Arts at Spaghetti Junction: Pt 2
In Part Two of a special feature on arts in the new Auckland Council, commentator Mark Amery looks more closely at the reasons for a regional arts and culture policy, the challenges of bringing together a culturally diverse city, and how with good planning the arts can help Auckland's growth - as it has in other major cities in the world.
The need for a Regional Arts and Culture Policy
For many I’ve spoken to the structure of the new supercity raises concerns that, unless there is strong cultural strategy and policy, arts activity may get even more chopped up between regional, subregional and community spheres than it already is.
One would hope, for example, in a more unified city to see stronger travelling through the region of local performance work. This is something which currently proves challenging. Yet given this is work that is usually not major in economic or venue terms, it could become even more isolated under local boards.
Director of Te Tuhi and member of the Auckland Arts and Culture Working Group, James McCarthy notes similar issues with festivals’ community reach.
“If you look to London, for example, festivals are seen as a key tool for galvanising a city and activating urban spaces, and they use them quite smartly. The danger without a high level strategy is that there will be no mandate for the festival people to have any sort of relationship with the Auckland City Art Gallery, or the South and West Auckland communities and art activities, and they end up behaving in silos.”
The new supercity structure is not so different, says McCarthy, from how Manukau City Council has operated. They initially found, he says, that the structure didn’t allow discussions about the arts to happen easily across departments. Policy was needed to give someone the mandate in planning or operations to get up out of their office and talk to someone in finance - who are responsible for a small CCO like Te Tuhi (who operate independently of council but have around 50% council financial stake).
Meanwhile those venues that are fully council run like Fresh Gallery in Otara, where the director is a council employee report to a different department. They will continue to in the super city, but within a far bigger organisation.
If local boards develop art policies some organisations with strong focussed community objectives could stand to benefit, says McCarthy. But potentially also each board could have a slightly different policy on how they fund things.
“If I as a theatre or gallery was under the local board and had a show I consider to be of regional significance I would have to go cap in hand to up to 21 local boards. If the Howick Little Theatre has a show they feel could serve all of south Auckland they would have to go to two or three boards and prove it’s what they call subregional. That’s just bonkers. How is Mairangi Arts on the North Shore going to grow and flourish?
“That’s where it again comes back to cultural policy. Currently there are no guarantees around that. It’s up to the faces of the local boards being able to set those agendas themselves. It means people getting involved now to get these things on the agenda.”
Waitakere Public Arts Manager Naomi McCleary agrees strongly about the need for regional arts and cultural policy.
“There are layers and layers of impact that could have,” she says. “With performance venues we have no coherence across the region. We don’t necessarily have a good spread of galleries across the region. A coherent regional strategy is a real chance to get equity across the region for future planning.”
Incoming Manager of Community Development, Arts and Culture for
the new council Louise Mason also believes there is a great opportunity to develop a strong, cohesive arts and cultural policy for the region.
“The new incoming council will determine future policy and priorities but I can say that I think there are tremendous opportunities with the new council to take a regional approach, learn and implement successful approaches across the region and develop more cohesive approaches to funding and programme delivery. I strongly support the importance of the arts in Auckland as a vital and innovative ingredient to making Auckland both truly unique and world class.”
“Obviously, any decisions on this will be the prerogative of the new incoming Council. The Policy and Planning department in the new Council will lead policy development, but I am keen that we have a strong linkage between the operational side of things led by my department and the policy development process. I am particularly keen on getting good information about what works at a community and regional level and feeding this into policy development.”
A Diverse City but a United City
There is no better illustration of the distinctive differences between regions within the greater Auckland region than as reflected through the arts.
Take for example the very different audiences and programming of the Bruce Mason Centre on the North Shore, the Telstra Pacific and new Mangere Arts Centre in Manukau, and the Corbans Estate Arts Centre out west. Or the flavour of Fresh Gallery in Otara versus Northart in Northcote.
Strong regional arts policy under the new supercity framework needs to ensure not only that activity is resourced fairly, but that it meets this diversity and also the aspirations of organisations whose impact may be far bigger than their local community (as James McCarthy noted in the first part of this article). It needs to recognise the distinct differences between different areas, whilst also allowing for more connecting up of activity and venues. For the pottery and sculpture trails of Rodney to meet those of Waitakere say, or local theatre to get strong legs through touring more across multiple venues.
There’s no better illustration of the current diversity of approaches to the arts across current council boundaries than in the area of public art. While city’s like North Shore have close to no public art activity and policy (a public art policy is mooted as part of their current Arts Strategy), Auckland City’s programme until recently has been dominated by large permanent sculpture, while Waitakere’s has been all about integrating artists into the urban design process.
“The new Regional Public Arts Manager,” says Naomi McCleary, “is going to have to somehow take the Auckland model and the Waitakere model and work out how they will synthesise, or work alongside each other, and then look at the rest of the region - which is a bit of a desert.
“One of the strengths is that in the arts sector in different councils there are models of best practice. The one that’s really relevant to us is the way that we have developed this process of integrating art into the infrastructure. The opportunity is that that practice, which is really well-honed now, could be spread across the region.
“I have a team of three guys who’ve been employed for years with me, trained by me and are beyond the skills I have in terms of the development and contract management of these really complicated projects. Those guys do have jobs in the new council.
“It seems to me that what Auckland is doing at the moment is putting in works in the CBD and other parts like Newmarket which are really high focus tourism or commercial business sites, but I don’t see that practice as being either affordable or even appropriate to spread across all the regions. Whereas the Waitakere practice can be integrated at any level anywhere almost.”
Making Arts a Priority: Models of Best Practice
A key issue for arts organisations, regardless of anything else, are things simply slowing up for a while.
This will effect organisations in all sorts of ways. Take Auckland Theatre Company for example. They report they’re currently in a holding pattern as to the development of a theatre in the new Wynyard Quarter due to the land it sits on being part of the about to be instituted Waterfront Development CCO.
There’s a risk that the arts aren’t seen as priority in an interim period as the new council and bureaucracy gets established.
“The big picture,” says James McCarthy “is that only one of the seven cities being amalgamated is operating not in debt (Manukau). All that combined debt on day one is a huge deficit that this city starts in. That will see the new finance team all over the new city like a rash. They’ll be looking for cost-cutting wherever they can. That’s why we’re nervous. We have guaranteed funding at Te Tuhi until 2012, beyond that we don’t know.”
“The arts is not a strong feature of this government’s interests at the moment,” comments Naomi McCleary. “It was very different under Helen Clark as Minister of Arts and Culture in a Labour government. Then we have a minister in Rodney Hide wanting to implement a pared back bureaucracy in Auckland where, as he puts it, “councils go back to core business”. I and Waitakere might happen to think that art is core business, but I’m not sure that’s going to translate in the first instance to this bigger organisation.”
“We need to be looking at models of best practice,” adds McCleary. “I mean Auckland City Council has been very good at writing policy. Out here we have a wonderful arts design practice, but do we have a thing called a public arts policy? No we don’t. We’re very action orientated.”
James McCarthy can speak a little to different models. He’s recently visited a number of cities internationally (Minneapolis, Chicago, Berlin and London) on behalf of the working group.
“I see parallels to London,” he says. “The borough councils are like the local boards, and then there’s the central authority that runs London. But no, there’s nothing really that’s exactly the same. But, you know, in America they go through city restructures all the time. There’s a guy called Mike Shea who has been a chief strategist in mergers in some American cities. He talks about how any city that restructures never goes back to what it was, there’s always some gain. It’s a matter of patience and it comes down to who has the vision. Who has the vision here?
“I came back from travelling seeing that where it works is where they’ve put in a cultural policy at the highest possible level within the city council structure. Toronto worked with (urban study theorist) Richard Florida to bring in such a strategy. We need similar thinking.”
McCarthy sees a key need for the formation of a regional Arts and Culture Advisory group proper. Ideally he says this would be formed independently of local and central government, but would proactively engage with the new mayor, CEO and executive team of the new city in an advisory role.
McCarthy points as example The London Cultural Strategy Group. They advise the mayor on the promotion of London as a city of culture, and help shape the development and provision of arts, sports and other cultural activity (see the latest beautifully presented draft of London’s cultural strategy).
“The GLA Group is a group of highly involved sector representatives chaired by Iwona Blazwick from the WhiteChapel Art Gallery. They are people that make up the cultural destinations, businesses and institutions within the London area. People who are responsible for having real outputs, rather than just complete theory or council people. Its membership is critical.”
In the bigger picture from his travels McCarthy is interested in the arts’ role in spatial development as part of ensuring a large city’s vibrant growth. The provisions of hubs and zones for creative industries, for example, and the need for low rent space for start-up creative endeavours such as seen in Chicago and London.
“These are cities that cottoned on to the fact that people feed off the creative industries, including the concentrated forms of the creative arts. They nurture a bigger sector. They’ve realised it’s worth a huge amount of money.
“London has some schemes where they basically hand over a building to a trust and they have accelerator scheme rental where people can come in and pay very low rental initially, and as their income increases they’re asked to pay more rent. It’s worked really well. It’s a way of doing development through partnership.”
Three years ago, says McCarthy, a blueprint document was commissioned by Auckland City Council that showed that the creative industries were worth more to the city than the construction industry.
“Those sorts of facts and figures help turn round the argument that the arts and cultural industry is a worthwhile endeavour. Places like Ottawa and Toronto also realised that through spatial hubs and creating precincts around these hubs that it leads to long-term sustainable cultural wellbeing within cities. Melbourne realised that, and ripped into it with all sorts of incentives. They embraced a scheme where they embraced individuality and diversity.
“I see one of the problems local and bigger government have here is the belief that we have to have control over what we produce in the cultural sector, whereas its going the other way in other places. If you say: “Yes, we want a vibrant and exciting scene, how do we do that?” You do that by acknowledging everyone and, where possible, setting people off on their own journeys as much as possible. It’s a critical point of difference.”
What Everybody Can Do
To ensure in this time of change a city where the arts are treated as key however, everyone needs to be talking to those who will potentially be making a difference in the new city says Candy Elsmore, also of the Auckland Arts and Culture Working Group.
“When people ask us ‘how do I deal with this’ we feel quite strongly that now that we know who is standing for council at every level, and some of the key appointments, people - even if they’re in small arts organisations - really need to start working with those people and cementing their position. They need to be asking those candidates “How will it work for me and what is your position on this?”
“They need to get their voice out there now because it could be chaotic in the beginning to a certain extent. In the confusion it will be really hard to establish relationships with those people - they’re going to be completely overwhelmed.
“If they’ve got people on their boards with relationships with those people, they need to be talking to them now. It’s a good time to do an environmental scan of who is out there, and starting to ask the hard questions of those people.”
Voting papers are now out and need to be in by October 9. If you do nothing else, read up well on the candidates and vote accordingly.
Commissioned by The Big Idea, September 2010.
SmART reporting: People bemoan the lack of in-depth arts reporting. We want to change that. The Big Idea wants to commission a series of issues-based articles for the arts and creative sectors. Issues like the supercity. You can Givealittle, or a lot, here.
