Arts administrator

By LIANE VOISEY

Name: Zoe Drayton

Age: 39

Job title: Arts administrator


Working hours: 40-60 hours a week depending if there's a big event approaching


Employer(s): Moving Image Centre. Generally arts administrators are employed by any arts organisation


Pay: $35,000 - $50,000. It's not high


Qualifications: Any arts degree will help towards that. Business skills help, too

Career prospects: Move into any arts organisation - dance, orchestras, art galleries. Arts management is a possible next step

Q. Describe what you do

A. MiC is a non-profit digital media organisation which means we help artists produce filmwork, audiowork and multimedia installations. We help promote and distribute their work through exhibitions in the gallery, film festivals and screenings that are shown all over New Zealand.

It generally takes about a year in planning for a big event such as the New Zealand Film Festival and I do all the marketing, publicity and accounts.

A huge part of my job is trying to find funding.

We're just about to move to the city, which is probably going to be more in the market for people who are interested in us - students and artists, filmmakers, musicians and design schools.

Q. Why arts administration?

A. I started off as a chef for 15 years and then did a visual arts degree and ended up specialising in audio and video at AUT. I starting running a gallery but I got poorer and poorer and I'm a single parent as well.

I went back to school and did a web design and CD-ROM course then ran my own web design business for a year but I was still not making any money. Then this job came up. I had never done arts administration before, but all my skills involve management - plus, I'm an artist.

I hadn't thought of doing it before but it consolidates every skill I have. I started working here five months ago and I think I'll probably stay within this field.

My main passion is to help artists in the community to make work, so this is the ideal place to be in for that.

Q. What skills or qualities do you need?

A. Mainly managerial. You need to be able to multi-task, to cope with creating systems that can keep running even if you're not there. And to have a passion for art in whatever form that takes - it could be performing arts, visual arts, audio, film ...

Q. What's the best part of the job?

A. For me it's the event management side of things. It's such a wonderful experience to pull something off that is just extraordinary.

Q. What's the most challenging aspect?

A. The sheer amount of things that I have to do can seem overwhelming sometimes. But the best thing to do is take it in my stride and if I can't do it today then it can always be done tomorrow. I think it's important to pace yourself.

Q. Any interesting one-off projects?

A. I think Interdigitate is the most exciting because it's only once every two years and it's got such an extraordinary amount of interesting artists.

Every year for the Film Festival we have a series called Homegrown which is of New Zealand short films. There's 30 or 40 filmmakers who make incredible films for free. It takes up about four to five months to plan and runs in almost every city in New Zealand. Co-ordinating that is a big deal.

Q. What are your career hopes?

A. Arts management. With administration you're like an interface between the artist and the community. With management you are managing other people to be an interface between the community and artist - it's a lot more directive.

My passion is sound - so one of my big hopes is to bring an audio component to the MiC and to help more women get into making electronic music. I'm hoping to start providing workshops for that and get more women out there.