Arts Centre crisis as council pulls cash
Christchurch’s Arts Centre Trust is threatening to hand the complex to the city council to run if its funding is not reinstated.
For the first time ever the council’s draft long term plan, its 10-year-budget released this week for consultation, does not include money for the Arts Centre.
The Arts Centre’s director, Philip Aldridge, warns the Trust will fold without the cash, and council management would cause the Arts Centre to fail.
The funding omission has come as a shock to the city councillor in charge of the arts, and to a leading heritage advocate.
The Arts Centre is owned by the people of Christchurch. It is run by the Trust, and governed by an Act of Parliament.
Aldridge said the Trust will be “heading towards insolvency” and will need to be dissolved if council funding runs out on June 30.
Under the law, the High Court would then need to find alternative management. Aldridge said a charitable council entity would be the only option.
“If we don’t have the funding to meet our obligations, under the terms of the Act we have to fold the Trust.”
The Trust has received $1.83 million from council annually for the past three years.
Aldridge said for the upcoming year they had asked council to cover the insurance as part of its group scheme, rebate the rates, and provide an annual grant of $500,000.
“That’s not an ideal amount, it’s absolutely rock bottom to keep us alive”.
Aldridge said ratepayers would end up footing all the bills.
“They’ll still have to focus on arts and culture activities and events, because the Act says so. But they won’t get the grants and philanthropy we do.
“The council’s ownership would spell the end of the Arts Centre. It would fail.”
One of the Trust’s obligations under the Act is to foster and promote arts, culture and creativity.
Aldridge said council had suggested they run the complex as a property management business “and stop doing the arts”.
He said the complex, New Zealand’s largest group of heritage buildings, was fully leased at market rates and they had already ”cut costs to the quick“.
“The council is being short-sighted. It’s trying to save money but it will cost the ratepayer a lot more in the future,” he said.
“No arts and heritage precinct this size can survive without public funding.”
Council has been trying to slash budgets in the face of rising costs and potential double-figure rates hikes. It has proposed an average rates increase of 13.24% from July 1, with an average rise of 12.4% for residential ratepayers.
Following a period of public consultation, the finalised long term plan will be adopted in late June.
Councillor Andrei Moore, who holds the council’s arts and creative industries portfolio, told The Press he was unaware of the situation and was “really concerned at the prospect of the Trust being dissolved”.
“I can’t imagine ratepayers want to see this end up costing us more than it needed to, so we will need to very carefully consider our options as part of this long term plan”.
Heritage advocate Dame Anna Crighton, a former city councillor and former Arts Centre Trust board member, was also taken by surprise and said the council “has a responsibility to the Arts Centre.
“It was given to Christchurch [by the Crown in the 1970s] and they can’t just take away the money,“she said.
“It is there as an arts centre, it cannot be a commercial business. If it doesn’t get the money it can’t function.”
Crighton said she would like to know why the decision had been made.
“I don’t think they are thinking straight.” The Arts Centre Trust board’s latest available financial report, for the year to December 2022, reveals an operating shortfall of $874,530, up from $759,941 for the previous year.
The audited 2023 accounts are expected to be filed mid-year.
The trust’s 2022 revenue was $2.12 million from sources including rents and parking ($1.79m) and grants ($382,000). Its expenses totalled just over $3m, including $1.34m in staff costs, $243,000 in administration, and $670,000 in asset depreciation.
This year insurance will cost the trust $1.2m (10 times what it paid before earthquake repairs), and council rates will cost $205,000.
It employs the full-time equivalent of 24 staff, of which about a quarter are senior managers.
After the earthquakes the trust spent more than $200m repairing and strengthening most of its 22 heritage buildings. Two remain mothballed awaiting restoration funding.
The Arts Centre previously declined a private proposal to restore the non-heritage former Dux de Lux building.
The centre’s buildings were valued at $443m in 2022.
The Arts Centre houses shops, offices, Lumiere Cinemas, the Observatory Hotel, the Health Technology Centre, Cellar Door wine bar, Bunsen cafe, Te Whare Tapere arts space, Canterbury University’s classics and music departments, and the Teece Museum, plus other tenants.
Apart from the city council, the trust received grants during 2021 and 2022 from groups including the Rata Foundation, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the NZ Lotteries Grant Board, the Stout Trust, and Creative NZ.