NEXUS
KUPU WHAKAATU / 特辑
With Aotearoa Music Month starting, we wanted to make sure that we were keeping up with all that’s happening throughout Kirikiriroa and keeping you all informed on what it means to support local artists in a month dedicated to their mahi. Nexus sat down with Creative Waikato’s CEO to discuss what it is they do over there, and how you as a consumer of art can get involved with supporting and facilitating the success of local creators. N: Can you give me the elevator pitch for Creative Waikato? What is it that you guys do? Creative Waikato is a non-profit organisation that helps facilitate and support local artists through Waikato. Currently we’re working as far south as Taumarunui, to Port Waikato, and across to Raglan. Within our organisation we offer advice, training and support in many different forms. Right now we have a lot of things that we are involved in and that we do to keep on top of the Arts scene in Kirikiriroa. I mentioned training and support and that comes in the form of things like Elevate, ArtReach & Toi Māori. Creative Waikato has been in existence since 2012, with myself coming on board in February of 2020. N: Can you tell us more about some of your initiatives like Elevate and ArtReach? We offer many different means of support and various growth opportunities, but with things like Elevate and ArtReach, the end goal is to grow and strengthen the knowledge and skills of young artists as they work on their craft and hone in on their skills. Elevate is a 9 month programme aimed at helping support Waikato creatives working towards building careers in the creative industry. One of the more beneficial parts of this programme is that we pair you with one of our amazing Creative Development mentors, as they help facilitate your growth. N: With NZ music month coming up, what events should we be on the lookout for in and around kirikiriroa? We don't have any specific events that we’re running but we do run the site thingstodo.events and that’s the easiest way of finding gigs and shows that are coming up and getting involved in supporting local artists and musicians throughout the month of May. There’s so many resources and links on our website, ways
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for you to be involved and what there is you can do during Music Month and beyond that. N: How do artists go about applying for funding? Do you allocate specific amounts aside for different creative mediums? Well we’re not a funder, so we don’t specifically give out any funding except the Creative Communities Scheme that is given out twice a year on behalf of the City Council. This isn’t something specific to us as it’s offered through local councils and we’re one of many to give it out. In terms of relative funding, we help facilitate the application process with local artists, giving them the advice and skills needed to ease that process the best we can. N: On the topic of advocacy, what else do you do to help local artists? There’s heaps of services that we provide and things we do to help those artists trying to find their footing. Like I mentioned, we do help in the application process for funding, but we’re also committed to making it known that there’s support for creative souls that feel there isn’t any. COVID has had a major impact on everyone but the creative industry, the music industry, has been greatly affected and we want to support as much as we can. We have plenty of team dedicated to helping you, so just flick us an email and see what we can do. And if it’s something out of our reach, then we’ve got connections. N: As someone who’s been through the PHD programme in music, what advice do you have for young tauira up and coming at Waikato? Honestly it’s all about creating but letting others see your creations. Allowing yourself the ability to grow in your works by having critiques and letting people you feel comfortable with listen or actively participate in the process you use when making and creating. One of the best things you can do is just jam with some mates. The best thing is that creating music or art is that you’re not restricted to genre or style. It’s all open and it can be as rough or as polished as you want it to be. Ultimately there’s no right or wrong way to do it. You need to be able to let your work be seen, so being precious and not allowing yourself to be open and receptive to criticism isn’t going to help you grow. Be open
