One from the art

Steve Thomas reads the government's draft strategy for the arts and wonders where the art is.

- Steve Thomas

The arts are the canary in the coal mine. They breathe their last as the carbon monoxide of tribute shows, social media, home entertainment and government intervention fill the tunnel. The “humanities,” as they are more broadly known, are ritually despatched on the altar of commerce by the priests and priestesses of neoliberalism and Business as Usual.

The recently announced Amplify, a draft cultural strategy for the arts in Aotearoa to 2030 from the Ministry for Culture & Heritage Manatū Taonga, reduces artforms to an international selling point with an emphasis on soft power and influence in overseas markets. Here come the business buskers, the buglers and bellowing barrow boys to the market. The draft strategy appears to have little interest in the distribution of our own performing artists to the Hokitikas and Pohanginas of Aotearoa.

The beauty and refinement of music, theatre, poetry and dance is taken on one last desperate lunge towards the light, and has become a platform for identity politics, cultural reformation and a useful tool in the marketplace.