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Lambton candidate criticises carnival neglect
Press Release – Jevan Goulter, candidate for Wellington City Council
It is no surprise how disappointed Wellingtonians will be to know that there will be no Carnival taking place due to lack of funding from the Wellington City Council.
I have to raise the question, does the Wellington City Council not realise how important the Cuba Street Carnival is to our city. Providing entertainment and a great Wellington experience to everybody in the City and to our visitors in Wellington, the Cuba Street Carnival also provides opportunities for local businesses to thrive and gives many local performers a platform to stand on.
Considering this year I am standing for council, I have tried to put myself in their mind frame of how they could not support this event. I honestly do not understand how they will not fund this event. One of the things I am passionate about is the arts and events, festivities in our City being the capital city and so proud of leading the arts portfolio in New Zealand. To lose the carnival puts us ten steps backwards !
I will be lobbying the council to reconsider and change their position on this decision, if elected I will definitely be fighting passionately and publicly to make sure things like this do not happen and that the council is supporting as many events like this as possible and not killing them.
We need to make sure things like this do not happen so we need a new council, I hope this year Wellingtonians think hard when voting this year.
We need to send a message to the council that we need to support the Cuba Street Carnival and we need to look at other ways of making the Cuba Street Carnival happen in the future if the council makes the same decision again.
We are a city that thrives on the arts and it is crucial that we act now and do something about this !
Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz
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The candidate needs to understand that campaign rhetoric means nothing in an election if you cannot deliver.
Jevan FYI and just to keep you up to date here’s the clarification the Council issued after the story in the DomPost at the beginning of this month.
cheers
Richard MacLean – WCC Communications
Cuba Street Carnival – Clarification
04.06.10
Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast has denied as “absolutely untrue” reports that the 2011 Cuba St Carnival has been cancelled because the Council is not committed to funding it and is spending money on the Rugby World Cup instead.
The Council has been working with the Cuba Street Carnival and Fringe Arts trusts since last year on forming a new trust focused on delivering and developing events for emerging artists in Wellington.
Mayor Prendergast says the Council committed $75,000 toward helping establish the trust and has not received any formal funding request for the 2011 Cuba St Carnival.
“As far as the Council is concerned we are still working with the trust and a report detailing the steps to establish it is being finalised at the moment.
“We have always been supportive of the Cuba St Carnival and contributed approximately $300,000 last year. The suggested figure of $500,000 was taken out of context and included a much wider range of events that the Council and Cuba St Carnival Collective Trust had been discussing.
“The Rugby World Cup has been budgeted completely separately from community events and major events. It is absolutely not drawing Council funding from any other events in the city.”
Nick Simcock, Chair of the Cuba St Carnival Collective, says a decision was made at the last board meeting that it was not feasible for the new trust to run an event of the Cuba Carnival’s scale in its first year of operation.
“We decided the focus should be on identifying appropriate trustees, building relationships with stakeholders and engaging appropriately qualified staff instead.
“We think it is in the best interest of Wellington city, the performers and the 150,000 carnival attendees for us to plan for a successful carnival in the longer term rather than compromise its authenticity because we have committed to an unrealistic time frame in a very difficult financial environment.”
The steering group for the new trust, made up of representatives from the Carnival and Fringe Trusts, is working with other creative interests, including Wellington City Council, on a long-term strategy to retain and build Wellington’s status as New Zealand’s leading centre for arts events and emerging artists.