Arts & culture funding in HB

This week the Hastings District Council reconsidered its funding of the Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival, one of the Bay’s signature events.

Back at its birth in 2015, HDC supported the Festival with $85,000 grant funding from the Hawke’s Bay Opera House operational budget, a $50,000 underwrite and in-kind support from other Council operational budgets, like marketing. In recent years, the funding has been $120,000 per year for an annual Festival event.

Arts Inc Heretaunga (AIH), orchestrator of the Festival, had sought continuation of this funding level during the LTP process, but after business case review and workshopping, the Council awarded only $60,000 per year towards what would henceforth be a biennial Festival. And in a surprise to just about everyone, Festival creator Pitsch Leiser was made redundant.

This week however HDC decided to up its contribution to $120,000 per year after all, while still envisioning a biennial Festival. From the Council’s perspective, given limited resources (including diminished return from ticket sales and tighter external funding/sponsorships), a higher quality Festival can be expected from a more relaxed and affordable biennial schedule – the next Festival in 2025 will tell.

This funding becomes a major component of HDC’s overall AIH budget support of $344,000 per year, which includes operation of the Hastings Community Arts Centre ($178,000) and support for Hastings Blossom Parade and other smaller events.

Overall, HDC commits approximately $3.8 million per year to ‘arts, culture and creativity’. The lion’s share, almost half, goes to Toitoi. Here’s the spending pie chart:

We attempted to look into the comparable spending level for ‘arts and culture’ by the Napier City Council, but this proved difficult, in part because the money is spread over numerous business units and new staff is still bedding in.

Nevertheless, allowing for ‘definitional differences’ with HDC, the bits and pieces add up to a significant amount:

MTG – $4,794,458
Municipal Theatre – $1,632,749 
Events – $456,000 (including $20k for the HB Arts Festival)
Deco Trust – $188,586
Creative Arts Napier – $79,847
City activations (e.g. street festivals) – $55,000
Civic Choir – $10, 506

Total – $7,217,146

Almost twice the HDC spend!

This could say a lot of things about the regard Hastings and Napier citizens hold for one another, but we won’t go there at this time.

But seriously, over $11 million of public money for ‘arts and culture’ (plus some small tip money from CHB and Wairoa). Plus this money leverages more from donors, sponsors and ticket buyers.

And of course this leaves out the entrepreneurial investment made by the likes of The Mission and Black Barn and others toward our cultural enrichment, at least musically. And is a Magpies game a ‘cultural’ experience?

I hear a fair amount of grumbling in the hustings as to how well the public ‘A&C’ funds are allocated and spent. But perhaps that’s unavoidable when at bottom the choices being made are by definition ‘creative’ judgments, around which tastes and interests will invariably differ.

What’s your view? ‘Arts and culture’ seems to be relatively big business in HB. Money well spent?