Auckland Pride have been denied funding for their Creative Director role by Creative New Zealand, effective next month. Director of Pride Max Tweedie talks to express.
“On Friday 30 September, Auckland Pride received news that our funding for the role of Creative Director had been declined by Creative New Zealand – who first enabled the role back in 2021,” Creative Director Nathan Joe has announced in an open letter, admitting that the funding was not guaranteed but, “we were disappointed with the results nonetheless.”
“There is no project Auckland Pride is inherently or objectively more deserving of funding over. Therein lies the impossible situation we find ourselves in,” Joe writes.
Creative Director is one of two paid full-time roles at Auckland Pride. In October 2021, the organisation announced their Creative Director along with two other new paid appointments – Major Events Producer and Kaiwhakahaere Takatāpui.
Elyssia Wilson-Heti took the role, with producing and directing Auckland Pride’s opening Pride Gala event, named as part of her duties.
Covid-19 restrictions scuppered plans for vast majority of the 2022 festival including the Gala, and by June this year Auckland Pride were advertising for a new Creative Director, with Joe, (well known in the arts sector as a playwright and poet) announced at the end of July.
“I entered the role because I believe that the queer and takatāpui artists of our country will lead us towards our vision and reshape our culture,” Joe says in his open letter.
“As it stands, it is just another arts project denied and struggling to justify its own existence.”
He goes on to say, “I don’t want to be too proud to say my job is in danger. We have every intention of ensuring my role can exist with or without the funding. We have every intention that our next Festival will not have its vision compromised.”
“Our priority at this time is attempting to fill the funding gap that we’re now faced with in our budget.”
Despite Covid-related setbacks Auckland Pride has expanded as an organisation over the past four years, from two paid roles in 2019 to five paid roles in 2022.
Speaking to express magazine, Max Tweedie explains the strategy behind their expansion:
“Auckland Pride is taking a more strategic approach to our role within the arts and culture sector, and wanting to invest more into the ecosystem to support more emerging talent and our established artists. The Creative Director plays a crucial role in focusing on the overall creative direction for the festival, and the outcomes we can generate for our artists. We’re interested more in long term sustainability in the sector, and to achieve this we need the capacity to develop relationships with arts organisations, funders, and of course artists and practitioners. Our expanding team of contractors represent the growing offering of major events being delivered by Auckland Pride, specifically Te Tīmatanga, and wanting to ensure that we have the capacity to deliver high quality events for thousands of our communities to enjoy. As we continue to evolve from a predominantly governance-run organisation to one led by its operations team, the capacity of our team to both run our organisation and deliver events is critical to our success.”
