The Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival's funding will continue. Photo / File
The Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival's funding will continue. Photo / File
The Government has committed to funding the Shakespeare Globe Centre after its funding for the Sheilah Winn festival was cut by Creative NZ.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, speaking to media this morning, said she had spoken to the education minister Chris Hipkins who had in turn spoken with ministry officialsto find a solution.
”We’re committed to continuing to see the programme continue,” she said.
”The Ministry of Education intends to reach out to the Shakespeare Globe Centre to work with them to find a solution that ensures that the programme will continue to be offered to schools.”
Ardern felt it was “most sensible” the issue sat with the education ministry. She expected to share more details soon regarding the solution found between the ministry and the centre.
“The Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival in particular has given thousands of young people the opportunity to be creative, and increase their confidence on stage,” Education Minister Chris Hipkins said.
“It would be a real shame if those coming through their education today were to miss out on these opportunities for learning and performing”.
Over the coming week the Ministry of Education will work through the necessary steps to ensure the benefits to young people from the festival and the work of the Centre can continue.
For the past decade, Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ has received about $30,000 per year for the festival from Creative NZ.
In a funding assessment document, the Creative NZ board had raised worries the festival “did not demonstrate the relevance to the contemporary art context of Aotearoa in this time and place and landscape”.
It also said Shakespeare was “located within a canon of imperialism and missed the opportunity to create a living curriculum and show relevance”.
For the past decade, Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ has received about $30,000 per year for the festival from Creative NZ. Photo / File
Top New Zealand actors Sir Sam Neill, Robyn Malcolm and Michael Hurst yesterday slammed Creative NZ’s plan to cut festival funding.
Malcolm called the agency "complete knobs", Sam Neill says it made New Zealand "look bloody stupid" and Hurst said it was "beyond short-sighted, reactionary and just plain dumb".
This follows a highly-critical letter by top University of Auckland English Emeritus Professor Michael Neill's open letter to the agency's chief executive saying the cut in funding of the annual school Shakespeare festival was "highly questionable" and "ill-considered".
“With respect , if you decide to cancel the greatest writer in English, or any language come to that, you sound like a f***ing idiot. And you make NZ-Aotearoa look bloody stupid,” actor Sam Neill said.
Robyn Malcolm Malcom said the decision to defund was 'beyond short sighted, reactionary and just plain dumb'. Photo / Supplied
Malcolm said the decision to defund was "beyond short sighted, reactionary and just plain dumb."
Actor Michael Hurst agreed with Malcolm”hit the nail on the head”.
"Lifting kids out of themselves, harnessing their own force to something that carries way beyond the mundane and transcends cultural boundaries rather than limiting or suppressing them," Hurst said.
"For heaven's sake, we're surely beyond parochialism in this inter-connected world. No one denies the benefits of developing our own stories, but this is ridiculous."
The decision by Creative NZ made headlines in major metropolitan English newspapers the Guardian and Daily Telegraph, along with the Irish Times.
"The UK and Australia are reporting in disbelief that NZ is cutting funding for Shakespeare's works because of concerns of 'imperialism' and 'colonial views'," Seymour said.
"All cultures deserve respect in NZ, not just those that fit with the left's ideology."
Professor Neill, a Shakespearean scholar and elder brother of actor Sam, earlier said in his open letter to Creative NZ chief executive Stephen Wainwright there was a rich history of Māori involvement with Shakespeare.
"The great Maori leader and scholar Pei Te Hurinui Jones translated Othello, Julius Caesar, and the Merchant of Venice: the last of these was published in 1946, and supplied the script for Don Selwyn's 1990s stage production of the play, which was later transformed into his ground-breaking film Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weneti (2002)," he wrote.
“This, you must surely be aware, was the first feature film ever made entirely in Te Reo Māori.” Neill said while Shakespeare “may once have been expropriated as an instrument of colonisation”, his work had become a “weapon of decolonisation”.
