page 17

Arts Conference 70

"During the past year, leaders of all sections of New Zealand's economic life, participating in the National Development Conference, expressed their unanimous agreement that the setting of economic targets for the future was insufficient and that the achievement of higher material standards must be accompanied by the creation of a social and cultural environment conducive to the attainment of a fuller and more satisfying way of life."

Thus read the opening paragraph of the notes supplied with an invitation to Arts Conference 70, the Conference that had as its slogan the words "Policy into action."

Everyone who was fortunate enough to attend the Conference would agree that it was a unique occasion. One could not help but have expected that it would linger in the memory for a long, long while when its aims were defined as "the establishment of a cultural policy for the next decade." And it was memorable. I shall leave a close delineation of the moods and humours of the Conference to the excellent Brunton, whose Fated Lurch does so much to convey the turgid writhings of the monster that was Arts Conference 70. A rather more explicit summation of the Conference may be helpful, however:

1. It was naive in conception. The Conference programme referred to Saved as "the play in which the baby gets stoned to death." The Conference motif reminded him, Patrick Hanly said, of a "potato-cut." The requisite politicians were in attendance (David Seath, Minister of Internal Affairs and philistine, began his address by saying "It is April 10th today . . . Wahine Day, I think . . . very different today from two years ago ... we were wondering whether it was Canadian, British or Australian weather we were experiencing . . There were too many speeches. Too many friendly tea breaks, chais, get togethers.

2. It was sabotaged. Artists were conspicuously absent. At a meeting of the younger delegates which I attended, it was pointed out that there was not one artist—in any medium—amongst us save Alan Brunton. We were all young bureaucrats—cultural affairs officers, student newspaper editors and so on. Bureaucrats of all ages preponderated. Departments of State such as Internal Affairs, Treasury and Foreign Affairs were ever-present. Arts Council bureaucrats too made their presence felt. I recall glancing up and seeing Arts Council Secretary John Malcolm grinning broadly as a motion calling for discussion of the question of direct representation of practitioners of the arts was defeated.

3. It was inconclusive. The decisions of Arts Conference 70 will be thrown into the faces of the arts community for the next decade. In fact, practically none of the discussion at the Conference related to the problems of the next two years, let alone the next ten. And so much that needed to be said about the last ten years wasn't said. Some of the participants, however, came away angry. That was a start.

A couple of days before the Conference, an acquaintance of mine wrote to me saying "I will not be coming to Arts Conference 70 . . . this for several reasons: I am suspicious of committees and the like. To me they always seem to achieve little and waste a great deal of time talking about what to do but never doing it. After seeing the programme for the whole thing I doubt the worth of trying to penetrate the thick layers of pretension and Art that will be present. I agree we need more money but I feel that the bad scene called Arts Conference 70 will do little if anything to help the arts in any way." Sadly, he was almost right. Arts Conference 70 did speak for the arts . . . but with a muted voice.

David Harcourt