Recurrent Funding Review

In two parts Mark Amery looks at Creative New Zealand’s review of recurrent funding - how, why and ultimately who gets funded by our arts council. Part one looks at what the review proposes.

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February’s announcement that the government wished to streamline Creative New Zealand’s governance from four bodies down to one made news headlines. Receiving less public attention however as it’s been rolled out over recent years, and now hitting an important point, has been an arguably even more important review – how, why and ultimately who gets funded by our arts council.

Creative New Zealand is in the thick of what is the first major review of its funding structure since it replaced the QE2 Arts Council in 1994. Following an overhaul of project funding last year (those grants given to artists and arts organisations for one-off projects), CNZ is seeking feedback through a questionnaire by 23 April on a detailed discussion paper about its biggest area of investment – recurrently funded arts organisations. The cultural castles are now under the microscope.

Visiting New Zealand earlier this year, British critic and chair of Arts Council England between 2004 and 2008 Sir Christopher Frayling didn’t mince words about the tough decisions arts councils sometimes need to make deciding whether to continue to fund organisations. He spoke from experience - he oversaw a review of funding in the UK that in 2008 saw 187 organisations lose all of their Arts Council funding.

“Let’s make some decisions, otherwise what’s the point of an arts council. Otherwise you’re a letterbox,” he rumbled cheerfully, speaking with Kim Hill on National Radio. “Those decisions are very controversial. It means you’re writing bad news to lots of people… but that’s what arts councils are for I’m afraid. These are professionals, whose professionalism you respect, making decisions about which arts organisations have run out of puff and which ones used to be great.”

The UK experience sent quiet shockwaves through CNZ’s recurrently funded organisations here in 2008. They’ve had good reason to start brushing up their vision statements and strategic plans ever since.

CNZ is now in the third and final year of its review of all funding programmes under its 2007 to 2010 Strategic Plan. With the project funding restructure decision-making has been made more rigorous and strategic for medium sized projects, while a new simpler, quick- turnaround stream has been created for small funding asks. More significantly for the recurrently funded organisations, a new funding stream was introduced below them entitled Sector Investment. It provides funding for organisations in need of infrastructural support for longer-term projects.

This Sector Investment stream acknowledges that in recent decades independent art production – that outside of that funded to recurrently funded organisations - has grown exponentially. As of late last year organisations as diverse as Enjoy Public Art Gallery and the Maori Literature Trust started receiving longer-term security this way. Yet the Sector Investment funding pathway not only provides a new strata of investment that some organisations have been raised to, but come 2012 it’s a level some recurrently funded organisations will also likely be lowered to.

Dubbed RFOs (recurrently funded organisations), these are the organisations, 34 in all, who are considered so key to the arts infrastructure that they receive funding on an annual or in some cases three-yearly basis. They range from theatres like Auckland Theatre Company (ATC) and Court Theatre through to smaller more experimental public galleries like Artspace, and service arts organisations like the New Zealand Book Council and Dance Aotearoa New Zealand (DANZ). While the big art galleries have receive core recurrent funding from local authorities, most of the older professional performing arts organisations have relied on the security of consistent annual funding from CNZ for many years.

While these organisations have still had to apply for their funding, and there is no guarantee that their funding will be rolled over, it has been fairly rare for organisations to be dropped from the RFO portfolio. The point has been to give organisations security.

Yet the irony now is, as CEO Stephen Wainwright and the discussion paper tell me, CNZ wants to do away with the ‘recurrent’ tag as its seen as giving the wrong impression - as making organisations feel too cosy. As CNZ makes clear in its paper – like a warning shot across their drawbridges - there is no guarantee of funding beyond December 2011, when all current RFO funding agreements have been lined up to run out by.

“The review is timely because it looks to establish how Creative New Zealand can best support a sustainable, dynamic and flourishing arts infrastructure for New Zealand in the 21st century,” says Wainwright, noting recurrent funding has never before been majorly reviewed under either CNZ or the QE2 Arts Council. “Much of our current arts infrastructure reflects the society and demographics of the 1970s. Since that time there has been considerable change, for example in the make-up and location of the population, and in how New Zealanders choose to experience art.”
While it seems unlikely we’ll see large numbers of vital organisations dropped, CNZ are clear there is major realignment required.

The first stage of RFO consultation saw CNZ commission MartinJenkins last year to survey the RFOS about the programme. “The survey tells us,” says the discussion paper, “that RFOs find the programme only moderately aligned with Creative New Zealand’s direction”. And that’s what the RFOS themselves have to say - let alone what comment those organisations waiting at the gates to be let in might.

Arrivals and Departures

So who will stay and who will go from the big house? You can be sure there’s plenty of talk. Most organisations I’ve spoken to believe we’re likely to see more organisations go than enter in the shake up.

 As to whether there will be organisations that drop off the list at the end of 2011, Wainwright will only say “it’s certainly a possibility”. As to new organisations joining them?

“I hope so. We’ve had a closed shop on recurrent funding for the past three years. We have been able to offer new opportunities through sector investment but we don’t think it’s ideal that we have a finite set of organisations in a particular position. That it’s healthy that over time there’s some movement, because things never stay the same. I think there’s been a view that the RFOs have been a set bunch but I think that’s a bit of an overstatement.”

Yet it’s also not an understatement. The movement hasn’t been huge. The last three organisations to leave the RFO portfolio have been Downstage in 2009, Canterbury Opera in 2006 and the Choral Federation in 2005. Coming on board conversely have been the International Arts Festival in 2006, Objectspace in 2004 and in 2002 (through what was called the ‘Future Strengths’ top up) Tautai Pacific Arts Trust, Capital E, Black Grace, Artists Alliance and the Book Council. 

With the introduction of Sector Investment since that time there is now a pressing need for clarity as to why some organisations are in one pool and some in another. Some examples that underline potential inconsistencies: while the NZ Festival is a new RFO, the Auckland Festival is now getting sector investment; while the ten-year-old Enjoy Gallery have sector investment, Objectspace, Physics Room and Artspace are RFOs; and while Downstage and Silo get sector investment, the likes of Circa, BATS and Fortune are RFOs.

Some of these differences can look more about the lack of fluidity of coming in and out of the RFO club. Or as even the discussion paper puts it “the system is overburdened with history – mainly the same organisations and artforms receive funding". Many people over the years have spoken of an abiding sense of ‘first in line gets into the RFO club, and then stays there’. This is something Wainwright says they’re trying to turn around.

“We do think there needs to be greater clarity. Certainly when the New Zealand Festival came on board it was seen as offering a particular form of leadership across the arts sector through new work and coordinating work across all the festivals. Now I guess if I was in Auckland Festival’s shoes I’d be looking to see if I could get recurrent funding - though we’re not going to use that term anymore, but whatever term we use to give people continuity and certainty in exchange for artistic success and high performance.”

“For many people,” Wainwright goes onto explain, “the term recurrent funding isn’t particularly helpful as it implies that you get funding because you’ve reached a particular point in your development, where I think what we’re more interested in is supporting organisations which continue to earn the right to public money. That could come from a relatively small organisation as well as a big one that has played a big role in the last thirty years.”

Having been ejected from the RFO portfolio in 2008 after concerns “about the downward trend of audiences” (I quote from the CNZ media release at the time), New Zealand’s longest running professional theatre Downstage is an interesting case in point. Though sector investment $300,000 has now been awarded, it was previously on $500,000 as an RFO. As such it’s not part of the RFO review, but sitting uncomfortably with others on the outside of recent surveys and RFO forums.

“I think the criteria of selection needs a great deal more transparency,” says Downstage’s Artistic Director Hilary Beaton. “That’s an absolutely essential thing that needs to come out of the review.

“What recurrent funding does is allow companies to long term plan. So ostensibly what CNZ has done to a company like Downstage, which has an extraordinary emphasis on providing professional pay in the local industry in Wellington, is to curb its long term planning.

“We were lucky in the sense that we were only dependant on government for less that 26% of our income but what it does is puts more pressure on the box office, which is a variable. That 26% gives you a certain amount of confidence.

That confidence is crucially about feeling you can afford to take more risks – what CNZ’s funding criteria is also about, as it is with RFO galleries like The Physics Room and Artspace.

But then as Wainwright notes to me when I ask about whether we’ll see the amount of New Zealand content that is programmed a criteria for RFOs: “Programming decisions are the territory of each RFO and Creative New Zealand does not seek to dictate what an individual RFO programme/service should be.” This is clearly not the case for non-RFOS however, applying for projects and programmes. 

“If this is to be a fair and transparent process,” Beaton says of the review, “we should know what the criteria is and we should be able to apply - anyone should be able to apply - in that first round. It shouldn’t be a question of them just making a decision of what goes or not.”

“Is <the review> taking into account current arts practise and its future? If they keep on funding the same old same old is that seriously taking the future into account? What does arts practise look like in the future? Do we want big institutions? That’s the big debate that’s happening overseas. They’re saying that the practise is changing so significantly that this needs to be looked at.”

New funding models

In the discussion paper CNZ have put forward four different funding model options for comment.

The first is the most moderate, proposing any changes to the RFO portfolio be incremental, with the objective of ensuring “that most current RFOs can continue to survive.” The disadvantage is noted as there being “little or no additional resources to fund new emerging organisations or to enable existing organisations to thrive” Hardly inspiring for anyone you would have thought.

The second option is labelled a ‘Modified Programme’ and looks to “focus on those RFOs that have clear potential to deliver to CNZ’s strategic outcomes, and to fund them at a level at which they can be expected to thrive.” This would see the number of RFOs reduced, with more pressure on the Sector Investment stream and, as above, no new organisations entering the club.

The third option starts with a cleaner slate. A group of organizations are invited to put forward proposals for funding for core activities for a period of three years. In addition, “organisations may be eligible to receive further funding through incentive funds designed to achieve specific policy objectives”. This model would see all organisations, not just current RFOs able to be considered. A couple of RFOs spoken to off the record seem to think from the forum they’ve attended that the third option is currently most likely. Certainly, if you could start from scratch what it proposes sounds good: “To focus on those RFOs,” says the document, “that have clear potential to deliver to Creative New Zealand’s strategic outcomes, and to fund them at a level at which they can be expected to thrive.”

The fourth option is arguably both the most radical in terms of change and conservative in terms of cultural politics. Labelled the ‘institutional model’ this would give a group of institutions (an interesting choice of word if ever there was) the ability to pursue national programmes that complement the already directly funded from government art institutions Te Matatini, Royal NZ Ballet, NZSO and Te Papa. This would bring some consistency to the current divide. The idea of a national theatre by way of example is even raised in the paper.

So, place your bets, which is it to be? Wainwright won’t be pushed publicly on which are more likely than others.

“You’re probably aware that none of the people that are ultimately responsible for making the decisions, mainly the arts boards, have even had a preliminary conversation about this,’ he replies. “I wouldn’t want to speculate at this stage.

“You want to strike a balance between creating uncertainty, while also saying we don’t know what the results will be. It would be imprudent to just assume that everything is going to be just as it was. We appreciate that’s a bit difficult, particularly for people in Auckland who are also going through the pains of change to the supercity. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve said 2011 will be a year of transition for everyone, so everyone has a good degree of time to come to terms with the future, if indeed there is a future.”

Scilla Askew recently stepped down as Executive Director of SOUNZ, after more than a decade running this CNZ recurrently funded centre for composers.
 
“In some ways I think the way they’re heading is generally conservative,” says Askew, “so that they’re taking an awful lot of responsibility themselves.”

She feels of the four different scenarios the institutional one is in fact what they have the best grasp of how they would implement.

“There’s a huge danger with that that they end up repeating the situation they have the moment, that they create major institutions to look after major aspects and then in ten years time end up where they are now”

There continues to be however the inconsistency and inequity of having several large organisations given preferential treatment, directly funded by government, as the artforms continue to grow stronger and wider from these traditional bases. There is an opportunity for government as well as CNZ to address this gap. Yet it would still at this time be a brave politician who rocks the boat of privilege our national ballet and orchestra sit in. Wainwright won’t be drawn on CNZ’s view on this.

“I think it is fair to say,” he says, “that there’s a fair degree of interest at the ministry and from the minister in terms of how a better future might be designed. We have no ability to compel nor would we necessarily want to but there’s an appropriate degree of interest in terms of thinking about the future of the arts infrastructure in New Zealand.

In Part Two of this article, to be published on Monday 19 April, Mark Amery examines the question of what organisations should get multiyear funding and why.

Mark Amery is an arts critic, curator and commentator. He was also until recently Director of a CNZ recurrently funded organisation for five years, Playmarket. 

Commissioned by The Big Idea. April 2010.