Arts Council Aims To Improve ‘Image’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32117, 13 October 1969, Page 24

Arts Council Aims To Improve ‘Image’

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, October 12. “We are like the tax department Our very nature doesn’t lend itself to winning friends,” the chairman of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council (Mr W. N. Sheat) said tonight.

“We spend a great deal of time considering whether to support this or that and it we support this then that attacks us and vice-versa. We just can’t win.” he said.. “We are trying to get people to understand what we do and why we do it" He said the Auckland artists who had criticised the council had talked “twaddle.” Their main complaint was that not enough of the $460,000-8480,000 grant was spent on the visual arts. “But not enough is spent on the other arts either. We spend the money as best we can,” said Mr Sheat.

To improve its negative image the council would rely on mass media rather than on reports to publish news of council activities, and would progressively increase the use of public relations organisations.

Mr Sheat said that tha council had begun compiling statistics to show the degree of public interest in the various forms of creative art It was putting art of a high calibre into the market place to show New Zealand art to people who would not normally go to art galleries and theatres.