to help recover, maintain and develop their practice in this environment. These are split into Arts Continuity Grants (up to $50k) to support the creation of new work or the reframing of an existing project in light of Covid-19, and Emergency Relief Grants (up to $10k per individual) for eligible artists and arts individuals who may be experiencing a devastating loss of income.
  • Short-term Relief for Investment Clients, which includes 83 arts organisations (NZ Opera, Objectspace, Auckland Theatre Company etc.) under Kahikatea and Totara streams which guarantee organisations certain amounts of funding each year. This will give relief to those negatively impacted by Covid-19 to help stabilise their business and remain viable. These organisations employ many artists and arts practitioners.

All current funding applications with Creative New Zealand have been suspended, and these measures are intended to replace them for the foreseeable future. These rounds include the current Arts Grant round, among others. Wainwright puts it bluntly: “All of the other responsive programs that we’ve had in the marketplace we’ve deferred until there’s a more practical time to do that, because they’re not of service anymore.” 

“A fund like the Ngā Toi a Rohe fund, for example, was designed to support projects with collaboration and community engagement, which is not possible in the current environment. Anyone who has applied for any of the suspended funding programmes can apply for grants within the Emergency Response Package.”

The cast of Silo Theatre’s Upu, which was part of Auckland Arts Festival. Photo: Raymond Sagapolutele

How will it be carried out?

Applications for both grants open on 14 April.“We know that under these extraordinary circumstances, we need to be nimble enough to get this support out to our people as soon as we can,” says Wainwright. 

For Resilience Grants, quick application turnarounds are planned, with rolling weekly decisions for both the Arts Continuity Grant and Emergency Relief Grant. Assessment for the Short-term Relief for Investment Clients grant will take up to 20 working days, beginning as soon as the application is received. “We will monitor this commitment and the rapidly changing environment. We’re still working through the details and looking at how we deliver this as no doubt with the constantly changing situation, it may be readjusted to ensure our systems and resources can cope.”

Who can access these funds?

These funds are available to artists, arts practitioners, arts groups, and arts organisations. If you’re eligible to receive CNZ funding outside of these times, you’re eligible to receive it now.

“The emergency relief grants are focused on practitioners, creators, and groups who are experiencing loss of income and opportunity in an uncertain future, so that’s not just a narrow view of a practitioner who was supposed to be in a show that was pulled from a theatre. That includes the broader ecology of producers and if it’s an online platform that can no longer do criticism of work because there’s no work to criticise. It’s really to try to sustain as far as we can within the resources we have with the broad ecology. It’s all part of something that matters.”

Wainwright can’t confirm ringfencing of funds between independents and non-investment clients. Ringfencing, in a funding context, means that a pool of money is guaranteed for a certain organisation or purpose. “We will be as even-handed and as fair as we can, and we will try and minimize harm across the board. But I can’t prescribe that in advance of what we receive.”

There’s also the issue of emerging artists, many of whom were struggling to get on the funding track before Covid-19 hit. 

“With scarce resources, we’re interested in people who have credentials as artists. We’re working with highly conducive funding. We’re interested as we always are in supporting emerging, mid-career, and senior, but there might be different cuts of the program that have more spending for different people in their careers. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

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That’s not to say that anybody is cut out of the funding pie though. “The intention is also to support practitioners across the spectrum from emerging to senior because they’re all in the same boat, which is that their prospects have been hugely curtailed by this bloody virus. We want as far as we can to get all these boats on the tide of our Emergency Relief Package.”

The bottom line for Wainwright, and CNZ, is this: “We’re abandoning business as usual to pull out all the stops to deliver this emergency package to where it most needs to go to sustain the viability of the arts ecology.”

You can find more details about this package, including how to apply, on Creative New Zealand’s website here. 

Keep going!
Al Noor mosque under armed police patrol on March 22, 2019 (Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images)
Al Noor mosque under armed police patrol on March 22, 2019 (Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images)

OPINIONSocietyMarch 26, 2020

There is relief. There is anger. And there is still a demand for answers

Contributing writer
Al Noor mosque under armed police patrol on March 22, 2019 (Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images)
Al Noor mosque under armed police patrol on March 22, 2019 (Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images)

This morning the Christchurch shooter changed tack and entered a guilty plea to 51 counts of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one under the Terrorism Suppression Act. We can now call him what he is: a terrorist. But there are questions that still need to be addressed, writes Anjum Rahman.

I’ve just received the news that the accused in the Christchurch mosque attacks has pleaded guilty to all charges, and my heart is so full of emotions right now. Mostly relief for all the victims of this attack, who will now not be put through a court trial. Relief that the attacker will not be able to spread his hateful message through the use of the courts in this country.

Relief that, to some extent, this will provide partial closure for the victims. Full closure will not happen until sentencing, but there is no doubt that this is a huge step.

Relief also for the people who would have had to be on the jury. For them to have to go through all the evidence would have also been traumatic.

Relief that the court case will now no longer be a rallying point for white supremacists the world over. Those who have been emboldened by his atrocious act of violence, and who have stepped up there harassment of Muslims and other people of colour. Those who have been inspired by this act to conduct other mass killings around the world.

Along with the relief, some anger that it took this long. That a guilty plea could have been forthcoming much earlier and reduced a huge area of stress for those affected. Still, at least it’s done now.

For me, the guilty plea on the charge of terrorism is one of the biggest aspects. This firmly places the act as one that was designed to cause terror and to remove any feelings of safety for the target community. It sends a huge signal that white supremacy and the alt-right are engaged in terrorist activity, and this acknowledgement has been very slow in coming, particularly in other places across the world.

There are some questions, though, that still need to be addressed. The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch Mosque Attacks has been tasked to answer some of these, but that report may or may not be released to the public. And the public deserves answers to the issues raised in the Terms of Reference. A trial, had it been fully public, would have given us the full details.

It is not good enough that our intelligence agencies hide behind the veil of national security in this. We need to know how the attacker was able to come and go from this country with impunity, why his social media activities didn’t raise any intelligence flags, why he was able to get a license and who were his referees.

Most importantly, we need to know who his associates were, both online and offline. An attack of this sophistication, though carried out by an individual, is highly unlikely to have been carried out in complete isolation. He would have been talking to people about some of the logistics, even if he didn’t specify exactly what he was going to do.

Also, we need to know about his path to radicalisation. I personally have seen some information about that, but now that there is no court trial, this information must be put into the public sphere. Who was he talking to, what was he influenced by. This guilty plea removes any excuse for secrecy, and we as a country must ask for full transparency.

I understand that our public service is tied up with the Covid-19 pandemic, another threat to our public safety. We appreciate their work and willingness to go above and beyond to keep the New Zealand public safe.

Once this current crisis is over, public safety requires that the full circumstances leading up to this attack are fully disclosed. We need to know about any failings in the system, what has been done to rectify these and what is yet to be done.

I wish that this was over, but it is not over and will not be over for a long time. We can not afford to forget or put it behind us. Because those who hate and commit violence are still out there and causing harm, and we need to know they will be stopped before they can do so.

Society