Te Putanga Toi Arts Access Awards have been our main advocacy event since 2008, celebrating  the leaders who pave the way for increased access to the arts for everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand. This recognition of creative and generous people has been an annual celebration we have come to love.

Recently, however, things haven’t always run to plan and we all know how the pandemic has interrupted the normal flow of how we run our lives and workplaces.

Because of the lockdowns and cancellations, we felt it would be unrealistic to call for awards nominations based on events and projects from 2021 as so much didn’t happen.

Long story short: for this year, we are pausing the awards event. Instead, we will offer fellowships of up to $10,000 each for successful applicants to create or present new work or projects. Something positive and an opportunity to look to the future.

As with Te Putanga Toi Arts Access Awards, the fellowship recipients, their projects and work will receive our maximum efforts to promote their achievements through  mainstream media and online platforms, including key websites.

Fellowships and criteria to be announced

We’ll be announcing the fellowships and criteria on Monday 30 May 2022. Applicants will have one month from that date to apply and submit their proposals.

These are the four fellowships we’ll be offering:

• an Artist Development Fellowship: to create and/or present a new work by a Deaf or disabled artist or writer
• an Arts For All Fellowship: to research or develop an area of accessibility that will increase access to the arts for Deaf and disabled artists and audiences
• an Arts in Corrections Artist Fellowship: to create and/or present a new work by an artist or writer who has undertaken an approved Arts in Corrections programme and has been in the criminal justice system
• a Creative Spaces Fellowship: for a creative space/s to create a new project, programme or resource that will increase accessibility.

We look forward to hearing from you about this new opportunity. 

Artistic Spotlight campaign

In the meantime, Arts Access Aotearoa has been running an Artist Spotlight campaign, aimed at promoting the benefits of creative spaces and the artists who attend them

It’s been awesome to see the diverse range of videos of artists, made by creative spaces and uploaded to Arts Access Aotearoa’s YouTube channel. I hope you enjoy them!

The person behind this campaign was Lachlan Giddens, who also created some useful guidelines to creating video. Lachlan did an internship with us from November until February as part of finishing his masters degree in communications at Victoria University.

Lauchlan made a lasting impact. He taught us new skills, helped promote creative space artists and enhanced our YouTube channel.

Welcome to Arts Access Aotearoa, Sam

We welcome another university graduate, Sam Morgan. Sam is a graduate of Massey University’s Bachelor of Commercial Music degree and will be with our team for three months, thanks to an MSD Mainstream Tertiary Internship Programme.

The placement has been arranged thanks to Be. Lab, which has placed more than 400 graduates in recent years.

The internship provides valuable experience for disabled graduates to join a workplace of their choosing. It’s very fortunate for us that Sam, who is also a musician, chose to come to Arts Access Aotearoa.

He’s developing digital content and will be producing a series of podcasts about accessibility in the arts, including interviews with accessibility champions who have driven and inspired this movement. We look forward to sharing the results of Sam’s work with you.