The link between the creative arts and economic development, especially in the areas of high technology, ......hmmmmm !
I don't know if that statistic is relevant for NZ. A part from milking and selling houses there isn't much of other industries.

With a good NW- wind we can see Wellington from our studio/ gallery or at least the rain clouds point to Wellington.
In % to the population the arty community is definitely the South Island.

My vote's for Welly. There's no way Auckland surpasses Wellington as creative capital of NZ.

Anyway, a lot of NZ's economic research comes out of Wellington and some of that has been pretty creative recently ;)

..and thanks Andy Rodgers I'm still working every day and did so my entire live making a contribution and by the way a living.
..and I think many other artists doing the same.
..and you obviously miss the point.

..and every hard working person deserves a life- thanks mouse- cheese is ready.

HI,
Enjoyed the article. My wife and I are thinking to locate to NZ. Do not know the south - especially Christchurch. WE both into innovation - me particularly am involved with Design Thinking and sustainability - focus on product development. Which cities would we find a vibrant community to participate with and obviously make a living? There is obviously the cost of living to consider. Looking forward to hear from anyone.

If Prof. Florida is correct , we should never have voted Nanny Helen and the sisters out of power . Rainbow politics would have led us to the promised land of eternal prosperity and weird love . So how is it that economically we are on a precipace , and babies are still being assaulted greviously ? Sorry Prof. , but it didn't work here .

Andy Rodgers - I'm all for subsidisation of the arts. NZ does not have enough population or wealth to rely on philanthropy, like the USA or Japan does to a significant extent (although they too of course have a lot of public institutions). I believe our lives can be much richer through culture. Without public subsidies the lowest common denominator would rule. When in Japan I also love watching the NHK channel (Govt sponsored) - no ads, just quality arts programmes and documentaries.

There are plentty of business spinoffs. Peter Jackson may well have struggled getting to where he is today without generous subsidies earlier in his career. And look at what the Lord of the Rings has done for NZ's profile.

The other thing too not directly mentioned in the article is that people with arts backgrounds often have a valuable, alternative perspective of things in a non-arts environment eg. business. I distinctly remember Bob Jones years and years ago saying he would rather employ an arts graduate than a commerce student because of the ability to think outside the square etc. I think we see this tunnel vision coming through in the views of our bank economists and business leaders.

Mark H - An excellent reply to Matt.

Since the new Christchurch art gallery opened in 2004 the subsidy per visitor has been $21. I would suggest that if all the people who had visited the gallery in this time had been charged this amount the number of visitors would drop to a very low number, probably very close to zero.

Matt - I get enjoyment from being able to spend the money, that I work hard to earn, in the way that I want not what some "Arts" commisar determines to be better

W.Kunz - User pays, you are now starting to understand.

Matt from Auck, and Mr Kunz.

I love the arts. Without the arts my life would be greatly diminished. While I have an undergraduate and an honours degree in accountancy, my first degree was an Arts degree in English literature and language from Canterbury, and that remains my passion. When I said above:

What say I want to write a novel; then why should I have tax taken from me to support a novelist on a Government Grant writing full time, while I have to squeeze in five minutes here and there?

I meant it. Where is the justice in this?

And do I think without Government grants art and culture will disappear? No, of course it won't. It 'will' mean I won't be forced to fund drivel like the rubbish heap in Waikato. It would also mean, because all this is connected, I could possibly be retired by now, following my passion, if it wasn't for the tax I've had to pay, the huge amount of tax, over the last two decades and more.

And what is culture? If it's something created by a government, then I want no part of it, but that is not the case either, culture just is, arising from the interactions of individuals and the creative impulse.

I've just read David Lodge's Author, Author, a fictionalised - though largely factual - novel on the life of novelist Henry James (writing through 1890's, died 1916). He was able to live off writing with no government assistance whatsoever, just as some of the best writers of all time, including Shakespeare, did. The interesting thing about James, though, that really hit home, was how cheaply he could live, and live very comfortably; the ability to do that has been destroyed by inflation, and guess what that brings me back to - the State. Inflation lies solely at the feet of our central bank/fractional reserve banking system. The huge, stifling size of the State.

What else? The best classical music in our history was created often with partronage of the wealthy, but without government subsidies, and on and on ...

Damn, I'm out of time. Finally, what I've said above, aside, I'll play the devils advocate and grant you the (wrong) but hypothical point: what, if you could prove otherwise, that without government grants art would somehow cease to exist? Faced with this stark choice, 'would I, therefore, want to to be reading Shakespeare in a Gulag'? No. I want liberty. Unequivoqually. Without liberty, there is no life; the State and her minions of bureaucrats, are the biggest obstacle to my pursuit of happiness, I just havent' had to be physically put into a Gulag to figure that out, although that prison is where the West is slowly headed back to, again.

Anyway, in terms of art, that will never be the question, and will never be the choice. Creativity doesn't work like that. Thankfully, though quite logically, the creative drive doesn't turn on a subsiday.

It never fails to amuse me when I hear snobbish "arts" lovers wax lyrically about the the arts and their contribution to life. However when asked to pay the true economic cost for their pastimes they choke on their gin and tonics. Surely this is the definition of hypocrisy.

@ Malcolm. Goes without saying in my book. Back to work.

Just went out to get some cat litter. Bought an English newspaper at the same time. Well what do you know? "Benefits scandal" cries the headline as it discusses the "unemployment shock". So I inspect the second worst offender in Britain - Tower Hamlets - where I discover that 24% of the adult population has not worked since 'New Labour' came to power in 1996. Yet wait! Don't I know Tower Hamlets well? Haven't I walked down the Roman Road many times? Isn't it the place with all those art galleries in Hoxton? Isn't it one of the most diverse, if not the most diverse, population centre in Britain? So where are all those high tech jobs?

Societies have the desire/right for arts and cultural experiences in general. The government is obliged to lay the foundation this to happen.

..Societies have the desire/right for law and order. The government is obliged to lay the foundation this to happen.
..Societies have the desire/right for education. The government is obliged to lay the foundation this to happen.

Yes, now add arts funding, to welfare, to health cost, to education, to Ministerial perks, to all the other costs of our mammoth State and you're up to what? Something like 50% of your income needed by Nanny; although that's not really the issue, is it. And anyway, you can't dollar cost average morality.

But it's 11.12pm; careful you don't fall over a principle, Patron - given you don't know what one looks like - as you turn the light out for the night: time for bed.

I don't think you see the value, Americas cultural dominance through music, film, food and tv is as great as it's military dominance. Governments make a conscious effort to refute alternate cultures and seed their own. You might not see a profit for 10 or 20 years, the private sector is incredibly bad at making general investments like this with no instant obvious benefit. Say what you want about nz music, film or tv, but it has come a LONG way in the last 20 years due to state investment. They now generate stand alone entities that pump out culture. Another example is space flight. the first 20 years had little commercial application and mostly state funded. There was no immediate obvious commercial benefit. It's not until all the Initial ground work is done that we start to see the emergence of commercial sattelite launch capabilities.

What I'm saying is, relax, these are not specific investments but scattershots in the dark, if one catches and it spawns a new film company, poetic genius, or mad scientist that contributes to the fundamentals of space and time allowing the development of light speed travel 40 years later.... Then we are all the richer for it

You mean we need more people like this?
http://youmustbefromaway.blogspot.com/2009/09/winner-of-trust-waikato-na...

Value for money. I think NZers get pretty good value for money in SOME areas of state funded arts. The NZ Ballet and NZ Symphony Orchestra have a very good international reputation, and for a country of 4mil people punch way above their weight in the worldwide arts scene. The regional orchestras benefit from the state funding of the Ballet and NZSO - as they get flow on effects such as increased standard of musicians available and financial benefits from more work. They also do not have do engage in the expensive touring that the national orchestra is obligated to do, so can keep their overheads low. The reality is that because NZs population is so comparitively low and spread out, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to run a world class orcherstra or ballet and turn a profit. If the state funding in those areas dried up or diminished, then the impact on the entire NZ Orchestral and Ballet scene would be irrevocable. Maybe one day, we will have the population base to run these major arts organisations without the need of taxpayer assistance, but until then, the only way they can survive is with your tax money.
NZ also has a high reputation for its media arts, especially with Weta, Peter Jackson, Wellywood, etc. Also the wearable arts awards seem to get a lot of exposure. But in the painted and scultpured arts, I am yet to see much of a case made that NZers are getting value for money in their tax subsidies - especially when you see a port-a-loo flown half way across the world at great expense, or a $15,000 pile of trash as above. There is a strong danger of artists with no talent providing for clients with no taste - and you never want THAT subsidised by a dime of your tax money.

Roger : I can see some merit in subsidising sports , at least for kiddies , getting them active . What's the point of rewarding a pile of rubbish , that the artist was too lazy to create himself . He instructed the staff on how to do it for him ! ( if you are referring to all that dosh Labour wasted on the NZ America's Cup yachting , I concur , went a tad apoleptic over that , myself )

Roger Thompsen - "What's the point of rewarding a pile of rubbish , that the artist was too lazy to create himself . He instructed the staff on how to do it for him ! "... what was the piece entitled... "The Art of Delegation" maybe?

Oh no....an Arts-related topic on a financial-website.

Mark Hubbard will be loving the opportunity to have a rant.

"No money for the arts!....Let them starve to death! NZ society will be WAY better off..."

Yeah, right.

What a fascinating discourse. It is certainly showing up all the petty attitudes on both sides.
I am a 'wannnabe' artist. I dont expect anyone to pay for it unless they want to. I dont see being an artist as anything 'better' than a plumber, lawyer or nurse, and I challenge any artist to claim that. Accordingly I don't expect to get paid just to 'express myself' anymore than I would expect plumbers to be paid for fixing every leak, they can find, just because they love to fix leaks.
I dont want to subsidise the ballet or the opera anymore than I want to subsidise corporate aluminium smelting or the military in Iraq but I have to take that up with my MP . I believe that user pays is a good rationale for both high and low culture activity. Culture will happen anyway and often the art that happens just for the sake of it, not on some grant led gravy-train, is better, more essential, more relevant.
In a world beset with creative challenges and issues, artists should have plenty of relevant, content to express, beyond art-scene in-jokes and amusing explorations of 'What is Art?'.
The Constructivists view, was of artist as worker, a capable professional, applying themself to real opportunities and challenges. They encouraged artists to get involved with graphic design, engineering, science, economy, anywhere, where an empirical and creative attitude could contribute. This idea is a good one and has been played out very succcessfully by some far-thinking arts coordinators at local goverment and corporate level.
What we come back to is a question of worth and value. Artists seem to think their work is priceless and worthless at the same time. They cannot value their work. As someone said 'art is not a divine thing', and in the corporeal world it isn't, it jostles amongst the essential, the useful and the highly-desireable. The challenge for artists is not to get all the mean people to change their attitude through some sort of utopian-brainwash, but to make art that is relevant, make it worthwhile, make it essential. If the essence of art is to communicate, arguably if no-one wants or needs it, what is the point of making it? Maybe it is so amazingly far ahead of its time, in which case leave it somewhere of use for the future, its still not needed now.
Many artists do claim a degree of altruism and I 'care' as much as the next doodler , I like to address isssues that I feel pertinent, but ultimately, I make art, because I like to, because I am compelled to. Not for ther benefit of the human race, not for the children of tomorrow but for ME. If you want some I can put a price on it and you can decide whether to pay for it or not but I will make it anyway.
And to all of you 'art-drubbers', spouting off about piles of rubbish or any other of the countless pieces of art that are all too easy to attack.....The wonderful thing about art as opposed to some other areas of human endeavour is that it is a benign wolrd in which anything is possible. Unlike science or other disciplines it is not restrained, by morality, pragmatism, logic, ideology, sexuality, politics, logistics, economics. Any idea, any concept, flight-of-fancy, dream, any subject can be explored, researched, proposed and considered. I think it is important that there exists an area of endeavour with these possibilities. Jules Verne wrote "From Earth to the Moon' in 1865. It was fanciful idea at the time, yet a combination of the 'art-dream' and scientific investigation, resulted in mankind landing on the moon 104 years later.
However bizarre or facile an artwork appears to be, it still reflects us alll in some way if you care to look. It doesn't mean it is good, some will like it and some won't like alll art and luckily thats up to you to decide, it probably won't be foisted into your living room.
The time for artists to be indulged and petted is over, no-one wants artsy diva types running around demanding special consideration and privileges, least of all me. It's time for us to step up, stop taking the piss out of ourselves and show our real worth. The only way to prove the critics wrong as always is the work, the work, the work...

Neil : Many of us have gazed in awe at a grand master , a painting or sculpture of great beauty . And we can marvel at the dedication of those who suffered for their art . Vincient van Gogh springs readily to mind . But to us old farts , the dumping of some random items upon a floor is lazy . It cheapens your profession . Pollock was a genius . Dane Mitchell is not !

The 'other' way to patronise art is to, well, er, patronise it. Privately. Buy good stuff. Because you get more of what you pay for.

The American philanthropic aspect hasn't been much mentioned on this rather polarised thread, but is surely the foundation of much of their high culture. Having the dead hand of Gummint in this, which seems to be the default setting for not a few common taters here, only accomplishes three undesirable things:

- crowds out the genuine philanthropic impluse
- infantilises art by making it dependent on public largess rather than the more solidly centered demands of private patrons and buyers (such as evidence of actual technique)
- leads to an artistic community dominated by rent-seekers, surely not good for the soul

And one must always beware the cleaners, as Tate Modern found a year or three back, with a similar piece of rubbish.