From the Minister
This year's Budget addressed a number strategic issues for the arts, culture and heritage sector, including maintaining capacity in key arts organisations, enhancing public broadcasting, building on museum and heritage services and taking New Zealand music to the world.
One new project coming out of the Budget which I am pleased to see getting underway is the Ministry's cultural portal project. The portal will offer a co-ordinated web presence for government cultural agencies , government funded cultural organisations, and other cultural entities. It will promote New Zealand 's cultural goods, services, events, and activities to a wider, more diverse audience both nationally and internationally.
Future issues of this newsletter will keep you informed of the progress of the cultural portal and I hope you take the opportunity to be part of its success.
Helen Clark
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage
From the Chief Executive
Welcome to the first edition of @MCH, our new look newsletter featuring our new design. The new design was developed initially to provide a basis for establishing a common look for our web-based resources and has been extended to be used for all Ministry publications. It is the first significant change in design since the Ministry was established in 1991.
The development of resources for the web is an ever increasing part of the Ministry's work. For some years we have had a strong presence with the NZ history site and the online Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara, the online encyclopedia of New Zealand went live earlier this year as did new sites on Anzac day and an oral history website project, From Memory. This year's budget has provided funding for the Ministry to lead in the development of a cultural portal, at least initially, for accessing details of cultural events and activities in New Zealand.
This issue of our newsletter gives you an overview of the diversity of the work the Ministry is currently involved with ranging from the web-based resources, building memorials, conducting research and funding activities totalling approximately $250 million. I trust you find something of interest to your part of our cultural world.
Martin Matthews
Chief Executive