Lusi Faiva attends CNZ's Pacific Arts Summit 2022

Lusi Faiva writes about her experience at the CNZ Pacific Arts Summit 2022.

Last week I attended the Creative New Zealand Pacific Arts Summit 2022 in Wellington at Te Papa.

It was a good experience, listening to other Pacific artists and professional practitioners in the arts community around Aotearoa, about their experiences with their teaching diversity with cultural dance, theatre, visual arts, music, video and film. And also other festivals nationally and internationally. The reason for this summit has been going on for years now is just getting an understanding of what is the next step of the Pacific Arts strategy to keep the stability in the future offerings in providing more support and opportunities to help them to achieve their goals.

I was part of the Toa Creatives panel among other disabled artists such as Pati Umaga and Tusiata Avia. We discussed lots of different ways to make the accessibility of the information we need to know more efficiently and easily beneficial for our own creative resources to ensure that we have the same opportunities as non-disabled artists.

It is my second summit with Pacific Arts and I’m just learning a lot to think out of the box. I do believe there’s more space to build a good, strong connection for the next generation of new artists all over Aotearoa, both disabled and able-bodied artists, to keep their creativity alive.