Claire Murdoch, Senior Manager, Arts Development

Congratulations on your new role. Can you tell us more about what the Senior Manager, Arts Development does within CNZ’s operations?

My role heads Creative New Zealand’s biggest team, responsible for leading its major funding and investment programmes. That covers most of the pūtea and support we make available to arts and artists—as well as the development of heaps of other initiatives to build the capability and success of arts organisations and artists across Aotearoa and internationally.

We have four teams within the group, each with a specific focus. They are arts practice development; investment; funding, assessment and evaluation; and our international programmes. All these teams are integral in building strong relationships with our partners across the arts sector.

I’ve also got a key strategic and leadership role across the organisation. As a leadership team, we’re looking at how we keep evolving to meet the current and future needs of artists, arts organisations and audiences in an ever-changing context—here in Aotearoa, in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa and in the world. 

We care a lot about the future of arts and arts development in this place, and about the huge value and utter importance of the arts at every level in society.

You’re coming to the position from Penguin Random House, where you were the Publisher. Your tenure coincided with significant restructures, citing a changing and challenging market as their cause. From the outside, this seems to signal a future of books in Aotearoa dominated by cookbooks and sports memoirs, at the expense of original fiction. Are you more optimistic?

I’m optimistic on several fronts. My tenure at Penguin coincided with some amazing years for sales by all publishers of New Zealand books. At the time of my departure, in late July, there was an ongoing commitment at Penguin to New Zealand publishing, and there are books coming out in 2024, 2025 and 2026 in literally every genre—children’s, literary fiction and illustrated non-fiction—including books about our art, taonga and natural world. Books about taniwha! Books about mermaids! A book I am especially proud of having published—Nine Girls by Stacy Gregg—won the top award at the recent Children’s Book Awards, alongside Penguin books by Eileen Merriman and Gavin Bishop.

Speaking as the immediate past President of the Publishers Association of New Zealand, I can say that New Zealand publishing is full of wonderful, nimble intellectual entrepreneurs publishing a staggeringly wide array of books and content for truly diverse audiences, and that they show no signs of focusing exclusively on one genre or category.

Yeah, commercial non-fiction is a substantial and absolutely key part of the local market, but only one part. And yes, the retail market has been tough and there’s a cost-of-living crisis. Those factors have a predictable effect on the ability of people in Aotearoa to buy books.

What role do you see a public funding body serving, as arts organisations and practitioners are increasingly asked to play to market forces—is CNZ a buffer or a broker?

CNZ is so many things. I see it as a partner—hopefully, a trusted one—to artists and arts communities. An enabler. An empowerer of excellence. An advocate. We absolutely broker partnerships with other organisations and entities.

You are stepping into this role in the wake of significant changes, both to funding processes and core staff. What vision or priorities of your own are you hoping to bring to the implementation of the new-and-improved CNZ? 

Creative New Zealand has experienced lots of change over its sixty years. Change is not a bad thing per se. And I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t hope to make a positive difference. But taking care not to lose what’s excellent and what’s working and what’s core to the mission of a public organisation with a very long horizon, like this one, matters a hell of a lot too. So that’s one of my big principles, personally.

We—at CNZ—have a clear responsibility and mandate to deliver on the widespread consultation with artists, arts organisations and other stakeholders all over the country that was led by my predecessor, Gretchen La Roche. We’ve been clearly challenged to change how we support—and how we think about supporting—arts development in this country. We’re making our ways of working more accessible, easier to use, community focused in their outputs, and transparent. Doing that well, carefully, iteratively and consultatively remains important.

I care a lot about people and their wellbeing—inside and outside the organisation—and about good relationships. All my previous roles at Penguin, RNZ and Te Papa have been at the intersection of money, art and the public good, about enabling great projects, initiatives and artworks that truly reach and impact real people. My own style and values are all about honesty and transparency, which I think are probably pretty good fits for this moment in time, my amazing team and CNZ’s future dialogue with the sector.

Something many arts organisations are struggling with right now is the need to adapt to a changing landscape—to develop new income streams, new audiences, new partnerships, new digital engagement strategies—while sustaining existing operations and communities. Do you see a way that this can be weathered sustainably by our sector?

I’m painfully conscious—all of us here are—of the existential pressures hitting so many industries and sectors at this time. But we are precisely interested in investing in and developing artists and organisations to grow skills, resilience and long-term capability as well as careers, and even more of our initiatives are doing and will be doing just that. Overall funding for the arts remains really important, because the sector doesn’t have anything to fall back on.

In an environment where funding for public-sector organisations like ours is the subject of (legit) close scrutiny, we’re pleased with where we’ve landed. Our public funding via the Ministry for Culture and Heritage has remained at the same level as last year, and our funding from the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board has been confirmed for the next four years.

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Kent Gardner, Chair

Congratulations on your appointment as Chair at Creative New Zealand. Can you tell us about what the role entails and how the appointment was selected?

I was appointed by the Hon Paul Goldsmith as Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage. I’m excited to have the chance to use my governance experience, my experience in business, in philanthropy, with the Arts Foundation and as an arts lover to lead the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.

As you know, one of the important tasks ahead of the Council is recruiting a new CEO.

You’re coming to the role as a philanthropist with governance experience in the arts—including as co-Chair at the Arts Foundation and member of Te Papa Foundation. The Arts Foundation in particular has been hugely influential in starting to change the notoriously barren landscape of private investment in the arts sector here in Aotearoa. From your vantage point, and looking at places like Australia as a comparison, do you see a future where philanthropy and public funding coexist to make each other stronger, and how might we encourage this?

I certainly do, and philanthropy and public funding already coexist. The Arts Foundation launched arts crowdfunding platform Boosted ten years ago—thanks to the Parkin Gift. Boosted is a real success story that’s raised almost $14 million for over 2,000 projects from more than 120,000 donations. But it’s not just about the funds raised—it involves mentoring, learning, capacity building and networking for achieving a more sustainable approach.

A great example of amplifying impact is Creative New Zealand’s Pacific strategy team partnering with Boosted to match funding for Pacific arts projects.

I’m happy to say that I see more of these sorts of initiatives being developed. Philanthropy is personal and idiosyncratic in a way that public funding can’t be. They coexist best when there is good understanding of the sector and when parties have clear vision and strategy for the allocation of funds.

There’s been a lot of debate around CNZ’s new mandate to support individual practitioners and what this means for the arts system at large. For example, many large organisations don’t have the budget to remunerate artists fairly, despite being seen as some of the country’s most coveted platforms. At the same time, individual artists are receiving grants for shows at lesser-known project spaces, or large stipends to create work with no predetermined outcome. 

Some see this strategy as singling out practitioners while disempowering the institutions that sustain the sector. Others see it as a way to give ‘breaks’ to those overlooked by institutions, few of which consistently take risks to support artists to pursue new ideas and work. It touches on some knotty questions concerning the allocation of both funds and decision-making power—and how this feeds back into a wider system of people, spaces and skills. What metrics could ensure that investments have a wider impact within the sustainability of the sector?

As you know, I’m new to this, but CNZ has always supported a mix of individual practitioners and arts organisations, and has a real focus on sustainability. It’s not sustainable that artists themselves are subsidising the sector by working for poor financial reward.

Currently CNZ supports eighty organisations on a multi-year basis and more organisations through the new For the Arts grant programmes. About seventy percent of what Creative New Zealand invests in the sector goes to organisations.

I think the fund you’re referring to is one of the new For the Arts grant programmes, developed in response to consultation with the sector. Artists told CNZ they find it hard to get time to do the thinking and experimenting that is necessary for development, and I understand that grant is designed to meet that need.

Last year, Australia launched a National Arts Policy that outlines a set of principles to inform initiatives and investment in the arts. These include placing “First Nations first”; recognising the “centrality of the artist”; providing support to boost cultural infrastructure; and “engaging the audience [to] connect with people at home and abroad.” What pillars would you like to see in a government arts policy in Aotearoa?

Minister Goldsmith has signalled his intention to develop a national arts strategy and work is underway. He’s suggested four pillars: setting an aspirational target, ensuring the regulatory environment enables success, spending government money wisely so that it leverages further input from philanthropy and commerce, and thinking in terms of sustainable creative careers.

I’m really comfortable with those ideas as the foundation for a strategy that helps improve the experience of the sector for practitioners as well as for audiences.

In terms of any changes you do want to see made at CNZ, or the direction you’d like to see it flourish in, what kind of timeline do you think we might start to see meaningful change within?

Whilst I can see some change happening now, with the continued progress towards being more relational than transactional and offering a fuller range of supports that promote artistic and organisational development, the appointment of a new CEO will bring a new vision and perspective. The first step in that journey is finding the right person.