Creativity blossoms in the shadow of the virus (with seed money from taxpayers who may not be aware of their generosity)

September 29th, 2020

Awake Goy

We have acknowledged on previous occasions that the Point of Order Trough Monitor was not calibrated to pick up every example of dubiously spent public money.

But when our monitor misses examples of eyebrow-raising grants, investments, loans and what-have-you, other monitors and watchdogs are on the job. The Taxpayers’ Union for example.

The other day it drew attention to Creative NZ’s track record for funding some pretty odd art projects.

The Taxpayers’ Union has focused on the value of the Arts Continuity Grant, which it describes as a COVID-19 response fund which has so far paid out $16 million in grants to a variety of questionable short-term arts projects.

Many of the descriptions of the projects funded under this programme are described as “frankly, incomprehensible” and:

“It’s hard to see how bureaucrats in Creative NZ can make an objective judgment on which projects are worthy of funding, and which…

View original post 714 more words