As a former Labour Minister of Arts and Culture I was shocked to hear that the Arts Council had decided to remove the annual subsidy to the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare festival for secondary school students. The sum of money involved ($31,000) isn’t massive. But the decision to cut the subsidy hits at a very significant secondary school cultural festival. The second biggest secondary school in the country, Mt Albert Grammar School, smack in the middle of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s electorate, has performed very well at these Sheilah Winn competitions, with several students, winning scholarships including recently an African international student at the school. The reasons advanced by Creative New Zealand for abolishing the grant related to some weird notion that Shakespeare is part of imperialism; that New Zealand should be “de-colonised”, and presumably that all students should be force-fed kapa haka and Te Ao Maori instead.
