Monday, August 03, 2015

Your tax dollar at work

Some big grants from Creative NZ were announced late last week. These are the ones that support artists and organisations for one to three years so they give a good idea of CNZ's priorities. The total grants weigh in at just over $6 million so how did the Visual Arts feature? Not at all really with just $186,000 (Scape and the McCahon House) allocated. That's 3 percent of the total. SCAPE rather hilariously received $99,999.00 so some philanthropist out there might like to send them a buck to top it up. 

Who got all the money? It’s always been an insider joke that CNZ is run by dancers and this time Dance was certainly the winner on the night. This category fetched just under $3 million or near enough to half as it's known in the funding trade. One other thing, of the 22 grants awarded, 12 went to Trusts. You can make of that what you will.

Image: gratuitous dance funding joke