The continuing adventures of Secret Squirrel

An invitation from the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane prompted us again to wonder why Creative New Zealand is declining to make the Trip of a Lifetime Reports public. In Brisbane, the IMA has scheduled three Australians to give public talks on their experiences at the Bienalle. Having travelled on our dime, it is hard to see why the New Zealand public shouldn’t know what our representatives saw and heard, and what they thought about it. We have now made three requests for the five individual reports by Natasha Conland, Gavin Hipkins, Gary Langsford, Lisa Reihana and Undine Marshfield (see WAITING FOR GODOT at the top right of the blog). The most recent response from CNZ claimed that, “The individual reports from delegates are submitted in confidence to us and so will not be publicly issued … this is common practice where free and frank advice is an imperative.” Kind of paradoxical that CNZ feels that getting ‘free and frank advice’ means you have to keep it secret.