The CEO of Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand is calling out Creative NZ for declining their funding proposal saying there are “a lot of contradictions” in their reasons explaining why.
For the first time in 10 years, Creative NZ declined a funding proposal for $31,000 to go towards the Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ for 2023 – 2025.
It’s the organisation behind the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival, an annual competition where high schools around the country perform scenes from the author's plays.
Since 1991, 120,000 students have performed in the festival and more than half the secondary schools in the country currently participate.
In the funding proposal assessment document, the assessors said, “the proposal did not demonstrate the relevance to the contemporary art context of Aotearoa in this time and place and landscape.”
The assessors also added that “this genre was located within a canon of imperialism and missed the opportunity to create a living curriculum and show relevance to the contemporary art context of Aotearoa.”
“Shakespeare clearly is relevant for a good part of our country and the number of young students that have taken part in it, it’s also not relevant for a good chunk of our society as well,” Creative NZ’s Caren Rangi said.
Dawn Sanders, CEO of Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand, said Creative NZ was trying to “cancel” Shakespeare and said the funding assessment comments couldn’t be “further from the truth.”
“For one thing, the empire wasn’t even around then when Shakespeare wrote it, so 'imperialism' is a strange word to use, and it’s a canon of work that has longevity,” Sanders said.
Sanders also added that Creative NZ staff “hardly ever” come to watch the performances.
Creative NZ’s Arts Council Chair, Caren Rangi said, the successful 58 organisations that had funding proposals approved were “better able” to demonstrate that they could align with Creative NZ’s priorities.
When 1News asked what those priorities were, Caren Rangi said they included supporting Māori arts, supporting the arts of Pacific organisations, and a focus on diversity.
Dawn Sanders said there were “a lot of contradictions” in Creative NZ’s assessment report.
“I think they need to look very carefully at why they’re not doing it,” Sanders said.
Earlier this year, students competing in this year’s Shakespeare NZ festival decided to perform a te reo Māori version of Shakespeare’s ‘Henry V.’
“The scene that was done this year in the festival which was Mount Manganui College setting the Māori land wars at the opening of the harbour there, and the students wrote a lot of the translation of the text,” Sanders said.
Creative NZ’s Caren Rangi said the decision was not about “cancelling” Shakespeare.
“This is about saying with limited resources, we’ve chosen to allocate them to other art forms and to new art forms that haven’t received funding before,” Rangi said.
Arts Minister Carmel Sepuloni declined an interview with 1News, but her spokesperson said she “does not have discretion over funding decisions made by Creative NZ.”
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