'Closing the pipeline but still expecting water': Development spaces are feeling the pinch

None of your favourite artists emerged fully-formed. Behind every award-winning book, every sell-out show, every artist profile, every cover story are the untold stories of what it took to get there. Years of training, years of work, restless nights, unpaid hours.

There is also the mahi of development spaces. These are spaces in the classically liminal definition of the word – physical spaces like venues yes, but also festivals and organisations that focus on supporting and sustaining emerging artists to give them the skills, the platform, or just simply the opportunity to create. 

In the melange of outcomes from the Arts Organisations and Group Fund, you can find a decidedly mixed outcome for organisations that focus on development. In the highest tiers, Basement Theatre received a slight increase, BATs Theatre received a decrease, Massive Theatre Company received a significant cut, and organisations like Little Andromeda and Tempo Dance Festival received very little at all. Every decision has ripple effects beyond the initial assessment.

While these spaces are often at the forefront of national conversations around the arts, and embedded deep in the ecosystem, they are not necessarily able to access the same revenue streams as larger organisations that have the capacity to focus on presentation as well as development, companies like the NZ Opera or Auckland Theatre Company (to mention names but not point fingers). These organisations, which have often been around for longer with ties to more traditional artforms and more mainstream audiences, have access to larger amounts of subscribers and patrons, international partnerships, and comparatively large amounts of ticket revenue. Development spaces are traditionally smaller, with fewer staff, and less access to these avenues.

I spoke to the directors of four arts organisations – Basement Theatre in Auckland, Blue Oyster Gallery in Otepoti, Featherston Booktown in Featherston, and Tempo Dance Festival – that are key developers of artists across artforms about what their platforms do, what development actually is, and what they could do with more robust funding.

In Otepoti, just a block south of the Octagon, Piupiu Maya Turei is the director of the Blue Oyster Gallery, which caters to a wide array of visual artists. “We give artists a space to test the boundaries of their practice and support them to do so,” she says. “How can we realistically achieve your artistic dreams? Each artist is different, some have distinct artworks they’re excited to explore, others like a more conversational approach, and we’ll meet often to talk about how it's going.”

“We’re responsive to the needs which allow us to support artists the way they want to be supported. For us development means trying out something new, the chance to explore new avenues, taking the risk that felt too risky much before. It's really dependent on what each artist is looking for.”

In the Wairarapa,Jordan Hamel, director of Featherston Booktown says  “they [artists] will always tell you the most valuable things you can provide them with are time, space, money and opportunity.”. The festival – Aotearoa’s only “booktown” – prides themselves on delivering that to artists through a few key avenues.

Most obviously this is through the annual Karutea Festival, which commissions new, often experimental or cross-genre work, provides a big stage for local writers looking to develop their craft, programmes emerging artists alongside established artists, and creates opportunities to reach audiences in the Wairarapa that they might otherwise not be able to reach. Outside of this festival, Booktown also provides opportunities for emerging creatives to work directly with students and to develop workshopping and performance skills, and it’s looking to deliver residencies and international exchanges (pending money, time, space, and opportunity, of course).

“I believe that treating all writers you’re working with, whether they’re an unknown or Stephen King, with a level of respect and generosity, helps to perpetuate a wider idea of how we should be treating artists across the sector that – hopefully – diminishes the amount of bad actors and grifters who thrive in these spaces,” says Hamel.

Further up the country, Basement Theatre is one of the most recognisable spaces in Tāmaki Makaurau when it comes to developing artists. While it cut its teeth as a theatre venue, it now caters to a wide variety of live performance forms, including stand-up, dance, music, poetry, and also communities across the city.

“Our whole kaupapa is set up to support emerging and independent artists to learn and grow, not through teaching but through doing,” says general manager Izzy Robinson. “Our role isn’t to develop individual artistic skills like acting or writing, but to offer a space to learn how the process of live performance works – presenting and producing, designing and teching a space, selling tickets and developing an audience. These skills need to be learnt just as urgently as developing acting skills.”

These skills are learned through initiatives including the venue’s hire-for-nothing programme which offers the space to selected artists with a $0 venue fee, Time and Space residencies which offer a selected artist a week in the space and a small stipend, and regular events like Bullrush and Live Reel to support long term development of an artist.

“Basement sits in a unique place – We are the last rung of the education ladder for first timers, or really emerging artists, or we are the first rung on the professional ladder – and sometimes we are both at the same time.”

Finally, Zanetti is the director of Tempo Dance Festival, which runs throughout October in Tāmaki Makaurau, and has a programme of local, national and international contemporary dance artists. “First and foremost, Tempo is a platform,” they say. “Which perhaps at first glance doesn’t sound as much like development, but actually one of the best development opportunities there is is someone enthusiastically saying, ‘YES’ to presenting an artist’s work and wrapping as much support around them as they can.”

The festival meets artists at different points in their careers – their upcoming programme includes up-and-coming wunderkinds like Oli Mathiesen, and established favourites like Jessie McCall and CONJAH. For some, it is an opportunity to expand their audiences, whereas others will be able to gain access to spaces – and even an entire city – they may not be able to perform in otherwise.

“Festivals are time-wise small but a mighty and vital part of the arts ecosystem,” Zanetti says. “They have an impact that, in my experience, can stretch a lifetime. I truly believe artists, venues, audiences, contractors, ticketing, curators, publicists, producers, technicians and all other aspects of the sector are at risk if we keep stripping away resources from festivals.”

“There is an expectation of everything always being the final product, the end result, the outcome of process,” says Turei from Blue Oyster. “With development spaces – of all kinds within the arts – it allows the public testing of ideas and work.”

At the end of 2025, Zanetti met with the wider dance sector across Aotearoa and Australia and did a rough sketch of the art of a dance creative’s life, and the organisations that support them at different stages. “It was confronting how much less support there is now then there was when I left dance school in 2020 – so much has been stripped away. And as such there are far fewer opportunities for upskilling, development towards presentation, access to spaces and resources, and more…. There needs to be a pipeline – we just don’t have the same opportunities to practice because of the lack of development routes.”

The word “pipeline” comes up again and again in these interviews. These development organisations are often not just the start of a pipeline, but the connective tissue right through to becoming an established creative. “If the pipeline stops then we end up with an industry of incredible artists who don’t know how to share their work, or are unable to operate to the level required by our professional companies,” says Robinson.

They worry that apart from the artists who use them, “no one” notices when development spaces struggle or stop existing. “They will only notice once they are gone and the quality and quantity of work dramatically declines. Once a development space is gone, it cannot be revived easily and the gap between emerging and established grows even wider.” Pōneke theatremakers will remember the end of Downstage – a professional theatre in its own right, but one that was a core pathway for artists from BATs to Circa Theatre.

Hamel believes that so often decision makers, including funders, in the creative sector are forced to conflate the development of emerging artists with the production of established artists, “thanks to age-old rationales: limited money, limited resources.”

He mentions the current government’s Amplify strategy and its real emphasis on art as a cultural export and driver of tourism. “While I don’t inherently disagree with these aspirations, they need to be backed up with robust pathways from the bottom up, so an emerging artist can become an established artist and then, eventually, an Eleanor Catton or Flight of the Conchords or whoever else.”

“By championing our nation’s creative output without adequately funding the development, the government is having it both ways. It’s closing the pipeline but still expecting water to come out of the faucet.”

The work that development spaces do isn’t just focussed on artists. The audience feels the impact. Hamel points out that Featherston Booktown is one of the biggest literary festivals in the country – in a town of 2,000 people. “By investing in writers and creatives and bringing them into spaces and places they may otherwise not move in, you’re not only providing them with a different range of experiences and opportunities, you’re developing and enriching the places themselves through access to the arts.”

We like to see ourselves as a place-shaping entity with an effect on local community that goes beyond one weekend a year, and a large part of that effect is acting as a conduit between Featherston and the Wairarapa more broadly, and Aotearoa’s plethora of brilliant writers.”

Meanwhile, 2026 sees Basement Theatre in its 18th year. “We may still be a little run down, but we are a professional space with all the associated meanings,” says Robinson. “Over the years we have moved past the scrappy, DIY nature of when the space was started, and we focus on being able to give our artists professional scaffolding and support. This means operating becomes more expensive than it ever has been in the past and we are invested in ensuring sustainability for those who run these spaces.”

The nature of the artists who come through the Basement has also changed, as arts curriculums have been cut or limited across the board, from the primary stage to the tertiary stage. “Add the pandemic on top of these, and the average artists coming through Basement are half as well resourced as they used to be. Which in turn means the Basement team needs to work twice as hard to meet them where they are at.”

Changes in funding to these organisations can have massive ripple effects. One city losing an organisation – see Little Andromeda’s woes in Otautahi – has an effect beyond that city. Similarly, one festival potentially wrapping up its programme means the loss of a platform entirely; Tāmaki’s loss of Auckland Fringe has had reverberations across forms and cities. 

“There is no one development pathway or organisation to rule them all,” says Zanetti. Tempo is part of the story for many world-class dance artists from Aotearoa, who have gone onto international careers that strengthen Aotearoa’s profile within an international context. “Our work is in hot demand.” And yet, it was not successful in its application for funding in CNZ’s AOG fund.

Like all arts organisations, Tempo has to be viewed in conversation with the wider ecosystem. “That’s what I was trying to ascertain: where can we most effectively contribute with limited resources?”

Finally, as has been made clear in the discourse around latest funding rounds, Turei believes that what organisations do in Otepoti and Te Waipounamu is overlooked. “This is reflected in the funding we received. For the Otago region, only three organisations were funded for tiers 3 and 4 of the AOG funding round,” she says. “A lack of familiarity of our work means that often we’re seen as ‘an up and coming place’ but realistically Te Waipounamu has been producing amazing art for a long, long time.”

She extends her – longstanding – invitation to North Islanders: “Come and have a look… There’s a reason Ralph Hotere and Marilynn Webb made their homes here.” 

It’s all well and good to advocate for the importance of your own corner in the arts. Authors advocate for literature, dancers for dance, theatremakers for theatre, so on and so forth. But what’s really important here is structural change, not how much of a stagnant proverbial pie one form, one organisation, one artist gets compared to another.

Turei has a few ideas, primarily around valuing those who make the art: the artists. “Transparency and more money. Artists need to be paid more. What use is development when someone can't pay rent? But the people who are getting the brunt of the funding cuts and restructures are artists. Art institutions need to raise their fees and work it out – because there is no art sector without the artists!”

Zanetti believes that an important change would be to have a government who recognises and supports the importance of the arts for wellbeing, building community, telling our stories at home and abroad, creating jobs and contributing to the economy – “and who fund it as such.”

They are also interested in the political success of the basic income for the arts in Ireland. What began as a pilot during the pandemic – 2,000 artists were given a weekly living wage for three years – is now a permanent policy because the return on investment has been so high. “It doesn’t solve all the problems with arts funding and organisations like Featherston Booktown may not see the direct benefit of the scheme immediately,” says Hamel. “But I think it really could be a ‘rising tides lifts all ships’ type situation and arts organisations would soon see the benefit of working within an environment where artists have more financial stability and freedom.”

He does, however, lack confidence that a scheme like this will ever be implemented in Aotearoa again, regardless of who sits in Parliament. “We’re too puritanical when it comes the way we think about the arts and funding, and the spoiled artists sitting on their asses and getting paid $300 a week to write poems instead of working in the mines or building data centres or whatever is the easiest political football to kick in the world.”

“I really hope I’m proven wrong.”

For Robinson, the obvious answer is to fund arts like sports participation. “To make it part of the essential fabric of our society for all ages. Art is a needed social good, let’s make sure there are no barriers to entry.”

Another thing they would like to see is funding better scaled to who can and can’t generate income. Development spaces sink the vast majority of their funds into the artists and the process, and the product is less “sellable” than many larger organisations. Ticket prices are affordable, visibility is low, and audiences generally don’t want to take a risk on work – or artists – that are still developing. “Patrons and donors like to support development in theory, but in reality it can be difficult to meet supporters’ desires to be involved with the process, as our focus can be so changeable depending on the needs of the artists,” says Robinson. This means some funding requirements aren’t a good fit.  Funding offers fromThe Arts Organisations and Group Fund are generally capped at 70% of an applicant's average annual turnover from their last two financial years – meaning organisations need to find ways to make up the other 30+%.

In short: “Development spaces need to be funded to thrive without the added pressure of additional revenue generation.”