Community Arts

Creative New Zealand funds community arts activities through:

• the Creative Communities Scheme (CCS) which is administered by New Zealand’s city and district councils to support local community arts activities. Please contact your local city or district council for further information about the scheme as well as about how and when to apply.
• Quick Response and Arts Grants which can provide support for projects with a clear focus on Community Cultural Development (see below) as well as for projects in which an established professional practitioner shares his/her knowledge and skills with recreational and/or heritage arts groups of regional or national significance.

Recipients of Quick Response or Arts Grants cannot receive funding through the Creative Communities Scheme for the same project.

What are 'community arts'?

Creative New Zealand has identified three principal strands of community arts activity. These strands are not mutually exclusive and elements of each can sometimes feature in a single community arts project.

1. Community Cultural Development
   - collaboration of arts practitioners with communities to achieve artistic and social outcomes
   - processes of collective creativity
   - community-based issues focused through the arts (relating to the environment, issues of social equity etc).
2. Maintenance and transmission of cultural traditions
   - Māori and Pasifika heritage art forms
   - defined groups of interest (e.g. migrant communities) maintaining and preserving their distinctive artistic and cultural traditions from one generation to the next.
3. Leisure and recreation activities
   - community-based arts groups and the recreational pursuit of diverse art forms.

Share your community arts projects

Share the story of your community arts activities and projects with Funded Artists and Their Work. Upload text, photographs, video, audio and links relating to your funded community arts projects.

You can also illustrate and share stories of community arts success on Creative New Zealand's Flickr page. To do this, please email your photos to natalie.petricevich@creativenz.govt.nz with a brief statement about the project and the people in the photo.

Visit Funded Artists and Their Work

Sign up to Funded Artists and Their Work and showcase your projects.

Visit Creative New Zealand's Flickr page

Community Arts links

New Zealand:

• Diversity Works Trust
• Kete Collaboration Engine
• Inspiring Communities
• Te Hāpori o Ngā Toi
• The Southern Corridor Project
• Voice Arts Trust

Overseas:

• Art at Work
• Center for the Study of Art and Community
• Connecting Identities, Geelong
• Creative City Network of Canada
• Cultural Development Network
• IMPACT Arts
• Queensland Government’s Creative Communities
• ReGenerating Community Conference, Melbourne 2009
• Regional Arts New South Wales