Transcript
Mark Amery: What sort of percentage of our artists are full time? Do you have those figures?
Stephen Wainwright (CEO of Creative New Zealand): This is one of the structural changes in the economy with which we're familiar, that there are fewer and fewer people who are employed on a full time, full year contract. We're increasingly in the gig economy and I think that's one of the structural questions that we should all be thinking hard about both at a government level, an agency level, and an industry level.
Mark Amery: What surprised you about the results? I mean it's not surprising to most of us that artists are not well-paid.
Jane Wrightson (CEO of New Zealand on Air): Nothing particularly surprising. For those of us who are deeply enmeshed in the sector it shouldn't come as a surprise, but the point is to flush out some some robust statistics to start pointing towards some some possible policy and planning actions.
As it turned out, creative people are paid less than the average self-employed New Zealander but not by much. The real point of this research is however that most creative people do not earn 100 per cent of their income from creative endeavour which is the difference between an another kind of self employment. They have to supplemented by either other work or by family or by other ways.
Jo Randerson (Director, Barbarian Productions): That was one part of the report I was really interested in because we often compare ourselves to self-employed contractors, and we look actively to those models for businesses rather than to arts organisations because I'm really interested in looking more to other small business models and then also lobbying that we are included in the economic development that takes place in a city.
We are another small business. There's so much startup money for I.T. and other areas, where can we get that? As artists I think we have to look broader than just to the arts, towards contractors and tradies. We actively modelled the way that we charge as a company after the way that carpenters and other trades people charge: by the hour.
Mark Amery: So Jo Randerson you've got a theatre company called Barbarian and I understand you're now paying the living wage for your work.
Jo Randerson: That's something we've always had a commitment to, but we have now gone through the accreditation process with Living Wage Aotearoa which is an amazing organization. It was a hard transition to make in some ways, I think partly because we were one of the first performing arts companies to go through this and we don't look like a lot of other businesses.... But I think it really helps us when we negotiate now with other organisations who want to contract us and we can say "we can't do this work for you because we're breaching our contract with living wage" and none of the festivals or companies who want us to do corporate entertainment want us to breach that, but often they offer us that scenario because they just sort of passing their shortfall down towards the artist.
Mark Amery: Here's the question: who's paying for the art? I mean you've talked about working on a more business footing or being treated in that way, but at the moment it seems the art sector is quite dependent on the funding of organisations like Creative New Zealand and New Zealand on Air. Is there a difference between what might be considered to be commercially viable in terms of its products? And I'm thinking of music and film and television and so forth, that are still heavily dependent on the public purse.
Jan Hellriegel: Yeah I've got some big ideas on this. The interesting thing about this report is it talks about the creative industries. However most of them fall under the banner of the Ministry of Arts and Culture and so when you kind of put those two things together there's a bit of a juxtaposition about what we're talking about.
For me personally in the music industry I see it as a very commercial industry and if you're not commercial then your music is not being heard and if you're not receiving royalties your music is not being heard. And so therefore we can create as much art and culture as we like but if the work that we're producing isn't being listened to or heard and we're not being paid royalties for it - which is the canary in the coal mine for musicians - then we need to re-look at how we are looking at the music industry in particular. We're all small businesses and I wonder why we aren't under the banner of Ministry of Commerce or trade and export because if we could make sustainable careers and businesses we wouldn't be so reliant on arts and culture funding. I think there needs to be more ways of creating incomes than just relying on the public purse.
Mark Amery: At the same time Jan I mean I've got a quote here I read from the arts writer Hamish Coney in Auckland. He said "art is and can be a fugitive process. There is no such thing as a job as an artist" which is to say that maybe some of us feel that it should be a public service.
Jan Hellriegel: Yeah but I don't know any artist that would turn around right now and say "oh yeah I really enjoyed being really poor and that no one is interested in hearing my music".
It's all very warm and fuzzy to say gee it's nice to have arts and culture out there. But these people are people that need to pay their rent and we've got to start looking at it from a practical perspective because the wellbeing issue and all the depression that's associated with the arts it's all to do with the fact that you know a lot of people can't even pay their rent at the end of the week.
Mark Amery: Jane and Stephen. I've noticed that in terms of what's happening internationally that there was a report in Australia a couple of years ago. I've got a link also to another one from Ireland not so long ago. How is it comparatively for our artists?
Jane Wrightson: From our (NZoAir) perspective - we focus on the outcome of the funding not the support of the artist itself, which is where we're different to Creative New Zealand - from our perspective we would say that the New Zealand funding model is unique. Australians go "Oh my God. You mean you actually pay for music funding?" And they're amazed by that.
It's hard worldwide. When you're in a small economy like New Zealand it's it's immeasurably harder. So you need the kind of public agencies to provide a baseline support for your work. Jan is exactly right about looking at it from a business perspective and looking at it from a trade and export perspective. There are no easy answers in the space. And if they were they would have been adopted, I can assure you.
Jo Randerson: A point around role modelling is I often look around and be like "Where are the examples of arts organisations who are nailing sustainability?" Because it's the way that we like to think about it as a company and that's a holistic thing, not just money but money is a core part of it. And it's linked to mental health and all these other factors and self value and then not being able to think entrepreneurially because you don't even value what you do.
I often look around and there are a lot of great creative role models but I don't see many business models that I can take from so I don't look to the arts for my business role models. I look to other organisations, other contractors, other values based organisations - because we are often values based in the arts we're striving for social change or voices to be heard.
Mark Amery: Do we have to treat the artists and their role a little bit differently in our society?
Jan Hellriegel: Absolutely. We need to value people a lot more. And this is interesting because you know my kids are at school and they're talking about their future careers and a lot of kids don't want to get into the arts, they're told its not a great thing. Thing is it's the arts and ideas economies that actually build great ideas and I keep on saying to my kids "man you got to do some arts as well as the science and the maths because that's that's where all the great ideas come from". So that's my parenting skills of the day.
I wrote down a list of things that we could proactively do right now to support New Zealand artists. For example government organisations should be using New Zealand art and music in all of the advertising collateral and communications, and they shouldn't be trying to get it for cheap which is what they do sometimes. Those sorts of things would make a huge difference to our economy. TV shows don't have enough budget to pay for New Zealand music so they're using really cheap imports from overseas and there's not even ring-fenced so all the but although the TV and film budgets are not even supporting our local musicians.
Jane Wrightson: I would I would take a little bit of issue about that. Jan's point is right in that the use of New Zealand music comes with a few complexities but it is one of our assessing criteria now that we introduced only a year ago. When we're dealing with a large number of applications you will get points if you're going to use New Zealand music. We encourage it as best we can. And Jan's also right that the budget is always a problem but I think they are particularly for the bigger budget - so the mainstream dramas - they are all using New Zealand music very skillfully at the moment.
Mark Amery: Stephen, on that thought I'm wondering if there is more opportunity across this for Creative New Zealand to be working more with other business minded parts of government and the business sector.
Stephen Wainwright: Well they've all got their own mandates and their hands full which isn't to say there isn't a lot of opportunity to be more entrepreneurial. Some of the issues that we're dealing with are due to the small size of the domestic economy. Everything would improve for everyone if we could actually grow the market of people who are interested in the work that artists make and do. So that's got to be a priority.
In addition to that I'd just like to challenge the idea that the value that arts create is wholly economic. It's not. And I think Jo's practice shows we're now in a realm where people are taking a more holistic view of what makes life good. We know that arts and creative people can make a huge contribution to some of the areas in our society where we're not doing so well whether that's working in prisons, helping people feel self confident about who they are, working differently in the education realm. There's many many ways that artists can make a contribution to society that isn't about selling your products. In all of those things we need to be better at articulating those messages. So yes it might be great if we could see the value in exporting music but also it'd be great if the Ministry of Health was really interested in doing even more work than they do already really helping creative people with people got mental health issues for example. I mean there's many many avenues to amplify the contribution that artists can make.
Mark Amery: In terms of the work the Creative New Zealand does Stephen it seems to me that we have seen over the lifespan of, for example NZ on Air an exponential growth in the amount of art that is being produced, and its interesting to talk about audience and the amount that needs to be supported. I'm interested in how much we hear about the quantity versus quality thing. Is this about ensuring we better resource those artists who couldn't prove to be of a quality and have the stamina to be full time? or is it about throwing more public money out to the arts?
Stephen Wainwright: That's a great question. There's no easy answer but I can tell you one thing that we're doing that is new is we're going to provide for individual practitioners or small co-ops to get longer funding than has ever been possible in the past. Previously you had to be an organization really to get that opportunity. And there's been enormous growth in that portfolio which means so much. But in addition to that, not everyone's gonna succeed in that realm and there are a lot of great people who come to us maybe three or four times a year to do things that are not commercially viable but very important for the vibrancy of our culture. For people who are very successful, it's very important they can sustain their careers. We changed some of the things that we do to make it easier. So that's just one example. But there's many other things that I think we need to work on together with the industry and perhaps with the ministries to to shift the old needle a bit further.
Mark Amery: Well we've got a budget announcement next week. We don't know quite what's in there. What things do we want to see more of happening with this government.
Jo Randerson: I think that the kind of partnerships that Stephen is referring to are crucial. There was a lot of great companies who make beautiful shows around mental health and then try so hard to get a partnership with the Ministry of Education around it and then you meet these people in the Ministry who say "we're really trying to find a way to do something creative around this" and I just think that we are really not exploring actively those partnerships enough.
Can arts even make money? I totally agree Stephen. We need to protect some parts of the arts that will never make money, but also some parts can. I think some organisations will always need funding but some could actually be encouraged to be more entrepreneurial. It would be healthy for our ecosystem. Definitely more capability development, professional development.
We go out and teach sometimes around the living wage and I work with artist and I say "What's your hourly rate?" Some people can quote that immediately. Other people have no idea. If you want to stay like that that's fine. But I think we need to start talking about money for those who want to. Where is the professional development for us to grow that way of our thinking. I see people come out [of training] and then after two years they're broke they're disempowered, the beautiful star career trajectory they had for themselves has not come to fruition. They're not Cliff Curtis. They're very skilled, talented people who've invested in an education and they don't know how to make a sustainable career.
