December 1, 2022

LIVING WITH THE ARTS ‘NO-STRATEGY STRATEGY’ 

Lucy Marinkovich on being rejected as an artist despite your excellence    

Lucy Marinkovich is a Pōneke based dance artist and choreographer. She codirects Borderline Arts Ensemble with Lucien Johnson. She is an Arts Foundation Tu Tumu Toi awarded artist. 

A fact of life: no one likes being rejected. As a professional artist, it’s inevitable you will cultivate an intimate relationship with rejection. I recently received an email that translated as the ultimate of break-up lines: “It’s not you, it’s me.” I’m usually quick to self-deprecate, but for once I believed them. 

I’m one of many swept into the maelstrom of Aotearoa’s arts funding crisis. A storm of neglect that’s been brewing for decades, whose waves of reckoning started to crest long before the pandemic hit. Recently I applied to Creative New Zealand for an annual arts grant on behalf of Borderline Arts Ensemble.  [More]