Ia manuia le fai o le faiva!

Creative New Zealand’s Pacific Arts Strategy 2018–2023 was launched in September 2018 with the main purpose of directing and prioritising increased investment to support the development of Pacific Arts over five years.

Developed in consultation with the Pacific Arts community and wider arts sector, the strategy’s  vision is of a powerful future Pacific Arts sector that is led by passionate and skilled Pasifika people, for Aotearoa, Te Moana-nui-a-Kiva and the world.

Creative New Zealand acknowledges the ongoing support, collaboration, talanoa and feedback from Pasifika artists and community, friends of the arts and partners.

Our governing Arts Council has endorsed an implementation plan outlining actions to the strategy’s mid-point, to December 2020.

Our initial actions have focused on amplifying our delivery to Pacific Arts across all our programmes and policies, including our investments, grants, international, capability building and advocacy programmes.

On top of this organisational re-alignment to the Pacific Arts Strategy, specific focus has been targeted to scoping and activating special new initiatives under the implementation plan. These will have long-term benefit to the development of Pasifika artists and communities, across multiple outcomes.

Overall, delivering the strategy is on track, with expected roll-out of further new initiatives and programmes in 2020. We’ll continue scoping, planning, researching and considering logistics to align for future success.

Key highlights so far are outlined below.

• Supporting diversity in the Pacific Arts community: A new Pacific Toa Award ($10,000) added as a seventh category as part of the Arts Pasifika Awards offered from 2019,  recognising excellence and supporting a Pasifika artist with lived experience of disability.
• Increasing amounts awarded at the Arts Pasifika Awards: The total prize monies offered for the distinguished awards have all increased from this year onwards, from $52,000 to $80,000.
• Improving Pasifika arts access to Creative New Zealand: New staff position created, Senior Communications Adviser – Pasifika focus. Paul Lisi (nee Fagamalo), a Pacific creative, has commenced in the role and is based in the Auckland office. This new role is critical to get information out to the Pasifika arts community, via the best channels and appropriate engagement, to help strengthen access between Creative New Zealand and the communities
• Supporting Pacific arts leadership: New Creative New Zealand partnership with Leadership NZ to provide four Pasifika artists with leadership training in 2019 (with a total value of $70,000). The four artists selected by Leadership NZ are Victor Rodger, Sefa Enari, Shimpal Lelisi and Raymond Sagapolutele. This new partnership complements the Pacific Arts Internships programme to develop emerging Pasifika arts practitioners as future leaders,  funded by Creative New Zealand since 2014.
• Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture 2020: Increased the number of Pacific artists chosen to be part of the FestPac delegation to Hawai’i, from 18 Pacific artists in 2016 to 20 in 2019 – this number also includes the first cohort of Pasifika youth ambassadors.
• Continue to support the annual Pacific Heritage Arts Fono and heritage artists: Funded annually with $50,000 per year since 2015 in Auckland, the strategy budget is supporting the 2019 Pacific Heritage Arts Fono with $75,000 as it moves to Wellington for the first time this year. This year’s fono project will be managed by Pacifica Arts Centre with delivery partner the College of Creative Arts, Massey University, and take place over three days in November.
• New Pacific Artist Residencies: New partnerships are currently being developed to create new artist residencies for NZ Pasifika artists in Oceania. The new three-month residencies planned for 2020 are:
  • Creative New Zealand Pacific Artist Residency – Fiji (Climate Change project focus)
  • Creative New Zealand Pacific Artist Residency – New Calendonia (Women focus)

The new residencies in Oceania will complement the two existing Creative New Zealand residencies for Pasifika artists at the University of Samoa and University of Hawai’i (the latter in partnership with Fulbright New Zealand)

• New Aotearoa Pacific Artist Residency with LGBTQI focus: Work is also in progress to develop a new Creative New Zealand Pacific Nuanua Artist Residency in Aotearoa, with a focus on the Pasifika rainbow arts community. This is planned to be offered in 2020 through a new partnership.

There is still more progress to be made, especially focusing on emerging Pacific artists and business support for arts practitioners, which will be developed over the coming months.

The Implementation Plan 2018–2020 outlines the 29 action points being delivered to December 2020, and outlines key priorities for action.