'Growing' the pie - cultural philanthropy

The Cultural Philanthropy Taskforce's report Growing the pie: increasing the level of cultural philanthropy in Aotearoa New Zealand was published by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage in mid December last year. Last week I talked about it on National Radio's Nine to Noon show with Kathryn Ryan - these are my notes.

Growing the pie: increasing the level of cultural philanthropy in Aotearoa New Zealand

The report was commissioned by Chris Finlayson, the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, from the Cultural Philanthropy Taskforce.

The Taskforce was chaired by Peter Biggs, the ex chair of the Arts Council, which governs Creative New Zealand, the government agency that distributes funding to arts organisations and artists. Alastair Carruthers is the current Arts Council chair, and was also on the Taskforce.

Other members included prominent arts philanthropists Dr Robin Congreve, Dame Jenny Gibbs, and Dayle Mace; experienced fundraisers Margaret Belich (who has worked with groups including the theatre group Indian Ink) and Jim Hill (director of External Relations at Auckland University); and Carolyn Henwood, a retired District Court judge with a history of support for theatre.

In the media release announcing the establishment of the Taskforce, Finlayson emphasised that his interest in increasing individual’s support of the arts in New Zealand was “over and above - not instead of - government funding."

He noted that New Zealand does not have the culture of private giving that is well established in other countries, and I think the strongest contrast you can draw is to the United States, which has an entirely different system of supporting the visual arts – at least – compared to countries modeled on the British institutions.

What the report recommends

• develop a fundraising capability building initiative to mentor and advise cultural organisations on a one-to-one basis
• promote knowledge and awareness of the recently introduced tax incentives
• introduce Gift Aid to boost private giving
• explore the workability of a cultural gifting scheme
• recognise and value the generosity of philanthropists
• reward with matched government funding cultural organisations that succeed in increasing their levels of income derived from private giving.

Looking at some of these recommendations in a bit of depth:

Gift aid

In terms of tax breaks, New Zealand is a bit different from other countries. As we don’t have capital gains tax or death duties, there are no advantages to encourage people to give money or items (such as paintings) to reduce or avoid these taxes.

One suggestion from the Taskforce was Gift aid, which they singled out as the “most significant remaining tax initiative New Zealand can consider”. It wouldn’t involve a new tax incentive, but instead would allow the giver to direct their tax break for their donation (the 33% IRD rebate), as well as the donation itself, to the receiver.

Explore the workability of a cultural gifting scheme

Apparently the Ministry and the IRD are looking into this idea already.

Cultural gifting would introduce tax incentives for the giving of physical items – rather than cash – to organisations: everything from paintings to personal papers to scientific collections. The market value of the gift would be fully or partially tax deductible.

These gifts are expected to become part of an institution’s permanent collection (and not, for example, on-sold to raise cash).

Countries with cultural gifting programmes include Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the USA.

Since its establishment in Australia in 1978, over A$575 million worth of items have been donated through Australia’s “Cultural Gifts Program”. Under this programme, givers are eligible for these tax breaks:

• The market value of the gift is fully tax deductible
• Donors can elect to spread the deduction over up to five years.
• Gifts are exempt from capital gains tax (not applicable in New Zealand).

Matched funding

This involves government proposing a contribution that would depend on the ability of the recipient organisation to identify a matching amount from a business, or possibly from an individual or a trust or foundation. This could also happen in reverse with a private contribution dependent on matching support from government.

For example, the Australia Business Arts Foundation operates the Premier’s Arts
Partnership Fund in South Australia, West Australia and Tasmania which doubles the value of new cash partnerships between small-to-medium businesses and cultural organisations.

The Taskforce suggests trialing matched funding initiative as a three year pilot.

What are institutions currently getting in the way of private sector/individual support?

In 2009 the Ministry for Culture and Heritage surveyed cultural organizations on their income sources for the 2007/08 tax year,

2000 organisations were invited to respond, and nearly 500 did, including most of the organisations who get recurrent funding from Creative New Zealand.

Although it’s a survey and therefore only a snapshot of the organisations who filled it out, it did have some interesting figures.

The total amount of gifts, grants and sponsorship, both cash and non-cash, received in 2007/08 by the 480 responding organisations was $383.2 million.

Central and local government contributed the lion’s share at 80 percent

Lottery Grants contributed 6.5 percent.

The corporate sector contributed 6 percent (or $22.6 million) towards total giving and sponsorship levels (that is, excluding all other types of income such as earned income from ticket sales).

Trusts and foundations contributed 4.5 percent ($16.7 million)

Individuals just 3 percent ($9.9 million).

The Art of the Possible: Strengthening Private Support for the Arts in New Zealand, October 2010

In May 2010, Creative New Zealand commissioned the Allen Consulting Group to conduct research into private sector support for the arts, and to develop an plan for increasing this support.

The report had 33 recommendations, and among the themes identified in the executive summary were the statements that:

• the private sector is the most viable source of additional external support (financial, in kind goods and services, skills-based volunteering) for arts organisations
• it is unrealistic to expect that the wealthy philanthropists will be the primary source of funds from the private sector
• increasing the number of New Zealanders who give to the arts, in a highly competitive and sophisticated philanthropic market, is a worthy but long-term endeavour
• arts/ business partnerships offer the greatest opportunity

Predictions

I'd guess that CNZ will soon have a new branch in its organisational structure, a small office that focuses on training cultural institutions to raise funds from business and individuals. I also wonder if we'll see CNZ introducing criteria around fundraising for its recurrently funded organisations, as part of the revisions that are currently being made.

As payroll giving (the ability to make donations to charities automatically from your salary) has already been introduced, it seems simple to pass gift aid in too.

Overall, none of this feels world changing. As the budget and election come closer though, there'll be opportunity to test Finlayson's assertion that government funding isn't going anywhere.

Life support

So Peter Robinson took out the Walters (deservedly, say Bestof3 readers, who correctly picked him as the winner earlier this year) and I have high hopes of tonight's Laureate awards.

Both the Walters and the Laureates provide artists with a healthy chunk of cash. But with the news that Janne Land, 64zero3* and Fishers Fine Arts are all closing their doors, I'm beginning to think - in these hard times, should CreativeNZ be underwriting art dealers, the way the govt is underwriting banks? After all, they've funded every other part of the production and critical apparatus (from making the work to critiquing it).**

*I'm kinda meh about the other two, but really disappointed to hear 64zero3 will shut up after their 64th show next February. They showed a number of artists whose work I really admire, they put the shows up online, were really easy to deal with, and regularly showed newer artists' work. I think it's a real loss.

**Yeah, I know they hand out the occasional grant to support a dealer to show at international art fairs, but I think it's a valid argument that dealers are an integral part of the visual arts ecosystem and are contributing to CNZ's strategic priorities:

• New Zealanders are engaged in the arts
• High-quality New Zealand art is developed
• New Zealanders have access to high-quality arts experiences
• New Zealand arts gain international success

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.

Relaxing and having fun

A curious wee article on the Creative New Zealand website at the moment recounts a recent visit to New Zealand by Alan Brown, an American consultant who gave workshops in Auckland and Wellington.

Brown's research "focuses on understanding consumer demand for cultural experiences and on helping cultural institutions, foundations and agencies to see new opportunities, make informed decisions and respond to changing conditions." His advice to New Zealand arts organisations:

"We should never lose sight of the fact that the number one reason people attend arts events is to relax and have fun. ... We have to be careful not to over-intellectualise the experience. Our research shows that it's in our nature to over-intellectualise the experience and this can alienate some audiences."

At the end of the article, a selection of comments from feedback cards handed out at the workshops are reproduced, including:

"I intend to use the value framework guidelines to create one for our organisation and to implement these ideas/terminology in our communication with all stakeholders (audiences, sponsors etc)."

You can read the full account here

And download Brown's value framework for art experiences (PDF) here

Residency Round-Up

Joanna Langford,Regan Gentry, James Robinson - Tylee Cottage Artists-in-Residence, Wanganui 2007-08

Peter Peryer - William Hodges Fellowship, Southland

Ronnie van Hout - Artists To Antarctica programme

Tanya Marriot, Louise Potiki Bryant and Tracy Duncan – Wild Creations residencies

Kingsley Baird - residency at the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, Belgium

Phil Dadson - Sanskriti Foundation residency at the Sanskriti Kendra campus, New Delhi

Mladen Bizumic - Creative New Zealand Berlin Visual Artists' Residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien

David Hatcher - Currently showing at the Govett Brewster, work from his 2006 residency

Judy Millar, Andrew McLeod, Gavin Hipkins, James Robinson - McCahon House residencies 2007

Ben Cauchi - Frances Hodgkins Fellowship

Johnny Penisula - Creative New Zealand/Macmillan Brown Pacific Artist in Residence, University of Canterbury

Creative NZ grants announced

CNZ's second round of funding for the 2006/07 years has been announced. 245 grants totalling more than $3.9 million have been awarded; nearly $13 million was requested from 723 applications.

The visual arts grants include:

• William Hsu: to participate in the 14th annual Stazione di Topolo in Italy - $5,940
• Natural Selection and Daniel Arps: towards participating in Documenta 12 - $17,390
• Art & Industry Biennial Trust: towards the new work component of SCAPE 2008 - $82,500
• Simon Ingram: towards creating a series of telephone painting machines - $12,410
• Ryan Moore: towards a collaborative artists’ book project - $11,080
• Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki: towards commissioning three new works and an exhibition catalogue for “Mystic Truths” - $40,000
• Neuer Berliner Künstverein: towards an exhibition of contemporary New Zealand art in Berlin - $45,000
• Alice Hutchinson: towards the participation of “Aniwaniwa” in the Venice Biennale collateral exhibition - $24,000

Full list of grants - CNZ website (PDF)

p.s. From this week's International Institutue of Modern Letters newsletter (PDF)

Which acclaimed New Zealand writer has just had a book published without Creative New Zealand assistance – even though a note in the book itself thanks CNZ for their publishing grant? Publishers have their print deadlines, and funding agencies have their decision deadlines, and sometimes the twain don’t meet. Likewise, it would seem, some literary judgements.

Off to Antarctica

Ronnie van Hout has been announced as one of the two recipients of the 2007/08 'Artists To Antarctica' fellowship (along with author Tessa Duder).

Van Hout will be off to the frozen continent in October or November this year. He says:

"Antarctica as a frontier fascinates me. It is one of the areas of our earth that resembles most closely an alien environment. The alien is a strong feature of my art, and I was interested to see how many early depictions of Antarctica have an alien presence at their heart. My aim is to examine the human in an extreme alien environment."

Image: Cinematographer Captain James Francis Hurley alongside the Endurance , on Shackleton's 1914-1917 expedition to Antartica. Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library. Reference number: 1/2-098619-F. http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz.

The tyranny of exchange rates

Britain's regional galleries are being offered £5m buy and display contemporary art from overseas.

The money is being put up by the Art Fund to provide "the stimulus and the means of changing insular collecting habits".

In an article in the Guardian, the director of the Art Fund is quoted: "It's a desert out there. If you wander around our regional galleries, you won't find any evidence that there is artistic life beyond these shores."

£5m to tackle the insularity of UK art galleries - The Guardian

Regional galleries are being asked to put forward proposals for the funding, which will be spread over 5 years. The Art Fund hopes that galleries will look to the work of an emerging generation of international artists, rather than "the 300 artists who feature strongly at Frieze and Basel".

The article suggests galleries could collect works from places such as "sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic world, or the Indian subcontinent". I say CNZ should start talking up New Zealand's attractive combination of affordability and exoticism.

Image: Peter Robinson, Strategic Plan - First We Take Manhattan, 1997. Collection FRAC Lorraine (that's overseas, you know).

CNZ to fund video game development?

Okay - that's totally speculative. In fact - not even speculative, utterly baseless.

What triggered it though was an article by Bruce Gain on Wired about the French government's newly announced sponsorship of the French video gaming industry.

Earlier this month, three game designers were inducted into the French Order of Arts and Literature. France has also recently signed tax breaks for video games made in France into law.

The breaks are only available for some projects: Gain cites an advisor to the culture ministry as saying "The games must have a narration of some kind and a scenario written in French with elements of adventure or simulation games."

Surprising fact I gleaned from this article: the game for King Kong was made by leading French video game company Ubisoft.

State art funding = mediocrity?

In an interesting post on Artworld Salon, András Szántó poses the question:

"Why is it that America’s sink-or-swim attitude toward arts support keeps producing world-renowned stars, while lavish state funding in Europe seems to achieve the opposite?"

Szántó is tackling the situation in Norway, but what he says resonates for New Zealand:

"The problem is that government programs don’t seem to do too well in nurturing the kind of artistic reputations that merit recognition abroad. Access to free training and living subsidies is a wonderful privilege. Enterprising artists can even take advantage of government travel grants. But in Norway – as in other European nations that spend generously on the arts – these forms of support have, by and large, failed to translate into international approval.

Let me suggest that this might be a perfect mission to embrace by private philanthropy, a phenomenon that is finally emerging in full force in Norway."

Szántó argues that private supporters and foundations can achieve things that government funding, hampered by politics and policies, cannot. His post is particularly when you put it against the Creative New Zealand Draft Strategic Plan.

CNZ draft strategic plan released

Creative New Zealand has released its Draft Strategic Plan for 2007-2010.

The Draft Strategic Plan identifies four strategic priorities

1. New Zealand Communities are Engaged with their Arts
"This priority is focussed specifically on communities and their participation in the arts. It acknowledges that through the strong foundation of communities and the arts, both the overall arts sector and communities will be healthier."

2. Development of Quality New Zealand Arts and Artists
"This strategic priority aims to ensure that New Zealand artists develop the quality of their work, reach their potential and move the arts forward."

3. Development of Quality New Zealand Arts and Artists
"This priority aims to give New Zealanders in metropolitan and provincial centres regular opportunities to access high quality diverse arts experiences."

4. International Success for New Zealand Arts
"International success for New Zealand arts, artists, producers and arts organisations does not tend to happen spontaneously, but is generally the result of a long-term commitment to achieving success for New Zealand arts internationally."

Feedback on the plan is due by Wednesday 7 March. CNZ has appointed an external reference group to provide independent feedback on the draft plan, consisting of Jenny Harper, Liz Civil, Sai Lealea, Roger King, Anna Kominik.

CNZ Draft Strategic Plan and background info - CNZ website

n.b. don't bother searching for the word 'venice'.

pshaw

After three presentations at the Venice Biennale (Peter Robinson + Jacqueline Fraser (2001), Michael Stevenson (2003), et al (2005) - CNZ, why did you not keep all the project sites live?) this year New Zealand is being represented by a small contingent of curators, artists, art dealers and a CNZ staffer, who are going to invade Venice surreptitiously and subversively with ... a book.

The 31-ish artists represented in the book (Ronnie Van Hout is a not-confirmed) were selected by a panel of eight curators and visual-arters. Over at Overthenet, you can speculate on which curator nominated which artist (apparently they all got one nomination the others couldn't veto) and then be astounded by the utterly ridiculous timeline that these artists have been given to prepare their artist pages - not to mention the finicky specs provided by the publication designer, Warren Olds.

I like artists. Some of my friends are artists. But if you give 31 artists 10 days to produce 6 pages of images, as 300dpi TIFF files, and think it will happen, either you're on something, or hurt yourself by holding your breath too long as a child.