Cultural ?

By Barbara Leishman

I went down to Christchurch prepared to present a few opinions on NZSAC, and to attempt to produce some discussion amongst delegates about Arts Council's role and direction For many of those who attended, though. Arts Council means one thing and one thing only: a deficit of frightening proportions. This is an extremely distressing attitude, for it signifies an indifference to the cultural needs of the students they represent. The particular difficulties encountered in trying to reconcile the need for a cultural service with the need to prevent losses, motivated my writing a paper for presentation at the NZUSA Council. Thus. I found myself in attendance at the Finance and Administration Commission amongst the heavies (yes!!) of the fiscal world wondering what a nice Cultural Affairs Officer was doing in a place like this. My first thought was to wonder why the subject of Arts Council was squeezed into a finance commission, when it requires a far wider range of discussion than finance delegates are willing or able to give. Why not a cultural commission?

There was a reverent silence as I introduced my paper, which was followed by comments from Lisa Sacksen who launched a few criticisms of people who are only interested in NZSAC for its deficit Alick Shaw ripped into Executives which give their cultural representatives no direction or support in regard to NZSAC. Don Leonardo (Canterbury) indulged in a little self-recrimination and generally agreed with the observations in my paper Clare Ward (Auckland) seemed to have completely misunderstood my paper, and spoke accordingly, while Alastair Broad (Otago) said that he was quite happy with Arts Council as it was, And added that he thought it ought to be scrapped.

All this did little to produce any solutions for Arts Council although it is not really for NZUSA to impose ideas. What I did hope to discover, however, was what some of the university political heavies thought, so that their ideas could be incorporated into plans made by the Arts Council itself. Not much in the way of ideas came forward, so the next step is to formulate policy at Victoria to take to the next NZSAC meeting to stimulate discussion at the level where something can be achieved. Meanwhile if you have any ideas on this matter, please see me about them straight away, so that they can be discussed and policy formulated.