Fringe Festivals Get Three-year Boosts For Emerging Pasifika Performing Artists

Creative New Zealand is thrilled to support Aotearoa’s Fringe festivals for three years to develop emerging Pasifika artists through the Pacific Arts Strategy 2018 – 2023.

The new collaboration, developed with the festival directors of the Auckland Fringe, Wellington Fringe and the Dunedin Fringe Festival sees an increase in strategic support for Pasifika awards at each festival. For three years (2022-2024) award winners will now receive $2,000, up from $500.

On top of the increase to the awards, each festival will also receive $10,000 annually for three years to support Pasifika artists to produce and present new work at the fringe festivals.

Ali Foa’i, Principal Adviser Pacific Arts, says this new strategic initiative and partnership aims to encourage more practitioners to submit works to the festivals and to increase Pasifika artist and audience participation.

“In Aotearoa our fringe festivals are places of experimentation; they offer artists a place to test new ideas and be playful. We’re thrilled to offer this opportunity to the Fringe community, it’s where so many of our artists develop and fine-tune their performance skills.”

Each festival can use the funding for micro grants to support individuals or collectives to write or create new works. Fringe festival directors are keen to see what exciting work will be developed.

Director of the Auckland Fringe, Borni Te Rongopai Tukiwaho, is enthusiastic about the new support.

"This kaupapa is incredible! I applaud the Creative New Zealand Pacific Arts whānau for recognising the specific needs our Fringe artists have, and for coming to the party with actual tangible support, Ka rawe!! It's a huge tohu. I'm looking forward to seeing the difference it will make to our Pacific artists this year and excited to see this support widen in the future.”

Weaving together the concepts of Tagata – the people, and Vā – meaningful spaces between people, places, cultures – this new support aligns with Creative New Zealand’s Pacific Arts Strategy to help create more infrastructure within the sector.

“I am so incredibly excited about the opportunities and space this will create for our amazing Pasifika artists and art community, and I can’t wait to see the fruits of this wonderful FATU begin to bloom!” says Wellington Fringe Festival Director, Vanessa Stacey.

Gareth McMillan, Director, Dunedin Fringe Arts Trust, says the support is game changing.

“Under the open access kaupapa it’s really important to have scaffolding like Fringe artist grants and awards, and it’s a huge development to be able to offer something specifically for Pacific artists who bring so much vitality to our festivals.”

“Creative New Zealand historically supports our major arts festivals. But we have a very youthful Pasifika population so these new partnerships with the Fringe festivals will help to develop the wider arts ecosystem as well as encourage more diversity and inclusion and ideas. We loved developing this with the Borni, Vanessa and Garth and are grateful for their fabulous ideas and co-design with our team,” says Makerita Urale, Creative New Zealand’s Senior Manager, Pacific Arts.

2022 Award winners:

The first recipients of this increased funding in 2022 were: Tui Vutu who received the Pacific Award at the Dunedin Fringe and Viki Moananu who received the Wellington Fringe Award. The 2022 Auckland Fringe Award is still to be announced.

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