Less singles, more global promotion: NZ on Air reshapes music funding

On Wednesday, NZ on Air announced a new music strategy that will be rolled out next year, starting in January. It is a comprehensive re-thinking and restructuring of the Crown entity’s music funding, which has a budget of $6 million for the 2026-27 financial year. The budget is a little less than the $6.337 million noted in the 2025/26 financial year report, a flow on effect of the 2% baseline reduction in Budget 2026

The new strategic mission is: Helping artists build audiences, careers and cultural impact in New Zealand and beyond. So what will that look like in practice? New, changed, and redistributed funding rounds. Here’s the most significant changes:

• Less singles will be funded

While funding new singles has been a core of NZ On Air funding, the entity had feedback from stakeholders that there was too much of it. New Music Single will be reduced to two rounds (of 30 grants) a year from four. The value of the grant holds steady at $11,000, and recipients can now use part of it for social content creation, and international digital marketing too. 

• More albums and EPs will be funded

The New Music Project stream will receive a greater share of the funding – $2.7 million. It will still have three rounds a year, but entry criteria will be widened to include CD, vinyl sales, and gig attendance as performance measures alongside streaming numbers. Also, CD and vinyl manufacturing costs and social content creation will be eligible expenses. 

• There’s a new stream for emerging artists’ development

There’s a new $220,000 funding stream called New Music Development, with the first round of applications opening in April 2027. In addition, New Music Pasifika, New Music Pan-Asian, and New Music Māori will each distribute $110,000 to emerging artists. These four streams are a more explicit entry-level pathway for emerging artists. There will be one annual funding round for each, and minimal entry criteria requirements. Recipients will receive support including mentoring sessions and skill-learning webinars.

• Tours will continue to be funded

New Music Project Touring, a stream worth $500,000, was piloted in 2025/26 in response to industry feedback. It will continue, and increase to three rounds a year to provide more flexibility around timing and planing. The maximum funding amount per application will be reduced to $40,000 (up to 50% of eligible expenses), which was the highest amount awarded at the latest round.

• Global promotion has a new funding stream

A new funding stream of $300,000 is aimed at increasing the ambition, scale and reach of NZ music. It is for artists who have received New Music Single or Project funding and have a confirmed international release or an international ‘moment’ (eg. a song has gone viral and requires additional investment to amplify the opportunity). Funding will cover up to 50% of eligible expenses for international marketing and promotion. It is a quick response fund that will be open all year.

• Some funding is being redirected from radio to digital platforms

NZ on Air’s funding stream Music Features, worth $700,000, has historically funded broadcasters, radio stations, and media organisations to create programmes and promos to get Aotearoa music to audiences. For example, this year funding went to MediaWorks ($250,000), NZME ($200,000), Most FM, and Pulzar FM, among others. The new strategy opens this stream to a wider range of activity, like digital and social media, that can support building local audience engagement across multiple platforms, and support awareness of the Music Features songs on radio. 

It is expected that the entity frames the changes as positive, despite the fact it will be working with a reduced budget. NZ on Air say the Amplify strategy allowed the changes, and three pieces of research (Victoria Kelly’s 2023 review of music funding, the 2025 Māori Music Industry Collective Review of Māori artists’ experiences of NZ On Air funding, and NZ On Air’s Where are the Audiences) and consultation with the music sector this year have informed the changes. An early vibe-check of social media comments on the announcement suggest that the changes are being warmly welcomed. Those wanting to dig deeper can read the full eight-page strategy here.

Chris Chetland, the Chair of the Music Production Guild of Aotearoa NZ, says there’s a lot in it the guild welcomes, including the move towards funding bodies of work. But there are a few issues. He says the strategy is weighted towards the end of the chain: managing, marketing, and promoting. “It says very little about the process that makes a song worth promoting in the first place.” He says the strategy seems to forget that a song has to be at a high quality before publicity and management can do their best. “The strategy treats the low success rate of funded singles as a discovery and marketing problem, and offers no analysis of why they fall short,” he says. In the guild’s view, production is an important part of the solution, but it's been left out of the strategy. Chetland says some useful fixes would cost nothing – counting the producer or engineer as part of the project team, assessing production quality, and publishing guidance on fair supplier rates.

Chetland points out that the smaller pot of money sharpens choices. Money shifted towards promotion is being taken from elsewhere. He also has concerns that evidence behind the strategy, in particular the consultation, has not been published in detail. “Spending this much public money on an industry under pressure needs solid quantitative analysis alongside the interviews.”

There’s plenty more to analyse within the strategy, and different parts of the music sector are likely to have differing viewpoints. I expect there will be plenty of “yes, but”. In any case, new and updated funding rounds and streams have already been published on NZ on Air’s website. Many, including Global Promotion and New Music Project, will open to applications in the very first week of next year. 

Sculpture in the Gardens turns 10

Aotearoa’s most popular outdoor art event, held annually at the Auckland Botanic Gardens, opens for the tenth time this weekend. It's free to attend and last year’s show had more than 370,000 visitors. Some works are ambitious and large-scale, like Wai Ora by The Indigenous Clay Artists’ Collective, installed in the Threatened Native Gardens’ middle and lower ponds. Using the principles of Flowform science, the work comprises a seven-vessel ceramic cascade that re-creates a nature-based system in which water moves in spirals and vortices, with figure-eight flow patterns promoting oxygenation and helping to naturally purify the water. There’s also hundreds of smaller works, some of which weave through the soil in the garden beds. Thanks to stalwart group Friends of the Gardens’ fundraising efforts, an artwork from the exhibition will be acquired for the gardens’ permanent collection. 

Inaugural Nesian Tide Arts Festival to take place in Christchurch

On 20 November the very first Nesian Tides festival will open with a Pacific Artists' Night at The Mud Bar & Restro on Saint Asaph Street. Pacific artists from Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch will perform music, dance, host workshops and cultural celebrations. “Our vision is to grow Nesian Tide into a sustainable, biannual festival in Ōtautahi,” says Zandra Ah Jay-Maepu, Director of Polynesian Pages, the organisation co-presenting the festival. 

DEPOT marks 30 years with a fundraiser

The Devonport-based arts hub is fundraising by a ‘blind’ exhibition where over 180 works are for sale, but their makers aren’t revealed until the work is sold. The works are by emerging and established artists, local art students and some well-known personalities with links to DEPOT including Tim Finn, Judy Darragh and Gin Wigmore. “You choose the work because you love it – not because of the name attached to it,” says DEPOT Director Amy Saunders. “That’s what makes the reveal so much fun.” The exhibition opens with a ticketed gala on 25 November, and the mystery works are $375 each.

L’Oréal includes the arts and culture in its inaugural Women for Worth program

The program, across New Zealand and Australia, will award four changemakers and leaders $32,000 AUD each, alongside mentorship and a platform. The four are to come from one of the four key areas: Women & Culture (and arts), Women & Sport, Women & Tech and Men for Worth. Applications are open now. 

The National Grid launches 10th issue

On Tuesday, The National Grid #10 launched at Objectspace. There were special edition Parrot Dog beers, the silver cans pleasingly matching the silver cover of the journal. The issue contains conspiracy theories, activism, hostile architecture, Māori printing presses and more. It looks again at the world we inhabit, uncovering fascinating histories and surprising revelations about how cultural meaning is created and reproduced through nine contributions. We will soon publish an extract, about the limits of Tongan design practices.

Art New Zealand hits 200 issues

The magazine was founded in 1978, and the first editorial (pulled from the archives and onto their website here) says that an “increasing dearth of intelligent writing for the general public on the visual arts” drove its instigation. The argument is not only that there was no regular journal devoted entirely to the visual arts, but that “the daily papers seem to share a delusion that just about anyone is qualified to turn in a few lines on an art exhibition.”

Inside the 200th issue is a special treat. A print of an artwork by either Star Gossage, Dick Frizzell, Reuben Paterson, or Adrienne Martyn has been slipped in.

Claymation film wins national competition OnScreen

Intermediate and high school creatives across Aotearoa have been celebrated in OnScreen, a free nationwide short film competition with a prize pool of over $10,000. The competition aims to inspire and support a future generation of filmmakers, providing mentorship, resources, and a platform for rangatahi to showcase their talents. Narrative Short Film: Eddie Elsmore from Wellington College took out the highly contested prize for best Narrative Short Film for his film Eddie and Golgator. The claymation film tells the story of an unlikely friendship between remote tech consultant Eddie and an alien named Golgator. “I wasn’t expecting to win because it was just a thing I made in my house! It took a very, very long time,” says Eddie. Watch the full film here.

Fergus Barrowman to become Publisher-at-Large 

For 42 years Barrowman has led Te Herenga Waka University Press. He will move into a new Publisher-at-Large role from 1 February 2027. The new role is part-time. “I have loved every minute of my 42 years at THWUP,” he says. “I’m excited by what comes next and very confident in the future”.

Fergus joined what was then Victoria University Press in 1984 as assistant to Editor Pamela Tomlinson, and he kept the publishing programme going after her death in 1985. Soon after, he was appointed Editor. He has guided 1,000 books to publication, including those of many defining writers at the very start of their careers, including Eleanor Catton, Barbara Anderson, Catherine Chidgey, Elizabeth Knox, Damien Wilkins, Tusiata Avia, Jenny Bornholdt, Emily Perkins, Hera Lindsay Bird, Tayi Tibble, Rebecca K Reilly, and pip adam (!!!!!!!). Fergus was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to publishing in 2014.

Aaron Huata steps down as Executive Director of the New Zealand Dance Festival Trust

After more than six years, Aaron Huata is stepping down as Executive Director of the New Zealand Dance Festival Trust, which oversees Tempo Dance Festival, to return to his own creative practice. His leadership was pivotal in embedding te ao Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles at the core of the Trust’s governance and culture. “I’m proud of what we have shaped together at NZDFT and deeply grateful to the trustees, our festival team, our partners, and above all, the artists whose courage and creativity fuel this work,” he says.

As Sam Brooks moves well into his second decade of being a playwright, he finds himself reflecting on how lucky he has been. Many of the early opportunities that allowed him to build a career and practice no longer exist, and so he argues for more space for new writing.

Naomii Seah 佘诗晴 observed that young writers are nourishing the next generation at the Dunedin Fringe Ōtepoti New Zealand Young Writer’s Festival.

Musician Peter Ruddell, currently on tour with Sulfate, says he keeps in mind death and the chaotic and fragile nature of existence, while just doing things, and refusing to dumb them down in a Shameless Plug.

“Stop being so political” 

On the Instagram post promoting my article synthesising, comparing, and recapping the Arts Policy Briefings. 

The end of the year is trundling at us faster and faster but I can certainly consider feedback for what we do next year! editor@thebigidea.co.nz