The Creative Communities Scheme (CCS) is a partnership between Wellington City Council and Creative New Zealand, and the funding is offered twice a year by a panel.
Mark Farrar, from Council’s funding team, explains that the panel is made up of a number of professionals working in different artforms themselves, representing the partners.
“The scheme supports projects that reflect the diversity of the capital’s culture and traditions, get young people participating, have broad appeal and community involvement, and encourage engagement in the arts.”
The next CCS funding round will close on 19 August 2021 We particularly want to see young people and groups who have never applied before to be taking the time to make applications, and that have a strong focus on diversity and non-traditional artforms.
The latest round of grants awarded $107,605 to 31 arts projects across Wellington in April. These included:
Sam Palmer’s Taonga Pūoro Wānanga (workshops) at Mt Cook School received $5,434
Sam’s overall aspirations are to inspire people to take pleasure in and contribute to the making and playing of taonga pūoro and preserve this meaningful and traditional art form within te ao Māori.
Music production course for women and femmes awarded $2,870
The Sensonaughts received funding for a weekend music production course aiming to get more women and femmes (non-binary gender descriptions) started with making their own electronic music.
Human Dance: A year-long programme of Kapa Haka classes and workshops for adult dancers in Pōneke awarded $3,000
Since 2015, Human Dance has been providing regular dance classes and one-off workshops from the Te Auaha dance studios in central Pōneke for amateur adult dancers and dance enthusiasts. The beginner level Kapa Haka classes for adults will be taught at an introductory level for complete beginners, and does not require any previous experience in dance, Kapa Haka, or prior knowledge of Te Reo.
See a full list of CCS recipients in the latest funding round: Creative Communities Scheme past allocations (PDF, 309KB)
We had the additional support of $30,000 in 2020/21 as part of Creative New Zealand’s COVID-19 response.
The Council’s Arts and Culture Fund is open for applications and closes 26 August 2021.
For more information or to chat with one of the team about a project, contact Mark and his team funding@wcc.govt.nz, or an arts adviser felicity.birch@wcc.govt.nz.