OH GOD, BUT IS IT GREEN
Do we really need a (hopeless) arts strategy when we’re TOO BUSY bankrolling Professional Rugby and committing Assault at Stadium ???
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Dunedin City Council – Media Release
Making Creativity a Top Priority
This item was published on 19 Jun 2014
Arts and culture should be at the core of our city, according to Toi Ao – Our Creative Future, the draft Ōtepoti Dunedin Arts and Culture Strategy.
Dunedin City Councillor Aaron Hawkins who has been closely involved with the preparation of the draft Strategy, says, “This is a great opportunity for the city to acknowledge the importance art and culture to our community’s quality of life. Having watched this strategy develop, I’m excited about it being at the stage where we can soon share it with Dunedin people, and see how it fits with their ambitions and aspirations. Dunedin has a rich tradition of developing, and attracting, world class talent. What we don’t always to so well is celebrate our successes. We need to look at how we can encourage excellence, and at the same time weave creative expression into the fabric of our public spaces and everyday lives.”
The draft Strategy has been developed in partnership with arts and culture collective Transforming Dunedin. The Strategy draws on the results of previous community consultation, including the Transforming Dunedin Symposium and follow-on work, DCC consultation on strategic priorities for the city and a review of other arts and culture strategies in New Zealand and overseas.
The Strategy’s purpose is to set the direction when it comes to future support for arts and culture in Dunedin. It aims to position Dunedin as one of the world’s finest creative small cities. The intention is to move to a place where arts, culture and creativity are fully integrated into the city’s brand and identity and recognised as critical to Dunedin’s success.
There are a wide range of goals, which include bringing a creative perspective to city decision-making, creating new ways for people to participate in arts and culture, and ensuring Dunedin people can experience the best of local, national and international arts and culture.
DCC Group Manager Arts and Culture Bernie Hawke describes the development of the draft Arts and Culture Strategy as “a significant milestone in developing a framework for supporting and fostering arts and culture across the city. “The forthcoming community consultation on the draft Strategy will be important to ensure that the Strategy represents the priorities and directions of the community.”
█ The draft Strategy will be discussed by the Council at its meeting on Monday, 23 June. Subject to approval by the Council, the draft Strategy is expected to be released for widespread public consultation in late July/August.
█ ‘Toi Au – Our Creative Future’, Draft Ōtepoti Dunedin Arts and Culture Strategy (PDF, 872.4 KB)
Contact Group Manager Arts and Culture on 03 477 4000.
DCC Link
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### dunedintv.co.nz June 19, 2014 – 6:03pm
New arts and culture strategy developed
The Dunedin City Council has developed a new arts and culture strategy. It sets the direction for investment and support of creative activities and events in the city. And on Monday, the document will be tabled for discussion by councillors, before going out to public consultation.
Video
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 
### ODT Online Thu, 19 Jun 2014
$3.5m redevelopment for Discovery World
By John Gibb
Otago Museum plans to spend about $3.5 million redeveloping its Discovery World science centre, including boosting the floor area by 70% or more.
Museum director Dr Ian Griffin said it had been seven years since the facility had been changed and this ”massive, important” redevelopment project aimed to make Discovery World the country’s leading science centre.
Read more
### ODT Online Thu, 19 Jun 2014
New museum staff reflect fresh focus
By John Gibb
Three experienced museum staff have been appointed to the Otago Museum collections and research team, after an international recruitment search. […] Museum director Dr Ian Griffin said the appointments reflected the museum’s new strategic focus on its collection and on boosting numbers of collection-related staff.
Read more
****
Rated more highly than Auckland’s Sky Tower !!! (oh yeah ?)
### ODT Online Wed, 18 Jun 2014
Olveston top of the pops for visitors
It’s not the tallest, the biggest or the oldest, but Olveston is the best, according to travel site TripAdvisor. The historic Dunedin home, designed by architect Sir Ernest George, has beaten the Sky Tower, Wellington’s Old St Paul’s Cathedral and the Stone Store in Kerikeri to claim the title of New Zealand’s top landmark in TripAdvisor’s Choice Attraction awards
Read more
Olveston [Video] http://www.dunedintv.co.nz/content/dunedin-home-recognised-world-stage
More about Olveston:
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/306602/olveston-part-citys-heartbeat
I’m delighted with the Otago Museum’s return to health after its years as a toxic work environment and as much interest in excellence as a travelling funfair. My only grouch is that the DCC with other gutless wonders who could have taken the pursuit of excellence seriously but didn’t, squandered so much time and money, when its shoddiness was so well known under the previous King and Queen of Egregious Mis-Rule..
Group Manager, Arts and Culture!
I am so pleased that now our culture can be managed. And by one of the top brass. Oi Vey!
Now we’ll have someone who can judge bands, arrange artists, organise poets and most importantly we’ll get more teeth and perhaps another worm. Now if Garrick Tremain would take that position, that would be different altogether. And to be lead by Aaron Hawkins well everyone knows he’s a b…sh..t artist!
Nice one, Cars. It looks like another pointless “employment opportunity” for someone not a day’s canter from DCC Central, whose talents lie in the managerial ‘crat (rhymes with prat – free sample from creative poet eager for free money) region rather than creativity. Creative people get on and create. Issue an edict that barriers put in their way better be VERY soundly justifiable or the tickboxer concerned loses access privileges to staff coffee for at least 4 months.
I’m assuming it’s the same typo that has been present in all previous strategies: for “Draft”, read “Daft”
Harsh, patently true.
Aaron’s trying to make his mark after the failed Bay Watch campaign at St Clair on Riviera. Backed by the usual do-gooders functioning at low ebb in Dunedin who mostly fail to gain distinction in the eyes of the upstanding patrons and professional arts community of New Zealand.
Another strategy to raise and fast track council debt to $1 billion. Nearly there or surpassed already if the DCC books were forced open to full public glare and examination.
God loves a trier.
Visitor numbers up at DPAG – surprise! Let’s put that out as “we” prompt the fact arts and culture strategy… Yep, came down in the last rain shower.
[Video] http://www.dunedintv.co.nz/content/art-gallery-surpasses-annual-visitor-record
### ODT Online Sat, 21 Jun 2014
Gallery visitor numbers reach record
By Nigel Benson
A change of art has led to a record year for the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. The 250,000th visitor of the financial year strolled in at 11.25am yesterday, to be welcomed by a smiling gallery director, Cam McCracken.
Read more
It may not be significant but those numbers will presumably include those who enter the foyer and duck into the loo and out again without visiting the exhibitions.
Sick to the back teeth of DCC frigging “strategies” — stadium/rugger, economic development, transportation, cycleways ………… from the thickest, most unintelligent, corrupt, fraudulent, and disloyal council you may ever have the thrill to pay rates to.
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### ODT Online Wed, 25 Jun 2014
Focus on city’s arts and culture
By Debbie Porteous
A rethink of the way Dunedin can develop its creative side was long overdue, welcome and would support the massive potential for the city to excel as an arts and culture centre, city councillors said, before approving a draft of new arts and culture strategy for public consultation.
The draft strategy, called Ara Toi – Our Creative Future, will be open for submissions over four weeks, from mid-July.
Read more
Holy crudmunchers, what could be less creation-inducing than a council strategy, esp one called Our Creative Future?
Prediction:
(1) Create a Creative Future manager/director/team leader position.
(2) Allocate a budget for salaries and promotion of Creativity.
(3) Campaign with posters “Dunedin, We’re Creative Here!” and other fatuous slogans.
(4) Hold meetings around the ‘burbs to discuss “Our Creative Suburb”.
Meanwhile the same people as would have been creative in their own ways keep on making, doing, performing, developing, inventing. Some may score a few jobettes designing campaign material for (3) but it will probably get done by the council’s usual people.
What a pathetic bunch of bleaters you all are. Evidently none of you have read the strategy. Certainly none of you were among the unpaid members of the community who gave up many many hours and much effort over the past 4 years to try to get this city – and city council – on the right track. Instead you sit there trotting out the same old same old weary cliches, unconnected to the facts. In fact, the team of unpaid volunteer citizens trying to work positively to get the right things to happen worked to develop a strategy that didn’t require additional spending, or any new departments or any of the wild allegations this group of bleaters have trotted out. But don’t let facts get in the way of your bleating. If it seems to you a hopeless strategy, it’s because you have given up contributing positively – or even checking to see what the real situation is – in favour of whingeing. Get out of your hopeless mindset and do something to help. You’re like misbehaving children whingeing because you’re outside in the cold while the class is doing something good.
Gee wow Roger. You sound upset. “Bleaters” contribute widely to arts, culture and society in many ways but don’t let that get in the way of a good yarn. Back to your knitting. Have you added up and quantified the cost of DCC time/space/motion spent in ‘crafting’ hold-hand meetings to date, processing through to adoption of the strategy, then for the actions resulting for X number of years of gravy train. Nah, thought not. Enjoy diversity! Suffer la difference!
Actually Staff time, no I haven’t calculated the cost of developing the strategy any more than I’ve calculated the cost of maintaining roads & footpaths or services to malcontents in the citizenry. The requirement to develop strategies is part of the responsibilities of all local governments. The requirement to consult with their communities is a requirement of all local governments. Given that it has to happen the choice is to approach it positively and try to get a good outcome… or bleat about things from a position of ignorance. Hey… if you’re happy bleating pointlessly, you go ahead. I think it’s a bit pathetic – but I’ll support your right to be pathetic just as vigorously as I support the right of people to get in and try to do something positive.
Roger, why is it necessary to get the Council bureaucracy involved. Why don’t artists just get together and provide their artistic work to those in the community who are prepared to pay for it, just like any other business?
Why don’t tourist operators, teachers, export businesses, roading companies, and rubbish disposal companies just get together and provide their work to those in the community who are prepared to pay for it, without the council bureaucracy? I’m figuring it’s because things that a community needs get missed without somebody paying attention to see that they aren’t. But that’s just a quick guess. I’m thinking that probably there are a whole lot of things artists provide to the community that are hard to put a value on. Like who pays to create vibrancy and interest in the streets so that people get a good vibe about living in this town? Who makes sure there is a community hall where the neighbourhood kids can see amateur productions or the local theatre group can get together to practice or run Saturday morning classes for disadvantaged kids? Or are we saying the disadvantaged in the community have to buy these things just like those of us with comfortable upbringings and cosy incomes?
But I come back to the point I made earlier: the council is going to develop a policy to guide its involvement in things. That policy is either developed by council staff, or artists get in and give them a hand to shape something that has input from people at the coalface. Or are you suggesting we should have a council that has no strategies for prioritising its spending – like a business with no plan?
And actually artists are, always have and likely always will get together and provide their artistic work to those in the community who are prepared to pay for it. They even are, and have always provided it to a whole bunch of people who aren’t able to pay for it. The proportion of artists who provide work for free is something like 70%, and many provide their artistic services free to schools, community groups, rest homes, etc etc and take on other work to pay their bills. I don’t think you need to tell most practicing artists how the free market works.
In responding to Alistair, Roger asks “Or are you suggesting we should have a council that has no strategies for prioritising its spending” which is monumentally off-beam, since prioritising council spending is precisely what Alistair and I among others earnestly desire.
By the way, of all the halls and other venues for amateur theatre and Saturday morning classes – generally not restricted to “disadvantaged kids” though – those belonging to the DCC are mostly out of reach for reasons of cost. Until the latest panic about earthquakes there were church halls dotted all over the city, all over the country in fact, that were used for community activities. They and Memorial halls and school halls and halls belonging to other organisations such as the one in Leith (?) St that used to belong to the Orphans Club till they sold it, and the one in St Clair that they then hired, all are used by various clubs and classes. The Globe and Mayfair and Regent Theatres have had uncertain, sporadic financial help from the pot of rates money allocated by Council. The argument that providing venues is a flimsy one that does not withstand examination. Likewise the point of getting Council bureaucracy involved, with their Daft Strategy cringeworthily titled “Ara Toi – Our Creative Future”.
Hype O thermia says:”In responding to Alistair, Roger asks “Or are you suggesting we should have a council that has no strategies for prioritising its spending” which is monumentally off-beam, since prioritising council spending is precisely what Alistair and I among others earnestly desire.”
Great. My understanding of how common sense works is that to get spending prioritised to the right things you’ve got to identify what those priorities are, and then develop a strategy to get the right things to happen to ensure that’s where the money goes, and that’s the outcome you get.
I’ve never seen anything achieved by going bleat bleat.. we don’t like that… we don’t like you… we don’t like anything you come up with even if we’ve not bothered to see what that is.
Hard to see the logic behind all the comments on this page, if you want to see things prioritised but don’t want to see any strategy developed to get that to happen.
Or is the issue that they’re not your priorities? In which case, I come back to an earlier point. Get off your keyboard and get positively involved. Some people are.
And you might actually discover that the people who have contributed to shaping the strategy include people who use and are working to save those community halls & the Mayfair, etc, etc, and want to see support for those types of facilities move from sporadic and haphazard – and often ill-considered – to reliable and effective so they return good outcomes for money spent and good service to those who rely on them.
The logic of sitting back bemoaning a lack of prioritisation and then carping and sniping when somebody tries to get some is just a little hard to see.
Note to the authors: it’s now “NHNZ” not Natural History New Zealand. And the sentence including “Michaelangelo, Picasso…and Ian Taylor” gave me pause…
People! I was thinking about the meaning of rob-us-t as I read new comments just then. But the day is too good to bite.
I am yet to see the details behind this strategy so I can’t comment specifically on it. Whatever it is, I hope the strategy doesn’t play favourites with certain artists and/or their art groups in order to promote some over others.
I am aware that the local art scene, like others elsewhere, can be very bitchy and inward looking. We don’t want this.
I think Alistair is right by allowing artists to do their own creative thing without the impediment of bureacracy. No doubt many will do so, blissfully unaware of the arts strategy in whatever shape it takes.
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{See draft strategy for download from the post at the top of this thread. -Eds}
Roger speaks of strategies as a bureaucrat speaks of control. We all should remember we are on the cusp of commemorating the greatest strategists of all. They showed the value of having strategies in place at ‘Verdun’ Passchendaele’ , ‘Somme’ and greatest of all ‘Gallipoli’. Never underrate a good strategist. The DCC is full of them and just look how effective a body that is. ‘Ach Tung’.
Tell us about effective bodies then Calvin. How would you make something effective.
For reference, the relevant Web site is here: http://transformingdunedin.co.nz/
The Web design is done by newSplash, who are the Otago Polytech’s design studio.
http://newsplash.co.nz/
Roger, I think the term ‘effective bodies’ is an oxymoron. Like the third paragraph in your last posting which I repeat here;
“My understanding of how common sense works is that to get spending prioritised to the right things you’ve got to identify what those priorities are, and then develop a strategy to get the right things to happen to ensure that’s where the money goes, and that’s the outcome you get.”
Gobbledegook personified. The arts and craft folk are better left to their own initiatives. It’s the spontaneity that makes it work, not ‘strategies and organisations trying to channel that free spirit thing. If of course it is aimed at getting money gifted from the citizens’ treasure then that’s a different matter and is the quickest way to disillusion the masses. So, in answer to your question there is no such thing, because as soon as it becomes so, it ceases to be.
You may want to check the facts. The arts and crafts folk got together on their own initiative. March 2012. You may have missed it – although it’s referred to in the strategy document. 200 or more practitioners thrashed through what was working for them and what they saw as missing and needed. Among the 6 top priorities identified: a co-ordinated arts and culture strategy. So yep… the arts and culture folk are better left to their own initiatives. Feel free to step aside any time.
Tell us about how to be effective then Calvin. How would you make something effective.
To be effective, just do your own thing in your own way. If that requires getting support from the greater community (DCC ratepayers) then you are not effective. Feel free then to step aside and go do something else. Arts and crafts have existed through the ages and I doubt that it would have if it relied on hand outs.
Telling grandmothers how to suck eggs hasn’t got a lot of artistic expression although I guess someone could write a poem about it using blood. Or make a finger painting.
What does the DCC’s visionary consolidated debt really look like to the struggling artist who doesn’t play for NZRU. Send photos of your work to Elizabeth for posting. Share it round – invoice Steve Tew.
Don’t confuse efforts to change the way things are done today with approval or support for what has been done in the past. It may just be that some people see more merit in trying to steer things to a better outcome than just sitting sniping bitterly from the couch.
Roger, what “better outcome” do you believe creative people will get from a council policy?
As I’ve said earlier, council will develop policies regardless. The choice is only get involved or don’t.
For what better result? Perhaps directing of resources to helping people build arts businesses rather than empty stadiums.
Perhaps council spending and activity in the arts area shaped by a wider cross section of the arts community.
Perhaps the arts sector being recognised as a potentially major contributor to the city’s prosperity rather than all but overlooked in its economic strategy.
Perhaps recognition of what the city’s artists offer in marketing and other development endeavours, as it has recognised the value of marketing the city’s wildlife & built an industry around it.
Perhaps recognition by the bean counters that value isn’t all measured in dollars. All of the above largely brought to mind by what I’ve read in the draft strategy.
I found this interesting post to the ODT from December. You may recognise it.:
“The arts are poor earners, directly, for most creative people. What they add to a city is excitement, and what excitement adds to a city is attraction for people whose preferred form of exciting isn’t “adventure tourism”. Dunedin is small enough for anyone to meet artists and musicians and designers, hang out with them, buy their wares to take back home if they are tourists, or decide that living here is for them. Young people who are strongly motivated to live here find or make jobs. Tourists tell people of their experiences – or post photographs of the city or of themselves hanging out with the jeweller who made the (another photo) ring they bought here.”
Submitted by Hype.O.Thermia on Wed, 04/12/2013 – 1:47pm.
But again, if we are talking Arts and Crafts, what has that got to do with the City Council? It’s Arts and Crafts’ business to change the way things are done. That is the trouble with the “entitlement culture,” it expects to be ‘molly coddled’ and fed funding. If efforts to change the way things are done today aren’t successful, then perhaps they aren’t meant to be changed. Expecting the DCC to step in to facilitate with funding is tantamount to ‘just sitting sniping bitterly on the couch’.
“Entitlement culture”? I think the majority of the people who turned out to the arts sector symposium in 2012 would justly take offence at the immediate assumption this has something to do with an entitlement culture. What I heard there resoundingly was mostly hard-working people trying to build businesses who were sick and tired of being ignored and side-lined by ill-informed people who see nothing but the occasional art work they don’t like, and think that the sector is all about handouts. I heard people determined not to leave their future to others. I heard discussion about how to get together and have things shaped by the people in the sector rather than by the ignorant and the ill-informed. I heard extensive discussion against – NB: against – calling for big ticket items and extra spending. I heard a lot of talk about making the money that is already being regularly spent more cost-effective and deliver more benefit to the city.
Read the strategy. Perhaps better to find out what you’re talking about before you start slagging off honest people trying to do exactly the things that you purport to be advocating.
Getting policy on the books of any council invariably means you have more hope and awareness around the council table at LTCCP/annual plan time; and meanwhile, council officers will work to your lobby’s ‘passionate’ ends, to meet the strategic objectives and set the policies that inevitably roll out from that. We see it for resource management planning, urban design, historic heritage, cycle network, food and resilience et al – as came out of the somewhat ‘set-agenda’ spatial plan workshops, and hand-picked leadership groups…
At a higher level of influence, much of this has been pre-programmed by ‘white-knight’ LGNZ methodology, campaign and dispersion. Is that a bad thing? Telling councils (hello Mr Yule) that debt funding is the best way to manage long-term infrastructure maintenance and development…but where the definition of infrastructure and council core business has been vastly expanded to the point where frequently arising is all manner of direct competition between an LTA and surrounding private business. Examples: Wall Street mall, the proposed Queenstown convention centre… Or indeed, competition between venues (often owned by the same council or part funded by it) such as the Dunedin Centre, Fubar and Regent Theatre on the local convention and events scene.
When your council is deeply indebted, watch who is pushing strategy development from the inside and outside – and how much they do or don’t know about local government finance or the standing of local networks who will voice oppositional views based on greater access to council intelligence.
The active history is that DCC is Very Poor at nominating and prioritising projects for potential financial returns to the ratepayer, project management without exploding budgets, and before these, accurate independent cost-benefit analyses to inform formal public consultation processes.
In many cases DCC operates by slight of hand, on the old ‘pet project’ basis without strict internal financial controls, rigorous auditing standards and random spot checks – explained away by production of dubious staff reports that ultimately ping the ratepayers some more, leaving very little in the city for rainy days.
Dunedin City Council’s lack of discipline (100-200 cars later) – where democracy drowns in the cesspool of mediocrity.
Stuff hosts a nice little video with its story on John Key’s (pre-election) pork barrel politics:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10212302/National-promises-212m-road-boost
[ http://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/307548/keys-roading-spend ]
Further to the article ‘No name, no love, no home’ by Kim Knight in today’s Sunday Star-Times (page A6) that asks what’s to become of the sculpture that ‘just appeared’ in the middle of a New Zealand roundabout? [link not yet available]:
Minutes of the Auckland Council’s Arts, Culture and Events Committee (4 April 2014):
http://infocouncil.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/Open/2014/04/ART_20140403_AGN_5256_AT.htm
See item 13. Wade Cornell Artwork Te Atatu Roundabout
In the newspaper, Dunedin’s Harbourside Mouth Molars by Regan Gentry are cited as ‘ill-fated sculpture’.
Not ill fated, they have finished in far and away the best place such a misconceived concept could have. The recycling centre was the preferred location, followed by the tip. Not ill fated, ill conceived and grossly overpriced and still an eyesore. What with the three unnceessary traffic lights the council have managed to ruin what could have been a lovely addition to the city, a road as an efficient method of transport and a view to enjoy.
[not in reply to Cars]
Yikes.
“Perhaps better to find out what you’re talking about before you start slagging off honest people trying to do exactly the things that you purport to be advocating.”
Honest. Oh really?
Artistic production, the label ‘artist’, creativity, collaboration, can’t escape the human condition. No discipline or field of endeavour, or the multidisciplinary, ever does.
[Sunday brainteasers and condescensions][watch out for the 50Max truck on the High Road]
Roger, you’re too sensitive by far. I have nothing but admiration for the arts and craft fraternity here in Dunedin. So, it’s tough going to make a business out of it. Doesn’t that tell you something? I suspect some can make a precarious living, the rarity is the likes of Ralph Hotere and Colin McCahon over the years. But that applies to any business, house building, plumbing, electrical, in fact any hand artisan striving to convert a skill, craft, art, into a living. None of those, if they can’t get a financial return turn to nor expect to get subsidised by the citizens. History abounds with stories of famous artists who died destitute, and were only recognised posthumously, some fabulously so. Colin McCahon I think fell into that category.
Roger, I am simply saying develop your organisation’s strategies by all means but leave the DCC out of it. It has great enough propensities to waste citizens’ treasure without you adding to it. If you were to study the financial predicament the city is in you would realise the enormity of it all and desist.
Yawn…. the world did it first, dear old lumpy frumpy Dunedin is Way Behind.
Mon, 26 Jun 2017
ODT: Art part of infrastructure to become council policy
By David Loughrey
Dunedin is set to have a new policy that will ensure artwork and creativity are integral to the city council’s otherwise mundane infrastructure projects. Dunedin City Council staff say the art and creativity in infrastructure policy will take the sort of art and design already popping up on the likes of Chorus boxes, bespoke cycle stands and seating and paving in the Vogel St area “a step further”. A report from council community arts adviser Cara Paterson said many councils in New Zealand had public arts policies about incorporating art in infrastructure, but few had specific policies on implementation or funding. Cont/
A full meeting of the council will discuss the report tomorrow.
Agenda item:
19. Art and Creativity in Infrastructure Policy
https://infocouncil.dunedin.govt.nz/Open/2017/06/CNL_20170627_AGN_540_AT.htm#PDF2_ReportName_11147
Report: Art and Creativity in Infrastructure Policy
https://infocouncil.dunedin.govt.nz/Open/2017/06/CNL_20170627_AGN_540_AT.htm#PDF3_Attachment_11147_1
[full meeting agenda]