We need the arts now more than ever
Grief, leadership, and how we create shared visions for the future
Last Friday, I was invited to speak at All in for Arts: He waka toi e eke noa nei tātou, an arts roadshow put on by The Arts Foundation and Creative New Zealand. The brief was to talk about how creativity and the arts impact your life - so that’s what I did.
Nō England, Ireland, Wales, me Orkney Islands ōku tīpuna
Ko Hutt o Ngāruawāhia tōku hapū
Ko Hodge o Tāmaki Makaurau tōku hapū
He tangata Tiriti au
I tipu ake au ki Whangamatā
Ko Kirikiriroa tōku kāinga ināianei
Ko Louise Hutt tōku ingoa
Thank you so much for having me this morning. It’s a real honour to be asked to speak on the arts because I moved to the mighty Waikato in 2011 to be a filmmaker. I studied a Master’s of Media and Creative Technologies at Te Whare Wananga o Waikato, with my thesis on New Zealand women’s experiences making films.
So I am spoilt for choice in terms of how the arts have affected my life, and this speech could have gone in any number of directions - but last week, a close friend of mine passed away. Grief has been a particular feature of the last few years, but a motif I’ve been unable to ignore is how often I use the arts to process my grief - as a way to honour and remember my loved ones as I navigate a world without them.
My uncle David passed almost a year ago, and at his funeral, his friends had made custom tee shirts that said “be curious, not judgemental” - a lesson from the TV show Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso is about an American football coach who goes over to the UK to coach Premier League football with the odds stacked against him. I was really missing my uncle a few weeks ago, and while I can’t call him and ask him for advice, the next best thing I could think of was rewatching all of Ted Lasso. It might seem silly because my uncle, who was a school principal and an English teacher, didn’t have the same lifestyle as a fictional American sports coach, nor the same mid-western accent - but Ted Lasso’s curious, nurturing approach and earnest belief in people reminds me of the kind of leader I want to be, because that’s the kind of leader my uncle was.
My friend who passed away last week - his name was Lachie. I’ve known him since high school, and a defining moment of our friendship was when we were in Year 10 (fourth form) and Lachie told me I had to listen to the song The Salmon Dance by the electronic band, The Chemical Brothers. It’s basically a rap about salmon facts, and he recreated for us (a bunch of 14-year-olds at the time) his impression of a salmon swimming upstream - something that is still seared into my memory 16 years later. His ability to be silly, and goofy, and also cool absolutely defined him and made him such a joy to be around - and that song about salmon facts will always represent how the practice of sharing the arts with one another can create lifelong friendships.
Great art unites us across different countries and languages, different demographics and lived experiences, but what has struck me in my grief is so how often the art that I hold onto dearly, that reminds me of my loved ones, didn’t come from Aotearoa. We are a nation of incredible artists, musicians, filmmakers, and creative practitioners - but our creative sector isn’t funded for success. I often asked, when pitching my Master’s thesis to people I met, if they could simply name a New Zealand woman filmmaker. Usually, they couldn’t - but it’s not because there aren’t any. I often joke to my colleagues that if we made the arts a viable career choice, they’d have one less candidate running against them because I could afford to be a filmmaker.
I believe that the arts can have job security, offer professional development, and simply the opportunity to practice and refine your craft without needing to work a different full-time job to keep the roof above your head and food on the table for your whanau. The arts shouldn’t just be a career for people who have family connections and whose personal wealth allows them to indulge in the noble pursuit of representing the human experience. Art has the ability to bridge our understanding of each other and to bring out the best in people - to create empathy, awareness, and curiosity - especially when we enable artists from marginalised, underrepresented communities to tell their stories. I think a lot about how the role of a good politician is to bring people together with a shared vision for our future, and I often pull from the toolbox of the arts when it comes to inspiring hearts and minds in our debate chamber. The ability to be a storyteller, to not only imagine a better future - say, one where we triumph over climate change, one where people no longer suffer under inequality and poverty, for example - but to share that vision with others, we need that now more than ever.
When I pass away, I want New Zealand art to be the thing that reminds my loved ones of me - art from places like Kirikiriroa, because we already know how valuable it is. We know how it allows us to travel time and space, to remind us of the best version of ourselves, our loved ones, and our world. We just have to enable our arts sector and those working in it to thrive.
Thank you.
This speech will be up on the All In For Arts website soon.