New Leaders Programme

Before you apply

Apply through the Creative New Zealand portal. One application per funding round. Submissions close at 1.00pm New Zealand time on the closing date — not midnight, which catches people out. Results due 10 November.

The pool you choose decides who reads your application. Creative New Zealand runs three funding pools across most of its funds — Ngā toi Māori, Pacific arts, and General arts. You may be eligible for more than one but you can only pick one per application.

Choose Ngā toi Māori and your application is assessed by Māori artists and practitioners with experience in ngā toi Māori, and the funding decisions are made by Creative New Zealand’s Ngā Toi Māori kaimahi. Choose General arts and it goes to a general panel. Same fund, same money, different people reading it.

To use the Ngā toi Māori pool as an individual you must be tangata whenua Māori, or the project must be managed or directed by Māori. An organisation, group or collective must be Māori-led, and where it applies on behalf of an individual, that person must also be Māori.

Ngā toi Māori is defined broadly. Creative New Zealand include taonga puoro, tarai waka, kaupapa waka, whakairo, raranga, tāniko, kākahu, tukutuku, kōwhaiwhai, tā moko, kapa haka, mōteatea, waiata ā-ringa, waiata tawhito, poi, waiata haka, pao, mau rākau, whaikōrero, karanga, whakapapa recitation, te reo me ōna tikanga, kōrero paki, pakiwaitara, karetao and whare tapere — and the work of Māori artists across all forms of contemporary practice. You do not have to be doing customary arts to use this pool.