Warm applause for H.O.T. Nation plan

By THERESA GARNER

The Government's plan to boost the economy by harnessing creative talent through the Heart of the Nation campaign has been welcomed by the arts community and the Opposition.

A panel of nine, led by arts consultant Hamish Keith, will report to the Government in two months on strategies to drive cultural policy over the next 10 years.

Dubbed H.O.T. Nation, it carries echoes of the British Government's Cool Britannia cultural programme, and Prime Minister Helen Clark said the aim was to rebrand New Zealand internationally.

Barbara Procter, an Auckland-based director of the British Council, said initiatives to promote Britain through its creative industries had been successful, with exports worth up to sterling 9 billion.

For two years, a 25-strong committee, Panel 2000, has advised the Blair Government on how to refashion Britain's image.

Creative NZ chairman Peter Biggs said the New Zealand panel looked like a group of extremely committed people. "We are highly supportive of it, and of a strategic plan for the arts sector.

"We are already positioning Creative NZ as a catalyst, and weaving arts through everything the country is doing."

National's spokesman on culture and heritage, Simon Upton, said he wanted to take part in the process. "I can see a lot of positives in having open discussion about where we want New Zealand arts and culture to go."

Helen Clark said there was potential for the creative sector to make a huge contribution to the nation's wealth, as well as express the national identity. "We want to be defined as a country with a leading edge; sophisticated, talented, that deploys high technology, has a modern design, and is innovative."

The Associate Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, Judith Tizard, is driving the project. "It came out of the 1996 [Labour Party] policy, and my concern that we were entirely missing the boat on national identity and 'feel good stuff'."

The name was dreamed up by a Niuean woman at a seminar on Maori weaving, but Ms Tizard said its acronym was a coincidence. "To my horror when I finally wrote it out in initials, it said HOT Nation, and I didn't mean it at all, I promise.

"This is a New Zealand idea about what we think New Zealand needs."

It is clear why she is so keen to dissociate the New Zealand tag from its British counterpart.

The phrase Cool Britannia has largely been discredited, and comedian Ben Elton summed up the mood of many when he attacked the Government's "gruesome obsession" with the notion. "I can do without the Labour Party trying to strut its funky stuff."

He said there was also anger in the arts community over a belief the Government was driving through reforms that would see business people and bureaucrats taking over and freezing out arts figures.

Ms Tizard said she had been influenced by the former Irish Minister for Arts and Culture, Michael Higgins, who visited New Zealand last year and advocated that creative society was the rock on which any successful economy should be built.

Ireland, which has exported success stories such as Riverdance, created by Michael Flatley, and the Cranberries and offers tax relief to artists and writers and funding and training incentives to filmmakers and musicians.

Musician Chris Knox said that while the idea was great, the advisory panel seemed weighted towards "things Helen [Clark] likes."

He was heartened to know that Ms Tizard was driving the project. "Judith is great. I've seen her at some down and dirty gigs ... She's prepared to go out and find out what's happening."

Ms Tizard reiterated that the panel was not meant to be representative. "What we wanted was people who were used to thinking about jobs, and how best to get creative New Zealanders into work. It is that process I was interested in, not necessarily the content of what those jobs were."