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Creative New Zealand reflects on the power of the arts and the impact creative expression can have on our individual and collective wellbeing. Turn to your creative skills. Take comfort from them. Share them if you think it would help others.
He waka eke noa – we are all in this together
In 'Together We Make A Nation', Dalal, Ola, Yibeth and Neary, four women of refugee backgrounds, invite us into their homes and share with us their stories. From being forced to flee their home countries, to adjusting to their new lives as NZ citizens, each woman reflects on their journey so far, and their hopes for the future. View this recently funded NZ On Air documentary.
Together we make a nation
Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Grant Robertson has announced he is calling for applications to the fourth round of the Regional Culture and Heritage Fund (RCHF). The round opened on 07 March 2019. Applications close at 5pm on Thursday 18 April 2019. Decisions will likely be announced in June/July 2019.
RCHF Round Four is now open
The Big Idea website honours the work of Zulfirman Syah. A victim of the shooting at the Linwood Mosque in Christchurch, Zulfirman is due to exhibit this and other works at the Auckland Art Fair in May with Indonesian art agency Redbase Foundation. Zulfirman’s is just one story, but each matters in understanding our strong diversity as a country today and in coming to terms with this tragedy as Zulfirman’s recovery will be long.
Artist in terrorist attacks
Do you want to see an outstanding disabled artist recognised? How about an inclusive project celebrating community arts or a leader providing access to the arts for people in New Zealand? Nominations to this year’s Te Putanga Toi Arts Access Awards, presented annually by Arts Access Aotearoa, close on Monday 8 April 2019.
Te Putanga Toi Arts Access Awards 2019 call for nominations
Deeper insights into the life and times of Helen Kelly and Te Rauparaha are among the New Zealand stories to be revealed through this year’s annual New Zealand History Awards, Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage Chief Historian Neill Atkinson said today.
Annual history awards reveal New Zealand’s stories
A new book, Here we are, read us: Women, disability and writing, creatively explores the sometimes complicated and often neglected relationship between writing and disability. This little book with big ideas features eight diverse, well-known and emerging women writers. They are: Tusiata Avia, Steff Green, Helen Vivienne Fletcher, Charlotte Simmonds, Michele Leggott, Trish Harris, Te Awhina Arahanga and Robin Hyde (the only non-living writer).
Crip the Lit launches “little book with big ideas”
Grammy Award-winning American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham will perform for the first time with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Wellington and Auckland in March.
NZSO goes out of this world with The Planets and opera star Susan Graham
This year in 2019, New Zealand will mark 250 years since the first meetings between Māori and Europeans during James Cook and the Endeavour's 1769 voyage to Aotearoa New Zealand. A national commemoration, Tuia – Encounters 250, will acknowledge this pivotal moment in our nation’s history as well as the exceptional feats of Pacific voyagers who reached and settled in Aotearoa many years earlier.
Tuia – Encounters 250

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News and Events

News and events from our sectors and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

2019 Smart Alex creative writing competition for secondary school students

For a second year, the Friends of the Turnbull Library are running the Smart Alex creative writing competition. The competition will connect young minds with the Turnbull collections to excite the imagination, inspire creativity and generate new ways of looking at our past, present and future.

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Arts continue to deliver value for New Zealanders

More than 2.19 million New Zealanders attended arts activities funded by Creative New Zealand according to its annual report for 2017/18.

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NZSO to offer more Shed Series concerts and new Baroque Series in 2019

The NZSO will tour a new baroque music series in 2019 & expand its innovative Shed Series concerts in Wellington.

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New film documenting gruelling New Zealand Arctic expedition premieres in New York

A new film, that follows young Antipodeans as they ski 560 kilometres to cross the Greenland icecap towing 60 kilogram sleds, premiered at a prestigious New York festival.

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2019 Ockham Finalists Explore Truth and Issues of Our Times

Four of our best-known novelists – explore what it means to tell the truth – are in the running for the country’s richest fiction writing prize with the Ockham NZ Book Awards.

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