April 1, 2014

PERFORMING ARTS POLICIES FORESHADOWED  

As the General Election looms a political analyst has sifted through the mostly hard-to-find Arts policies of political parties and summarised the implications for the performing arts as follows (in alphabetical order):

ACT PARTY  
Creative New Zealand to be privatised – i.e. floated as a public company on the NZX. Majority shareholders will form the Arts Council which will determine who gets funded for what.  

CONSERVATIVE PARTY  
No arts policy apparent (but an anonymous source suggests Colin Craig is awaiting irrefutable evidence that an arts sector really exists in NZ).

GREEN PARTY  
Will require an Energy Audit for all public performances as a means of assessing the environmental impact of the performing arts in order to formulate incentives for ‘clean energy’ innovations.  Ticket prices to be scaled to carbon footprints with commensurate levies to offset the costs and incentivise less use of energy-sapping technologies.

INTERNET PARTY  
Everything that receives government funding must also be digitised and uploaded to the internet in an encrypted form so its source is unknown. Preference to be given to anti-establishment projects. 

LABOUR PARTY  
Will institute an ‘Estate-to-State’ long-dead* playwrights, choreographers & composers’ royalty to create a fund for commissioning new New Zealand plays, dance shows and operas.  (*Kicks in 50 years after death when copyright to the estate runs out.) 

MANA PARTY  
Government funding for the arts can only be given to 100% homegrown projects with 50% of all funding to Tangata Whenua and 50% to Manuhiri.

MĀORI PARTY
All government-funded productions presented in English must either provide simultaneous translations in te-reo or present 15% of performances in te reo Māori.  

NATIONAL PARTY
Creative New Zealand to be partially privatised with the government retaining 51% – unless ACT is part of the government coalition in which case ACT policy will probably be adopted (i.e. policy adoption as per Charter Schools).

NEW ZEALAND FIRST
Government funding conditional on free tickets being offered to gold card holders – to be funded by a poll-tax on all Asian arts events.

UNITED FUTURE
All government funding to be in proportion to ‘worm’ ratings generated by audience representatives selected for their commitment to common sense and responding to live pitching ‘webinar’ sessions by funding applicants.

Forum discussion here

Oh – and note the date.