The Arts Centre - A National Taonga?

Christchurch Arts Centre in the firing line

On a cold May morning, a tram-load of tourists stares out at a large “Save the Arts Centre” banner dominating the historic stone clock tower in central Christchurch.
“If anybody in the tram’s got a spare million,” the driver quips, “the Arts Centre Trust would love to hear from you.”
How did it get to this?
Te Matatiki Toi Ora The Arts Centre is a popular hub for Christchurch’s arts and cultural activities.
“It’s pretty rare anywhere in the world to have the largest collection of heritage buildings in the country which also happens to be an arts centre,” says embattled Arts Centre director Philip Aldridge. For the past three years the Christchurch City Council has given the Arts Centre $1.83 million a year. Under this year’s draft long term plan, it receives nothing.
“It doesn’t make any sense at all,” says Aldridge.
From 1973, when then Prime Minister Norman Kirk announced the gifting of the former university to the people of Christchurch as an arts centre, the 23 heritage buildings housed galleries, studios, shops, theatres, cinemas, cafés, bars and markets.
Following the 2011 earthquake, the Arts Centre embarked on a $290 million restoration project. So far, 20 of the 22 Category 1 heritage buildings have been restored.
The Arts Centre is now home to about 70 organisations covering art, entertainment, cinema, food and creative industries – including Frank Film. Core tenants include the University of Canterbury, Observatory Hotel and Health Technology Centre. Last year it broke pre-earthquake visitor numbers; this month its new Saturday market was seething.
So what’s gone wrong?
The Arts Centre is expensive to run. Insurance has shot up from $125,000 a year before the earthquakes to $1.2m, annual rates sit at $205,000 and heritage buildings are costly to maintain.
The Arts Centre Trust has asked the Council for $1.8 million to cover insurance, rates and $400,000 for operations.
As Aldridge argues, the Trust’s remit under the Arts Centre of Christchurch Trust Act – to foster and promote art, culture, creativity and education – prevents all costs being passed on to tenants.
“The profit these organisations deliver to the community isn't a financial one. Throughout the world these sorts of institutions that benefit the community require public subsidy. Yes, there has to be some fiscal responsibility and sustainability within that but if you remove the subsidy from any cultural organisation then it fails.”
Without Council funding, argues Aldridge, the Arts Centre would have to dissolve the Trust. The only possible new owner, he says, would be the Council.
Around the Council table, views are divided.
“I’m not sure that Council is the best owner,” says councillor Sara Templeton. “The Arts Centre Trust is able to get a huge amount of philanthropic funding and people simply don't donate money to councils.”
Councillor Sam MacDonald wants to explore the option further.
“What we're saying is, if we were holding it, is that how we would run it? We just want an assessment effectively saying, does it make sense to have this many people running the place for the size of it and things like that.”
At a Council meeting last month, Mayor Phil Mauger accused the Arts Centre of taking the “narrowest view possible” of its legislative responsibility and suggested new trustees “who can do the job” be appointed.
Public feedback has zeroed in on the derelict Dux de Lux building. During his 2022 mayoral campaign, Mauger said he was keen to work with Redux, the group proposing to restore the popular bar/restaurant in return for a 50-year rent waiver. The Arts Centre rejected the proposal, saying it would be irresponsible to commit to a tenancy that gave no return for that long.
The idea that private interests could run some of these spaces more economically rumbles underneath this debate.
As Mauger told The Press this year, "I think there is still an opportunity for us, the council, to buy that building and maybe look after it ourselves or get someone else to get it fixed."
Changing the legislation to allow for more private interests, says Aldridge, “would be a hell of a fight”.
According to MacDonald, the intent of the legislation “is quite enabling”.
“What it effectively says is that it doesn’t make sense to have this place sitting entirely empty because you can't afford to run it so there will be aspects of it that actually makes sense to rent out so you can fund the other things. It will be just whether that balance is right.”
Does the Council have other plans for the buildings?
“Nothing is off the table. But just at the moment, nothing is on the table either,” he says.
Both the Arts Centre Trust and Council are now looking to the results of the draft plan’s submission process. “We subsidise sport really heavily,” says Templeton. “And not everyone’s sporty. A lot of people are arty or a lot of people are a combination and we need to do both.”

By Sally Blundell