Auckland Festival comes of age with increased profits and audiences

Auckland Arts Festival’s fifth festival held in March this year has reported a $40,000 operating surplus and increased audience numbers

It is the sort of news that Aucklanders need to hear and that may help drive performances in more venues across the city as well as making the festival an annual event.

Auckland Arts Festival Trust chair Victoria Carter says the festival took place in an extremely challenging environment, butcareful management ensured costs were controlled. The surplus will now go toward the small operating deficit from previous festivals.

Ms Carter said increased sponsorship played a significant part in the positive outcome for the 2011 festival with sponsorship income more than double that of 2009.

“Sponsorship is absolutely crucial to presenting an event of this size. Major sponsors and funders for 2011 included our core funder Auckland Council with gold sponsors New Zealand Post Group, TV3 and Colenso BBDO, and key funding partners Creative New Zealand, ASB Community Trust, Te Puni Kōkiri, The Lion Foundation, Pub Charity, The EDGE and Heart of the City.”

Additional media support from TV3 and Colenso BBDO also enabled television advertising to be used for the first time, providing an opportunity to reach more members of the public. “We also had significant support from the NZ Herald and we believe that this increased exposure led to an increase in audience numbers, up 30 per cent on 2009 figures.

Key factors contributing to audience growth were the success of headline shows including NBR New Zealand Opera’s Xerxes, U Theatre’s Sound of the Ocean, Smoke and Mirrors, Martha Wainwright, Douglas Wright’s rapt, The Manganiyar Seduction, the development of the Festival’s popular education programme, and new initiatives White Night and the Festival Garden in Aotea Square.

The introduction of the first White Night event in the Asia Pacific region involved art galleries and museums across the Auckland region opening late for one night with free transport provided between each venue.

Te Tuhi Director James McCarthy said: “We were overwhelmed by the response to White Night with approximately 4000 people coming through our doors over the course of the event. It was fantastic to activate the gallery space at night and I was thrilled to see so many people engage with the art in a relaxed and fun atmosphere.”

Auckland Arts Festival chief executive David Inns said the Festival Garden in Aotea Square created a great festival hub with the Speigeltent, Vietnamese Water Puppets and the TV3 Stage creating a central focus.

“In the middle weekend we had a great crowd for U Theatre to kick off White Night and the square was constantly full of people for the Family Day. Every day there was a great buzz in the square while people enjoyed the free early evening music programme and it became a popular meeting place over the 19 days of the Festival.

“Another significant element of this festival was the education programme. Almost 7000 children from as far away as Kaikoura enjoyed performances and lectures they may never have had the chance to experience. We will continue to build this area of the programme.”

Ms Carter added that the 2011 festival was another step forward in engaging with the different communities of Auckland and new audiences as well as achieving a bigger presence in greater Auckland with shows in various regional venues.

“Of course, we would have loved more people to see the amazing range of local and international works that artistic Director David Malacari programmed for his last Festival; however given the environment that we were in we understood that people wanted to put their discretionary dollar elsewhere.

“We received wonderful acclaim from both critics and the public. To have staged five festivals is a great achievement in this city. We have so much going on all the time but festivals are important not just from an economic point of view but also because they enrich us and enable our talented local artists to tell their stories and then take them on to the world.

“Auckland Arts Festival has been a major presenter of new New Zealand work and we have an important role to play in producing, preparing and creating a platform for this work”. New Zealand work commissioned and presented in 2011 included Douglas Wright’s rapt, Red Leap Theatre’s Paper Sky and John Psathas New Zeibekiko.

Ms Carter said that there were challenges finding suitable venues for work in the city which meant some shows that were better suited to a smaller venue had to be put in a larger venue. “The Lautten Compagney is a good example. This also worked in our favour though, with The Manganiyar Seduction selling out in Sydney in a much smaller venue. We had excellent audiences for this show with 1000 more people seeing it in Auckland than in Sydney.

“Looking ahead, we will continue to work to actively reach new audiences and create a stronger presence and our new artistic director Carla van Zon is creating a wide reaching programme that will connect with Auckland audiences to achieve this. We are looking forward to the next Auckland Arts Festival in March 2013.”