CCC Community Arts Team

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu houses the city's visual arts collection, comprising around 6,000 objects in a bewildering array of media and forms. But this is just one facet of the city's involvement in the arts. Christchurch City Council's arts policy also takes into account performing, literary and multidisciplinary arts across the broad range of communities and ethnicities that make up the city today.

Charged with implementing council policy across this wide playing field are Marlene Le Cren, arts advisor, and Paula Rigby, Māori arts advisor. Although both are based in the Gallery, their work crosses many Council units, from Festivals and Events to Transport and Greenspace. At the time of the 2005 Paradigm Shift it was felt that the Gallery would be the ideal environment from which they should operate.

Before working for the Council, Marlene, whose background and training is in the performing arts, primarily theatre and dance, spent twenty-three years as junior dean and head of performing arts at Linwood College. She describes her current role as ‘advocate, supporter, promoter, enabler, planner, funder, facilitator and passionate devotee of all art forms'. She is responsible for the allocation of arts funding from the Council's annual Strengthening Communities funding scheme and Creative New Zealand's Creative Communities scheme, and liaises with CNZ on local government arts involvement.
Paula (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairoa, Ngāi Tuhoe) has been actively involved in the arts as a weaver and performer of kapahaka at national and international levels. At the Council her focus is on promoting and encouraging the growth of artists and arts opportunities in Māori and Pacific Island communities, and increasing public participation in the arts as both passive and active participants. She also helps out at the Gallery with all things Māori and organises workshops as part of the immerse programme where appropriate.

Art, and especially contemporary art, can easily feel exclusive. Together Marlene and Paula help to ensure that the arts in Christchurch are inclusive and accessible to all.