A great deal of work went into the organisation of the second students' Arts' Festival in New Zealand. The programme, subsidised by Shell, was magnificent. The opening statement by Don Locke, the Arts Festival controller, is well worth reprinting in full:

"It is exceedingly difficult to speak of art and/or culture without appearing to ride the intellectual hobby horse of the great gods Art and Culture, two beings who are at least as obnoxious as the much despised Mammon, yet we do feel inclined to lament the fact that New Zealand lies materially happy if spiritually enervated in a cultural backwater.

"Many regard the lack of an authentic New Zealand culture as our greatest omission, but the desperate attempt to produce an art of our own usually degenerates into good-cobber Kiwism, with the peculiar point of view that we remain uncultured until we can develop an art circumscribed by our accidental boundaries in space and time. What we do lack in this country is rather a sense of the value of art, and the chance for it to be presented and appreciated. It is the national drama, ballet and opera organisations which are building, however slowly, an art in New Zealand.