The Cultural Policy branch provides policy advice to the government on arts, culture, heritage, broadcasting, and sports and recreation issues. We do this by working on policy proposals, legislation and reviews that are significant to the sector. We work with other government departments on joint initiatives bringing our cultural expertise to projects.
It includes an international perspective through the Cultural Diplomacy International Programme and liaison with overseas agencies. Recent projects such as UNESCO’s World Heritage sites and New Zealand’s accession to the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the event of Armed Conflict show the diversity of our work.
We are responsible for ministerial servicing functions such as preparing speech notes and draft replies to correspondence.
The Ministry also monitors the government’s interest in cultural sector agencies who receive crown funding. These agencies range from major crown entities such as Creative New Zealand to smaller organisations like the Antarctic Heritage Trust. Ensuring services and products of funded agencies are of a high quality that meets agreed performance targets, we offer additional support through our governance service.
We provide names for consideration to Crown entity boards. Details including forwarding names to our nominations database are available in the agency boards and nominations section. We’ve developed board induction programmes providing best practice support to our family of boards.
We monitor broadcasting agencies that receive government funding and administer parts of the Broadcasting Act 1989. Our responsibility for local content and public broadcasting complements the Ministry of Economic Development’s concern for the radio spectrum and telecommunications. We manage requests for non-commercial broadcasting licenses and liaise with Te Puni Kokiri who deals with Māori broadcasting issues. The Ministry works with other government agencies enabling co-production film agreements with South Africa, India, China and Thailand to be signed.
A major focus is New Zealand’s transition from analogue to digital television. We are working with the national and regional broadcasters to ensure the efficient delivery of public service broadcasting across rapidly changing environments. A comprehensive programme of actions for the digital switchover including establishing a dedicated website has been implemented at www.goingdigital.co.nz.
The Cultural Policy Branch comprises four teams: Arts Policy, Heritage Policy, Media Policy and the Cultural Sector Performance Unit. The branch is managed by Katherine Baxter, Cultural Policy Branch Manager and Deputy Chief Executive.
