New Zealand’s cultural sector encompasses a broad range of cultural and creative industries and activities: film, music, broadcasting, design and digital technologies, our built heritage, libraries, literature, museums and galleries, performing and visual arts.
Economy and Employment
The sector is an engine of growth for the New Zealand economy. In recent years, it has either matched or outpaced other sectors of the economy in terms of income, employment and value added.
We, along with Creative New Zealand share a mutual interest in achieving a better understanding of the contribution the arts make to New Zealand’s economy, and also in measuring the contribution more accurately. As a first step, our two organisations commissioned Infometrics to gather information on the economic characteristics of the sector. While the findings are robust we recognise a significant portion of the arts economy isn’t captured by the data sets and the resulting calculations are conservative. The Working Paper: An economic profile of the arts in New Zealand from 2015 provides a useful start towards gaining a better understanding in this area and the data sets available will be useful in informing government policy and funding decisions.
For more details, visit Creative New Zealand's arts advocacy page which lists relevant research about the value of the arts.
According to research commissioned by the Ministry, in 2019 the arts and creative sector contributed $10.8 billion to New Zealand’s GDP and created more than 92,000 jobs.
A March 2018 report The Value of Sport released by Sport NZ, explored the value of sport to New Zealanders, their communities and our country.
Architecture of the Sector
The Ministry is the government’s leading advisor on media, cultural and heritage matters. We fund, monitor and support a diverse portfolio of 15 agencies, including Crown entities, non-government organisations (NGOs) and trusts.
Government makes a significant contribution to the broad cultural sector each year. Support for the cultural sector is also provided through other public sources, most notably education and local government. Further funding is provided by the Lottery Grants Board each year to four key cultural sector agencies in their capacity as Statutory Bodies. In the 2022/23 financial year we will administer approximately $640,723 million for Vote Arts, Culture and Heritage and $95.193 million for Vote Sport and Recreation.
The Ministry has a leadership role and heads an informal sector cluster of funded agencies, based on voluntary collaboration. It has been working with cultural sector agencies to develop more of a whole-of-sector approach. In addition to engaging on specific policy, research, partnerships and development areas, and aligning some funding strategies, agencies have more recently been collaborating on a range of initiatives to improve value for money and develop new sources of funding outside government.
The sector is home to tens of thousands of organisations which fit broadly into categories of heritage, culture and media.
For a general overview of the cultural sector, read our Cultural policy in New Zealand document.
Updated on 1st July 2022