Artists and creatives should be valued and the work they make should be accessible to everyone. But the creative sector has been underfunded for years, and COVID-19 has left many artists without a paying audience.
Many artists and creatives, particularly those just starting out, end up compromising their work or giving up entirely. This robs them of their passion, and denies all of us their contributions to Aotearoa’s social fabric.
The Green Party believes in sustainable public funding for the creative sector. This means funding to back our artists and to support local venues that are critical for musicians and creatives trying to build an audience. The Crown has a responsibility to foster and encourage the taonga of toi Māori.
We will work to establish sustainable support and community-led projects across Aotearoa that weave the contributions of our creatives into the cities, towns, and regions they love and reflect. This requires collaboration across central and local government, community organisations, iwi, and hapū to create the best possible supportive environment for our music venues, galleries, and theatres.
With greater government support, Aotearoa will have a more vibrant creative sector that inspires and challenges us as a nation.
The Green Party will:
- Require public funding goes directly to artists themselves.
- Work to ensure publicly-funded creative projects pay a living wage.
- Collaborate with local councils, community groups, and iwi to ensure there are enough venues for all forms of art, and that these venues are accessible to everyone.
- Ensure laws support creative workers on big projects to get a fair share of profits and decent working conditions, especially for international film and television projects.
- Make donations to non-profit art and creative organisations tax-deductible, like charities are.
- Support Aotearoa’s artists to tour overseas.
- Support and fund more locally made content on television, radio and online.