ROLE
The Council is responsible for setting the policy and strategic direction of Creative New Zealand, allocating funds to the arts boards for investment, and undertaking initiatives. The Council is also responsible for and monitors the overall performance of Creative New Zealand and the arts boards (the Arts Board and Te Waka Toi - the Māori Arts Board).
MEMBERS
Members of the Arts Council are appointed by the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage for a term of up to three years. Anyone can nominate a person to be considered for appointment to the Arts Council.
Alastair Carruthers (Chair) was appointed Chair of the Arts Council in July 2007. He was previously Arts Board Chair from July 2004 and an Arts Board Member from July 2001. Alastair has been Chief Executive of the national law firm Chapman Tripp since 1999, and divides his working time between Auckland and Wellington. His studies include classical music and he is a former trustee of the New Zealand String Quartet.
Oscar Kightley is a Samoan-born writer, director and actor based in Auckland. In the early 1990s, he helped establish Christchurch theatre education company Pacific Underground, where he co-wrote his first play Fresh off the Boat. He is a member of the Naked Samoans comedy group and co-wrote the television series bro'Town. He also co-wrote and acted in the New Zealand film Sione's Wedding. In 2006, he received an inaugural Arts Foundation of New Zealand Award for Patronage discretionary donation from Denis and Verna Adam. In 2006 Oscar received a Laureate Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand and in 2009 was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to television and theatre.
Erima Henare (Te Aupouri, Ngati Kahu, Te Rarawa, Ngapuhi, Ngati Whatua, Tainui, Te Atiawa, Rongowhakaata, Te Aitanga a Mahaki and Tuwharetoa) has had a long association with the public service having served in senior roles in The Department of Maori Affairs and The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as Deputy General Manager of the Iwi Transition Agency, and as Chief Executive Officer of the Maori Language Commission. He is currently a consultant to many organisations on strategic Maori development. As well as chairing the Maori Language Commission as the Maori Language Commissioner, Erima sits on many local, regional and national boards, committees and organisations. He is also a Personal Advisor to the Maori King.
Anne Rush, MNZM is a visual artist based in Nelson who has worked across a wide spectrum of arts and cultural development. Apart from creating her own exhibitions for dealer and regional galleries since 1983, she was researcher and project manager of the benchmark symposium Destination New Zealand- Capturing the Cultural Tourist (1998) and has served as a member on the APEC Prime Ministerial Advisory Group on Arts and Culture (1999), National Working Party on Cultural Tourism (2000), Queen Elizabeth II National Working Party on Community Arts (1993) and Queen Elizabeth II Central Regional Arts Council (1986-1989). Regional projects include co-founding the Nelson Bays Arts Marketing Network (1993) and the Nelson Regional Guidebook: Art in its own place (1994). A recipient of a Social Entrepreneur’s Grant in 2002 she developed a Cultural Mapping case study and toolkit Presenting Ourselves: Unlocking and Interpreting Cultural Landscapes, and has chaired the Nelson Heritage Advisory Group (2002-2009) and Nelson City Council Heritage Implementation Group (2007-2009).
James Wallace works as a lawyer in private practice in South Canterbury, where he lives on a small farm near Geraldine. James was previously a member of the QE2 Arts Council for four years before it became Creative New Zealand in 1994. He has also been involved in arts development at a local community level through arts festivals, Community Arts Councils, music, theatre and gallery groups. In recent times James has been a board member of Arts Access Aotearoa, a national organisation providing arts programmes for marginalized members of the community such as prisoners, refugees and the disabled, and Arts on Tour NZ, a performers' tour agency that helps to bring the arts to rural and remote areas of New Zealand.
Professor Judith Binney, DNZM, FRSNZ is the recipient of many academic awards, fellowships and prizes, has published extensively, and was the editor of the New Zealand Journal of History from 1996 to 2001. In 2006 she received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement (Non-fiction). She is Emeritus Professor of the University of Auckland and an inaugural Guardian of Alexander Turnbull Library 2003-2009. She sat on the Te Papa Board from 1999 to 2006 and was a member of the New Zealand Historic Places Board from 2007-2009. Her academic skills and bicultural experience will add considerable value to the Council.
Helen Kedgley is Senior Curator Contemporary Art at Pataka, Porirua City. A graduate of Victoria University, Massey University and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts and Ecole du Louvre in Paris, she has wide international experience in the arts. As a painter Helen has participated in numerous exhibitions in France, England, India, and Zimbabwe. International museum work includes the Science Museum, Oxford, England and The National Gallery of Zimbabwe. Helen has curated over fifty exhibitions of Maori, Pacific Island and contemporary New Zealand art, many of which have toured nationally and internationally including Toi Maori - The Eternal Thread which toured the USA.
A member of the Board of the Wellington Sculpture Trust and the Advisory Group for the Museum and Heritage Studies Program at Victoria University, she has been invited to judge numerous art awards including the Wallace Art Awards and Headlands: Waiheke Sculpture on the Gulf 2009.