New Money and Pathways for Pasifika Artists at Arts Festivals!
Cover image: MĀUI by Freshmans Dance Crew as part of the Measina Festival in December last year. Photo Credit: Pacific Arts - Creative New Zealand
Creative New Zealand have announced their support for Aotearoa’s Fringe festivals for three years to develop emerging Pasifika artists.
The new collaboration, developed with the festival directors of the Auckland Fringe, Wellington Fringe and the Dunedin Fringe Festival sees an increase in support for Pasifika awards at each festival. For three years (2022-2024) award winners will now receive $2,000, up from $500.
On top of the increase to the awards, each festival will also receive $10,000 annually for three years to support Pasifika artists to produce and present new work at the fringe festivals.
Ali Foa’i, Principal Adviser Pacific Arts, says this new strategic initiative and partnership aims to encourage more practitioners to submit works to the festivals and to increase Pasifika artist and audience participation.
“In Aotearoa our fringe festivals are places of experimentation; they offer artists a place to test new ideas and be playful. We’re thrilled to offer this opportunity to the Fringe community, it’s where so many of our artists develop and fine-tune their performance skills.”
Each festival can use the funding for micro grants to support individuals or collectives to write or create new works. Fringe festival directors are keen to see what exciting work will be developed.
Director of the Auckland Fringe, Borni Te Rongopai Tukiwaho, is enthusiastic about the new support.
"This kaupapa is incredible! I applaud the Creative New Zealand Pacific Arts whānau for recognising the specific needs our Fringe artists have, and for coming to the party with actual tangible support, Ka rawe!! It's a huge tohu. I'm looking forward to seeing the difference it will make to our Pacific artists this year and excited to see this support widen in the future.”
Weaving together the concepts of Tagata – the people, and Vā – meaningful spaces between people, places, cultures – this new support aligns with Creative New Zealand’s Pacific Arts Strategy to help create more infrastructure within the sector.
“Creative New Zealand historically supports our major arts festivals. But we have a very youthful Pasifika population so these new partnerships with the Fringe festivals will help to develop the wider arts ecosystem as well as encourage more diversity and inclusion and ideas. We loved developing this with the Borni, Vanessa Stacey (Wellington Fringe Festival Director) and Gareth Mcmillan (Dunedin Fringe Arts Trust Director) and are grateful for their fabulous ideas and co-design with our team,” says Makerita Urale, Creative New Zealand’s Senior Manager, Pacific Arts.
The first recipients of this increased funding in 2022 were: Tui Vutu who received the Pacific Award at the Dunedin Fringe and Viki Moananu who received the Wellington Fringe Award. The 2022 Auckland Fringe Award is still to be announced.
"For Pasifika emerging artists it is hard to break into the mainstream festivals without experience or testing of performances. It is fabulous to see more Pasifika funding being put into festivals where groups like Fine Fatale will thrive, and we hope this means Pasifika cultural competency training and human resource will be supported at the same time in these spaces" says Olivia Taouma producer of Fine Fatale performance group.