Local bodies and the arts

Press, 17 January 1979, Page 14

Local bodies and the arts

Public money flows to support artistic endeavours and cultural activities in New Zealand through a great variety of channels. The task of finding money for the arts is shared by local and central government; and some local authorities, as a recent survey completed for the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council has shown, take the task very seriously and have been making an effort which fully matches that of the central Government. Indeed, some municipal authorities have done more to protect the artistic and cultural activities of their areas in times of recession and inflation than the central Government, which may have scrimped in these areas rather too severely in the last year or two.

The survey also established that some municipal local authorities do not do as much to support cultural activities as they could or should. Establishing who pays how much to support particular institutions or activities is not, however, a useful thing to do if the only purpose is to shame those local bodies whose records are poor. A more positive approach, one emphasising the benefits of extensive and wiell-supported cultural programmes and institutions, would probably do more to sway those local bodies which at present neglect their responsibilities. The results, rather than figures on money spent, are likely to set the most productive examples. Still, the survey’s findings show up some local authorities in a very bad light, and to the extent that local authorities in general can reasonably be called on to increase their spending on cultural or artistic activities, most of the increase should come from those suburban-satellite authorities which are at present riding on the backs of the central authorities they surround.

The findings of the survey highlight the extent to which there is already a reasonably clear division of responsibilities between local authorities and the central Government in the field of art and culture. It may be

sensible to retain this division. Local bodies tend to spend more on traditional activities or institutions—libraries, museums, bands and to a lesser extent theatres, cultural centres and historic places: while the central Government supports, primarily through the Arts Council, more innovative, less traditional activities and the work of individual artists.

In time, of course, activities that were once innovative become an established part of an area’s cultural scene. The survey contains a strong suggestion that local bodies should gradually take over responsibility for these new activities. This seems to be a generally sound suggestion; but if local bodies are to assume such increased responsibilities, they must have adequate resources to discharge them properly. In part, it will be a matter of reallocating existing resources. Sporting activities have been supported more generously in the past than cultural pursuits. Given the growing recognition that cultivation of the arts, in the broadest sense, is as important as providing means for physical recreation, money that would once have gone to sports may quite properly be preferred for cultural activities, and especially when sports have other sponsors or attract a paying audience.

The country’s ratepayers cannot be expected to become the sole patrons of all the arts, and if some additional artistic and cultural activities are to become the responsibility of local authorities, the authorities must be given alternative sources of money. At the same time, there will always remain a role for the central Government. It must continue to fund artistic and cultural activities which are new or experimental and to support the work of individual artists. Until they have greater resources local authorities can reasonably insist that their support be limited, as it has tended to be in the past, to more traditional, established activities which ratepayers, in fairly large numbers, have shown that they appreciate.