What goes on tour ...

This week I've banged my drum on a few pet topics, namely blogging and succession planning in New Zealand art galleries.

Another pet topic is the touring of art exhibitions. I've thought for a while now that New Zealand would benefit from a central organisation to coordinate the touring of shows around the country.

I'm particularly interested in seeing shows get out of the four main centres and into the smaller, regional galleries - Wanganui, Hawkes Bay, Palmerston North, Gore. And for a system to be developed where the fees charged for touring shows to bigger, better resourced galleries could help subsidise the fees for smaller, poorer galleries.

At the top of the post is a (slightly crappy) image of page 55 of Creative New Zealand's new Strategic Plan for 2007-2010 (available here - but warning, as a quite hefty PDF).

CNZ have identified 4 strategic priorities:

1. New Zealanders are engaged in the arts
2. High quality New Zealand art is developed
3. New Zealanders have access to high quality art experiences
4. New Zealand arts gain international success.

Under no 3, the 'delivery of the arts' has been identified as a key objective (thank goodness for all the diagrams in this document, I'd be lost without them). And under this objective is this interesting wee snippet of text:

We will invest in providers who deliver high quality arts experiences for New Zealanders in the metropolitan centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. These opportunities will include:

• facilitating the touring of work
• investing in key providers to deliver quality arts experiences locally and regionally.

We will invest in targeted opportunities that provide high-quality arts experiences in up to four identified provincial centres.

We will develop systems that enable organisations to better monitor audience numbers attending events.

We will develop and implement a touring strategy [my emphasis].

So today I'm holding out hope.

You can order a hard copy of the Strategic Plan from this page on the CNZ site.