The changing dynamics of the creative city: Toward an inclusive, participatory, and place-based cultural policy in Wellington, New Zealand

ABSTRACT

The policies and practices of creative cities are transitioning from a more externally focused and neoliberally oriented creative agenda toward local, place-based approaches that are grounded in the principles of social and cultural inclusion, participation, and diversity. However, little research has specifically examined the tensions, trade-offs, and opportunities cities might face in this transition. This research explores the creative dynamics of Wellington, New Zealand’s creative capital, pursuing a more inclusive and community-oriented policy. Using a case study approach, we identified seven key themes critical to supporting more inclusive and place-based creative city policies: affordability; availability of creative and cultural infrastructure; a supportive built environment; celebration of Indigenous culture and creative expression; support for inclusion and diversity; reliable funding resources and supportive regulations and processes; and grassroots community innovators. We developed these themes by considering both Wellington’s creative city policies and the existing creative dynamics of the city, which provide implications and recommendations for other cities experiencing similar transitions in their creative city policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative cities
• cultural policy
• inclusion
• place-based development
• Wellington

Introduction

In recent decades, many cities worldwide have adopted diverse approaches to integrate the concepts of creativity and creative industries into their urban planning strategies. These approaches range from globalized, commercially oriented, consumption-focused city branding to locally oriented approaches that focus on community participation, grassroots creative activities, and production-oriented strategies. While these sometimes competing approaches usually co-exist within any place, the globalized commercially oriented approach has often seemed to dominate creative city policy and practice. Some researchers have criticized such policies and practices for their adverse impacts, including increased inequality, gentrification, the commodification of culture and urban spaces, and social displacement (Scott, 2006; Trip & Romein, 2014).

In response to such concerns, urban decision-makers, planners, and scholars are reconceptualizing creative city policies around a more socially and culturally inclusive place-based approach (Borén & Young, 2013; d’Ovidio & Rodríguez Morató, 2017; Grodach, 2017; O’Connor & Shaw, 2014; Whiting et al., 2022). Cities such as Toronto, Dubai, Amsterdam, and Barcelona are changing their policies to balance the goal of economic prosperity with other goals, including social livability, inclusion, social innovation, and alternative forms of creativity (Alsayel et al., 2022; Sánchez Belando, 2017). Nevertheless, there is a developing area of research in the study of such transitions in creative city dynamics, and the tensions and potentials associated with such policy shifts (Borén & Young, 2013, 2017; Romeiro, 2017).

This paper explores such dynamics through a case study of the city of Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. In Wellington, creative city policies are shifting from a more neoliberal economic approach toward a more inclusive and community-oriented creative city approach that foregrounds inclusion, well-being, and Indigenous identity. We examine this shift in Wellington’s creative city policy and some of the emerging tensions and opportunities apparent in the way creative activities are unfolding. This study contributes to the discussion surrounding creative city policy by highlighting limitations and implications associated with the Wellington case and recommending how more inclusive and place-based creative cities might be achieved.

The paper is organized into four sections. First, we review calls made in the literature for a more progressive form of creative city policy and then develop a theoretical framework that identifies key concerns in this regard. Second, we explain our research design, data sets, and methods. Third, we analyze the creative dynamics in Wellington by exploring the spatial pattern of creative sites, recent shifts in Wellington City Council policies, and the tensions and possibilities associated with more inclusive creative development. Finally, we discuss the implications of this research, while noting limitations and suggestions for future research.

Literature review: Understanding creative dynamics

For almost 2 decades, the concept of creative city policy has gained prominence in urban planning and development agendas (Grodach, 2017; Trip & Romein, 2014). Deemed a lucrative strategy, many cities around the world have been inspired by the potential benefits of creative city policy as an indispensable part of the new urban imaginary (Evans, 2009; Trip & Romein, 2014; Whiting et al., 2022). Creative city policy encompasses different concepts, including the creative city strategy (Landry, 2008), creative industries (DCMS, 2001), and the creative class (Florida, 2014). Local and state governments are optimistic about the potential of creative city policies to address diverse goals, including an enhanced quality of life, urban regeneration, and community and economic development (Grodach, 2017; Sasaki, 2010; Tavano Blessi et al., 2012).

We associate the creative city concept with two interlinked scales of global and local analysis. At the global level, creative city policies and strategies aspire to enhance competitiveness and support economic vitality, anticipating that positive effects will trickle down to local communities (Alsayel et al., 2022; Borén & Young, 2013; Krätke, 2010). Florida’s (2014) creative class concept, in which he discusses the ways that talented and creative professionals can be attracted and retained, is influential in this debate. According to this concept, cities and countries should prioritize quality-of-life amenities, including quality cultural facilities that appeal to the creative class. In turn, the high human capital endowments associated with the creative class will attract investment and (especially high-tech) companies and increase global competitiveness (Florida, 2014; Grodach, 2017; Peck, 2005). Florida (2014) considers technology, tolerance, and talent essential for fostering creativity in societies. On the other hand, on the local scale, creative city policies support bottom-up community development processes that aim to bring direct social and economic benefits and build community capacity for both cultural workers and residents (Murdoch et al., 2016; Tavano Blessi et al., 2012). With regard to this local scale, research highlights social values and processes such as inclusion, participation, and diversity, and a well-balanced system of cultural production and consumption to be significant (Alsayel et al., 2022; Mould & Comunian, 2015; Sasaki, 2010).

A growing body of research, however, has highlighted that creative city policies have primarily been implemented using the neoliberal and globalized approach that treats culture and creativity as market-regulated objects (d’Ovidio & Cossu, 2017). Scholars like Peck (2005, 2020), Mould and Comunian (2015), O’Connor (2016), O’Connor and Shaw (2014), and Whiting et al. (2022) have critiqued the narrow and neoliberal conceptualization of creativity and the rapid uptake of a singular notion of creative policy by city officials worldwide. They argue that this conceptualization, often seen as a codified “cookie cutter” approach, promises to revitalize deteriorating urban areas while maximizing creative consumption practices (Whiting et al., 2022, n.p.). The increasing criticism and contestation around the idea of creative cities includes concerns about gentrification, displacement, and increasing inequalities (Morrison, 2011; Teresa & Zitcer, 2022; Zukin & Braslow, 2011). Particularly, creative city policies face opposition because of the exclusion of local communities, including cultural workers, from decision-making (Sánchez Belando, 2017) and the precarious working and living conditions of creative workers and artists (d’Ovidio & Cossu, 2017). Additionally, such creative city programs have contributed to the commodification of urban spaces through culture (Sánchez Belando, 2017) and the erosion of the intrinsic value of culture and creativity (d’Ovidio & Rodríguez Morató, 2017; Grodach, 2017). Creative city practices have been criticized for increasing the tensions between highly urbanized central neighborhoods and peripheral suburbs over access to arts and cultural resources (Murdoch et al., 2016). Recently, a special issue of City, Culture and Society (2017, 8, pp. 1–50) explored urban social movements by creative workers and artists who oppose creative city policies for using artists’ names as champions of creative development, while favoring market-based urban development agendas that increase the vulnerability of artists.

In response to such critiques and at the same time considering the ongoing uptake of creative city policies worldwide (Grodach, 2017; O’Connor, 2016), there have been recent calls in the literature to reconceptualize creative city policy in a way that is less centered on global branding and macro-economic growth, and more focused on local communities and processes (Borén & Young, 2013; d’Ovidio & Rodríguez Morató, 2017; Grodach, 2017; Pratt & Hutton, 2013). These shifts in creative city thinking recall ideas of the “good city” and engage with local contexts and communities, celebrating vernacular culture and creativity (O’Connor & Shaw, 2014, p. 169). This reconceptualization of creative city policies aims to explore social and cultural identity, including Indigeneity, and to nurture inclusion, participation, diversity, and social innovation (d’Ovidio & Rodríguez Morató, 2017; Grodach, 2017; Luckman et al., 2009; Sasaki, 2010).

Scholars such as Sasaki (2010) stress the need to take issues of social inclusion, minorities, and homelessness more seriously in creative city visions and policies. According to Sasaki (2010), in developing creative city concepts it is crucial to understand a city’s historical and cultural context and to recognize the impacts of artistic and cultural creativity on many other areas, including industry, employment, social welfare, education, medical care, and the environment. Furthermore, cities should foster various creative milieus and spaces for cultural creation and support the participation of various community members, including nonprofit organizations and ordinary citizens.

Alsayel et al. (2022) explore how the cities of Toronto, Amsterdam, and Dubai have operationalized the concepts of both creative city and inclusive city. The authors found partial adoption of the discourse of inclusion within policy documents. In Toronto and Amsterdam, aspects of inclusion that received the most attention were those that seemed more consistent with the tolerance dimension in the creative class concept, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion. In contrast, other aspects of inclusion such as age, disability, income, wealth, and locational distribution received less attention. In the case of Dubai, consistency with local culture was also influential. Dubai’s creative policy highlighted ageism and ableism but appeared reluctant to foster inclusion in terms of class, religion, gender, and race.

Post-colonial urban theory, the increased recognition of Indigenous rights, and acknowledging Indigenous peoples’ enduring struggle against the impacts of colonization have started to play an influential role in revitalizing creative city thinking (Gibson et al., 2010; Luckman et al., 2009; Morgan, 2012). Based on their research in Darwin, a comparatively small city in the Northwest Territory of Australia with a large Indigenous population, Luckman et al. (2009) argue that the global transfer of creative city theories may unwittingly contribute to the increasing (colonial) marginalization of particular social groups. Instead, enhancing spaces for Indigenous creative products, popular music, paintings, fashion, and film and acknowledging and contesting the hidden dimensions of race in urban planning (e.g., the exclusion of Indigenous people from the city’s public space) can work toward pursuing decolonizing outcomes and invigorate creative city thinking. The increasing recognition of Indigenous rights and culture contributes to a progressive form of creative policymaking, where inclusion and social justice are fundamental.

Other alternatives and counterbalances to the market-oriented articulation of the creative city include prioritizing local socially innovative initiatives that democratize governance structures (i.e., through bottom-up processes and social participation) and promote alternative creativity based on collective action (Sánchez Belando, 2017). These initiatives address different types of needs, ranging from material needs (e.g., training and employment), existential needs (e.g., creative and artistic practices that promote self-realization, recognition, and visibility of diversity), to political needs associated with democratization and equity in decision-making processes (e.g., creative activities that can promote debates and human interactions; Sánchez Belando, 2017).

A new strand of literature aims to elevate the discussion about the creative city by promoting the forgotten aspects of the industrial city, including urban manufacturing (Grodach, 2017) and the intangible elements of industrial culture such as solidarity, community building, cohesion, and working-class creativity (Kozina et al., 2021). Small-scale manufacturing, especially around craft and cultural production (apparel, jewelry, furniture, etc.), represents an opportunity to support place-specific designs and cultural production rather than consumption and to consider diverse communities and workforces (Grodach, 2017).

Finally, Markusen and Gadwa (2010) discuss the concept of creative placemaking to elaborate place-based community revitalization through creative development. In this approach, the main aim of creative placemaking is to put the community at the heart of creative initiatives, contribute to improving quality of life, and recognize the entanglement of creative initiatives with the wider processes and factors that shape a place (Afsari Bajestani et al., 2022).

These alternatives suggest that in recent years, the vision for creative city policy has taken a more localized and sensitive approach to place. In addition, the recent literature has argued for a less polarized debate on creative city policy that moves beyond merely fleshing out the negative impacts of creative city policy (Borén & Young, 2013). In line with such arguments, and following Chang et al. (1996), this paper acknowledges the ways in which locally oriented approaches to creative development co-exist with more globalized approaches with varying effects in specific places. As a result, it is necessary to explore how the tensions, disruptions, trade-offs, and coalitions resulting from a range of perspectives and practices unfold in places while considering local imperatives (Romeiro, 2017). This investigation is particularly important considering the ongoing enthusiasm for creativity by urban policymakers around the world (Borén & Young, 2013; Romeiro, 2017).

Data and methods

To examine the tensions and potentials involved in pursuing an inclusive creative city, this paper adopts a case study strategy with a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis. Exploring shifts in creative city policy, policy implementation, and existing creative city dynamics is highly contextual. Undertaking a case study gives a rich understanding of the research context and the phenomena being studied (Saunders et al., 2019). We chose Wellington, New Zealand, because of its current efforts to shift its creative city policy to a more inclusive and place-based approach that prioritizes partnership with Indigenous communities. Since this paper deals with policy intentions and the reality on the ground, we draw on data from a range of sources. These include maps showing the distribution of creative sites in Wellington at a micro-scale; an analysis of related Wellington City Council (WCC) policy documents; field observations; and interviews with 18 people involved in creative development in Wellington. These methods helped us understand Wellington’s creative dynamics, challenges, and opportunities for moving toward a more socially and culturally inclusive creative development. We carried out data collection in the following order:

First, the lead author mapped Wellington’s creative sites, as there were no existing datasets for the location of creative industries in the area. We chose UNCTAD’s classification of creative industries with its four major categories of Heritage, Arts, Media, and Functional Creations as the basis for data collection (UNCTAD, 2008). We chose to use UNCTAD’s classification because it included a good balance of valuing “upstream activities,” or core cultural activities (e.g., cultural heritage and performing and visual arts), and “downstream activities,” or market-driven and new industries (e.g., design, media, advertising, digital media activities; Cruz & Teixeira, 2015, p. 86). This upstream-downstream model acknowledges the “linkages and interdependencies among all the industries that compose the value chain” (Cruz & Teixeira, 2015, p. 92). While UNCTAD’s classification covers the current creative industry’s classifications in Wellington and New Zealand, which are mainly based on ANZSIC (Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification) codes, it also addresses some of their drawbacks, such as the arbitrary exclusion of crafts and heritage or the selection of a restrictive number of creative sectors (Walton & Duncan, 2002; WCC, 2020; Wilson, 2020). Like Mengi et al. (2020), we limited creative sites to physical creative spaces and excluded spaces for intangible creative activities such as the spaces for holding celebrations and festivals (although some of these events are held in the physical spaces we identify).

Using QGIS 3.24, we collected data related to creative industries from OpenStreetMap (OSM)—an accessible and editable geographic database. For this paper, we extracted the relevant creative industries from the categories of “amenity,” “shop,” “historic,” “craft,” and “tourism.” In each category, we chose those sites defined in UNCTAD’s (2008) classification. For example, we included art centers, movie theaters, libraries, theaters, universities, colleges, co-working spaces, and crafts in the category of “amenity.” The lead author modified and analyzed the retrieved OSM data in ArcGIS Pro Software. She updated the OSM data by searching Google Maps and online websites and conducting some field observations and interviews. We decided to specifically undertake field observations and interviews for the neighborhood of Miramar, which has a cluster of film-making facilities, and Te Aro, which forms a large part of the central business district (CBD) and includes the city’s main creative infrastructure. Updating our database through online searches, including council websites, along with using Google Maps, field visits, and interviews, had several benefits. These methods helped to expand our knowledge of formal and informal creative spaces (e.g., community arts spaces and performing venues), validate the allocation of creative sites to a specific category, and exclude sites that did not fit any of UNCTAD’s creative categories. The initial search through OSM resulted in 389 creative sites. In updating the database, we removed 50 and added 183 sites. In total, we derived 522 creative sites. In mapping the creative spaces, we gained a better understanding of the different types of creative activities and their spatial patterns in the city.

We then reviewed a range of Wellington City Council (WCC) documents, including the city’s main strategy, named Wellington towards 2040: Smart capital (WCC, 2011), the city’s main arts, culture, and creativity strategy and action plan for years 1–3 (WCC, 2021a, 2021b), the city’s spatial plan, and the proposed district plan (WCC, 2022b). We focused on documents that reflected the past and current policy intentions and initiatives and their effects on Wellington’s creative urban dynamics. Given current policies have not yet been fully implemented, we paid attention to understanding the forms of creativity WCC is promoting, how the new policy differs from previous policies (notably the former Creative Wellington–Innovative Capital strategy, 2000), and any tensions within the contemporary context.

Finally, the lead author conducted semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 18 people involved in Wellington’s creative development. We selected interviewees nonrandomly through snowball sampling (i.e., we asked interviewees to introduce the most relevant people to the study and then the lead author invited them to participate in the study). The interviewees were spread over different subsectors of creative industries, policy (i.e., involved in WCC creative strategies and funding), and urban development (see Table 1). At the start of the interviews, the lead author showed a map of creative sites in Wellington and then worked through a series of open-ended questions related to the main drivers of creative development and how they impact creative development, the types of culture and identity expressed through creative activities, and the role of the built environment in creative development in Wellington. We intended to gain a broad understanding of Wellington’s creative dynamics and to learn about the changes in creative development and the pressures, trade-offs, and opportunities. The in-depth interviews lasted 60–90 minutes. The Research Ethics Committee of the authors’ institution approved the research design and protocol for conducting the interviews.

Table 1. Interviewees’ profile according to the profession and the length of time in that profession.

Profession	Length of time in the profession
	2 to 5 years	6 to 10 years	11 to 15 years	More than 15 years
Māori design and creative experts				1
City Council and national funders		2		1
Managers of creative events/venues/industries	1	4	1	3
Urban design/planner				3
Artists (music, performing arts, visual arts, media)	1		2	6

Note: The total sum of the number of interviewees in this table is not 18 as some of the interviewees identified themselves in more than one category.

Source: Authors.

We qualitatively reviewed relevant WCC policy documents to produce a summary of key points and principal themes (Saunders et al., 2019). We also audio-recorded all interviews and transcribed them verbatim. We coded and analyzed the interviews qualitatively using NVivo software (version 1.6.1; Saunders et al., 2019). Rather than using predetermined categories, we identified categories from the interview data by considering the research’s purpose of identifying tensions and opportunities in pursuing a more inclusive and place-based creative city. For documents and interview analysis, the lead author read the data multiple times to derive initial findings. Then, all authors iteratively reorganized data, generated categories, and processed key themes and patterns of relationships.

Case study

Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, the second largest city in New Zealand and its capital, is an instructive case study where creative city policies are shifting to a more socially and culturally inclusive approach. The city is renowned as the cool, creative capital of New Zealand (OECD, 2014, Chapter 4, Part II). In 2019, Wellington was officially designated a Creative City of Film by the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The city is located on the southern tip of the North Island of New Zealand and in the southwest of the Greater Wellington Region (Figure 1). It is home to 202,737 people, which is less than half of the population of the Greater Wellington Region (527,800; Stats NZ, 2018). The landscape of Wellington is defined by a range of ridges and hills that constrain the city’s growth, putting flat land at a premium and resulting in housing clustered along the steep hillsides and around its extensive waterfront (Page, 1996). Influenced by the city’s complex topography, the city has a compact urban form and a bounded flat urban area where Wellington’s CBD is located (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The location of Wellington City in New Zealand and the Greater Wellington Region.

Source: Adapted from WCC (2022b) with permission.

The creative sector is currently a significant source of employment in the city. In 2019, creative industries in Wellington provided 5% of employment, almost the same as retail and construction (WCC, 2020). The screen sector, known internationally for innovation in special effects (Wētā Workshop, Wētā FX (formerly Weta Digital), and Park Road Post), includes 29% of employees in the creative industry with 1,005 business units. The design sector has 26% of employees and 648 business units. With 17% of employees and 30 business units, preservation is the third-largest creative subsector in Wellington, which mainly refers to the nation’s cultural amenities with museums (e.g., Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum), galleries, libraries, and the national archives located in the city (WCC, 2020).

Table 2 and Figure 2 show the spatial patterns of creative sites in Wellington.

Figure 2. Creative sites based on UNCTAD’s classification and showing the different suburbs.

Source: Authors. The base map is adapted from WCC (2022b) with permission.

Table 2. Number of creative sites in Wellington based on UNCTAD’s (2008) classification, and their locational distribution.

Creative sector	CBD	Suburbs
Heritage	23	18
Craft	14	6
Library	4	9
Museum	5	3
Arts	51	48
Visual arts	32	16
Performing arts	17	13
Community spaces for arts	2	19
Media	75	28
Movie theater	2	3
Media agency	19	2
Music/audio	12	4
Publishing and printed media	21	6
Screen and video production	22	12
Functional Creations	223	41
Advertisement	11	1
Architecture	26	17
Co-working space	10	1
Fashion	115	13
Jewelry	18	1
Graphic	9	3
New Media	33	4

Source: Authors.

As can be seen from Table 2 and Figure 2, far more creative sites are clustered in the CBD than in the suburbs. Within the CBD, there are some distinctions in the distribution of creative sites (see Figure 2): the northern end of the CBD has more contemporary high-rise buildings and government buildings. In terms of creative industries, this area is characterized by large international fashion and retail brands and franchises, advertisement and new media (software-related) sites, and co-working spaces. Along the waterfront there is a string of significant cultural buildings (e.g., performance centers, galleries, and museums) which are connected by an expansive pedestrianized waterfront area with parks, cafes, and bars. These are the city’s prominent physical and cultural landmarks, which are significant at the city scale and some at the national scale. The third distinct area is the Te Aro neighborhood, which makes up a large part of the CBD (see Figure 2). This area offers a more bohemian and inclusive atmosphere through varying styles of living (e.g., work-life lofts, sharing flats, etc.), types of buildings (i.e., a significant number of old and historic buildings), a culturally diverse population, and a wide range of prominent street art. The Te Aro neighborhood accommodates smaller-scale, culturally oriented creative activities, such as small music venues, artist-run galleries, craft spaces, and vintage and secondhand shops.

In the suburbs, most creative sites are scattered local cultural amenities, such as libraries, bookshops, movie theaters, and community centers dedicated to arts spaces. Among the suburbs, Miramar (see Figure 2) stands out for its distinctive film cluster where a number of large and small film production companies and other film-related services (e.g., a movie theater and a film training center run by Wellington’s Victoria University) have emerged.

Wellington, New Zealand: Shifting toward a more inclusive, participatory, and place-based cultural policy approach

The emergence of creative city policies emanating from neoliberalization

Wellington’s strategic adoption of the creative city approach is linked to major cultural and socioeconomic shifts that took place in New Zealand following its enthusiastic embrace of neoliberal policies in the early 1980s. The neoliberal era in New Zealand, as elsewhere, prioritized the role of the market over the state and promoted liberalization and privatization of government assets, and greater openness to international trade and global competition (Barnett & Bagshaw, 2020; Bonelli et al., 2019). In this context, Wellington, once dominated by public services, ministries, and government departments, experienced severe job losses, a population decrease, and a considerable shift of its workforce toward the private sector (Bonelli et al., 2019). This situation necessitated rethinking the capital’s urban identity and economic structure. As a part of that process, Wellington’s urban identity moved toward celebrating its tertiary education (marketed to international students), cultural industries, entertainment, and tourism (Bonelli et al., 2019). Some examples of integrating culture and creativity into Wellington city policies were WCC’s supportive regulations of private initiatives that inspired the emergence of the city’s cafe culture in the late 1980s, significant urban development projects including the waterfront redevelopment in the 1980s and 1990s, and the opening of the national museum Te Papa Tongarewa in 1998 (Bonelli, 2018; Bonelli et al., 2019). Such shifts toward a creative city identity were consolidated by the rising prominence of the city’s film industry, particularly with the international success of the trilogies The Lord of the Rings and then The Hobbit, directed by Sir Peter Jackson who used his Wellington-based film studios. The New Zealand government then actively used the trilogies to promote the city’s image, capitalizing on its status as the locus of the film industry in the country (Morrison, 2011).

Another key factor in the rise of creative city policy occurred when the newly elected fifth Labour government introduced creative industries to New Zealand policy discourses in 1999. Influenced by the creative industries policy in the United Kingdom (adopted in the late 1990s), the New Zealand government deemed creative industry policy beneficial to reinvigorating New Zealand’s cultural scene after years of neglect by previous governments (Prince, 2010). The government particularly viewed the creative industry policy as a way to differentiate New Zealand’s image based on innovation and talent to promote a more knowledge-based economy and to enhance the country’s global competitiveness (Prince, 2010). Since then, creative industries have been a constitutive element of a variety of national and regional policy initiatives. However, some of the drives for global competitiveness in the creative industries have undermined labor laws for creative workers and created controversy. For example, in 2010, the New Zealand government changed its labor laws to convince big studios (like Warner Bros.) to remain in New Zealand (Clark, 2010).

Wellington City Council formalized its globally oriented creative city approach by integrating the principles of a creative city strategy into its urban regeneration and regional economic development plans (Parkin, 2007). At that time, Wellington’s civic leaders were interested in Florida’s creative class concept (Van Grondelle, 2004). Florida traveled to New Zealand in 2003 and visited the neighborhood of Miramar and its film studios (Parkin, 2007). Florida then cited Wellington in a Washington Monthly article as the “epitome of an international creative center” (Parkin, 2007, p. 3), where “paradigm-busting creative industries could single-handedly change the ways cities flourish and drive dynamic, widespread economic change” (Florida, 2004, p. 31). The concept of the creative class informed the city’s growth and development, particularly the adoption of its long-term strategic vision in 2004—Creative Wellington—Innovative Capital (Van Grondelle, 2004). This vision aimed to “attract and retain smart, creative people and cutting-edge enterprises to advance the city’s social and economic development” (Parkin, 2007, p. 56). In WCC’s publication Our Wellington: A great place to live, work and play 2004–2005, WCC identified specific characteristics of Wellington that have attracted the mobile creative class to choose Wellington as a destination (Van Grondelle, 2004).

Wellington’s authorities then devised city policies to encourage and support the values and lifestyles that meet the needs of the creative class (Parkin, 2007). These policies included supporting a rapid increase in the number of inner-city apartments, enhancing the quality of third places like vibrant cafes, restaurants, and bars on Cuba Street and Courtenay Place, enhancing walkability in the central city, developing a 24-hour party zone (especially in Courtenay Place), promoting easy access to green spaces and reserves, and celebrating openness and diversity at events and in public spaces (Morrison, 2011). While these strategies resulted in a short-run economic success, they also have brought some vulnerability for the local community and creative groups and led to rethinking of the creative city approach (Morrison, 2011). These vulnerabilities include a sharp increase in housing rents and a decrease in affordable creative spaces, leading to the displacement of local creatives (Morrison, 2011). Interviewees mentioned such vulnerabilities, as we discuss in the following sections.

Setting the scene for alternative approaches to creative city policy

WCC’s current policies and strategies continue to promote a creative and innovative identity tied to the city’s economic future. However, there is a clear policy shift from the concept of creative class toward incorporating more sensitive and balanced creative development that supports well-being outcomes. Three milestones at the city and national scales have guided this shift: (1) the city’s long-term strategic vision: “Wellington 2040 – an inclusive, sustainable and creative capital for people to live, work and play” published in 2011 (WCC, 2011); (2) the “Local Government 2002 (Community Well-being) Amendment Act,” passed in 2019, which re-oriented the purpose of local government toward promoting community well-being (Local Government Act 2002 (Community Well-Being) Amendment, 2019); and (3) the impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the efforts for recovery. Following the mandate of community well-being, the New Zealand government introduced its first Wellbeing Budget in 2019 with the main principle that financial prosperity does not necessarily guarantee improvements to standards of living (New Zealand Treasury, 2019). In 2021, the city’s long-term plan (2021–2031) defined four outcomes that reflect four dimensions of well-being: environmental well-being, social well-being, economic well-being, and cultural well-being (WCC, 2021c).

Within the cultural well-being area, WCC developed the Aho Tini 2030: Arts, culture, and creativity strategy to pursue an innovative, inclusive, and creative city (WCC, 2021a). The publication of this strategy followed 2 years of consultations with the creative sector, Wellington councillors (elected members of the city council), and council staff to define problems, demands, and priorities for the next 10 years of council activities. Several strategic frameworks, including the Tūpiki Ora Māori (Indigenous people of New Zealand) Strategy, Accessible Wellington Action Plan 2019, and Wellington City Housing Strategy, informed the development of this policy (WCC, 2021a). Aho Tini 2030 supports the idea of a “creative ecosystem” to envisage the relationships and interconnectedness between different elements involved in Wellington’s cultural and creative practices: “Aho Tini draws together the many strands of Wellington’s creative and cultural genius, and weaves them into something stronger, more powerful and more sustaining than they are in isolation” (WCC, 2021a, p. 1). As can be seen in Table 3, Aho Tini outlines four main focus areas to support the creative ecosystem. Each of these four focus areas or goals is translated into Action Plans for years 1–3 (to be reviewed and updated in 2024; WCC, 2021b).

Table 3. Aho Tini 2030 focus areas and approaches.

Focus Area	Approach
Aho Tangata Our people—Connected, engaged, inclusive, accessible communities	Ensure offerings reflect the increasing diversity of our communities, and encourage access to and participation in arts and culture
	Enable communities to create in the central city and neighborhoods
	Support bold, inclusive, and contemporary art
Aho Hononga Partnership with Māori	Tell nation’s and region’s stories with tangata whenua (Māori people, Indigenous people of the land)
	Ensuring that ngā toi Māori (Māori arts) and te reo Māori (the Māori language) are highly visible
	Encouraging respectful use of tikanga (customs, protocols)
Aho Whenua City as a stage—Our places and spaces	Improving access to affordable, accessible venues, places, and spaces
	Developing infrastructure and technology to support events and digital projects
	Supporting creativity through simple, efficient, enabling processes
	Sharing Wellington’s and the nation’s stories across our cityscape
Aho Mahi Pathways Successful arts and creative sector and careers	Working with partners to build capacity and grow the arts and creative sector
	Supporting emerging and growing creative businesses
	Attracting, developing, and retaining talent

Source: Adapted from WCC (2021a) with permission.

The first goal is to ensure that the community’s diverse population is represented and included in arts and cultural facilities and is connected by diverse arts and cultural expression. The policy focuses on accessibility and inclusiveness based on age, disability, sexuality (rainbow community), and ethnicity. The second goal emphasizes the partnership with and participation of Māori—particularly the local iwi (tribal groups) of Taranaki Whānui and Ngāti Toa Rangatira—ensuring their integral involvement in narrating locally significant stories and supporting Māori language and artistic practices. This celebration of Māori culture is a critical distinction from previous creative city approaches which did not necessarily address issues of settler-colonial injustices, Indigenous cultural identity, or even question whose culture was to be promoted in the city. The third goal is concerned with enabling access to affordable places and refers to how arts, culture, and creativity can keep Wellington vibrant and alive where there is more visibility of art in public spaces. Here, the policy promotes investment in infrastructure and technology; improving access to venues, places, and spaces; expressing the stories of places; and animating public and private spaces through creative activities. The last focus area deals with retaining creative professionals, ensuring the growth of the creative market, and positioning Wellington as a global hub of creativity.

What is clear from this new policy platform is that Wellington’s creative city policy is undergoing a significant shift. Previously focused on global processes—where branding, internationalization, tourism, consumption, and attracting the creative class prevailed—the policy is now adopting an integrated perspective. This approach prioritizes well-being through engaging with local communities, celebrating Indigenous identity, and supporting accessibility, participation, diversity, and inclusiveness. Below we will explore the tensions and possibilities for pursuing such an approach.

The associated tensions and opportunities toward the new creative paradigm

In relation to the above-mentioned policy shifts, and considering the existing creative dynamics of Wellington, in this section we discuss the tensions and potentials Wellington might face in moving toward a more progressive form of creative city policy that foregrounds local complexities, equality, inclusion, diversity, and community development. As explained in the data and methods section, using a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis (i.e., mapping, reviewing WCC’s creative policy, interviewing experts, and field observations), we identified tensions and potentials around seven key themes: (1) availability of affordable spaces; (2) availability and stability of the city’s cultural infrastructures; (3) the built environment and its relationship with creative dynamics; (4) celebrating and supporting Indigenous culture and creative expression; (5) supporting inclusion and diversity; (6) securing reliable funding resources and supportive regulations and processes; and (7) grassroots community groups as innovators. Below, we expand on each of these themes and the associated tensions and possibilities. We include quotes from interviewees to explore contextual nuances.

Availability of affordable spaces

In Wellington, various factors, such as the city’s hilly topography constraining growth, the current housing crisis, and the high cost of living, have resulted in tensions in the use of space (Morrison, 2011). These factors have impacted the affordability of space, which is critical for sustaining creative work by enabling live and work arrangements in a locality, especially for small producers.

The tangible pressures of space and affordability can be particularly traced in Te Aro (partially overlapping with the CBD), which has emerged as a creative quarter (albeit undesignated) with particular conditions appealing to different grassroots groups. Previously, there were many older buildings that were used as affordable warehouse studios and living spaces and were effectively used as “creative commons” where “groups of artists lived and worked” (Interviewee 1). However, in line with Wellington’s earlier strategic vision—Creative Wellington: Innovative Capital (2000)—the council introduced a range of urban improvement projects, some of which were less sympathetic to the existing context (Parkin, 2007). One of the infrastructural projects was the construction of the city’s main motorway bypass that cut through a historically significant area of Te Aro. The construction of the bypass between 2000 and 2006 (albeit with controversy) resulted in the removal of historic houses in the southwest of Te Aro and the displacement of a part of the community. At the same time, a surge of higher-density housing development took place in Te Aro to accommodate more residents in the city’s apartments. This development was accompanied by the emergence of complementary consumption activities, such as cafes and restaurants. The interplay between the rise of residential and commercial developments and the increase in local rents is reflected in a quote from one interviewee:

If I go back 30 years ago … it was hardly any [residential complexes and apartments] … now we have lots of apartments and so what that means is that our city has a mass of people that are living right inside of it … It’s meant that there is a ready-made audience on our doorstep for a lot of venues and a lot of galleries … But the other side of it is that it’s made it difficult for creatives to exist in the city because space becomes a premium. And so, it’s become expensive and for people in the arts … those two don’t always go together. (Interviewee 1)

Nowadays, many artists have moved out of the city center area to adjacent neighborhoods, such as Newtown and Aro Valley, and to more peripheral locations, as the inner neighborhoods of the city are also becoming less affordable. Our interviews show that rising rents and housing costs have even compelled many artists and residents to migrate to other cities (e.g., Whanganui and Christchurch). As one of our interviewees called it, this migration could sometimes be a “sort of a devil’s agreement” because it does not solve the precariousness of creative activities:

You move there [another city in New Zealand], it’s cheaper, that’s nice. But now you’re even further away from all the infrastructure that you need to support your career, so it might be a long-term negative decision ‘cause art, especially music, is very dependent on urban density. You need audiences. You need venues. It all has to be packed together, so I don’t think that’s functioning as a solution so much as it’s making the problem just take longer and sort of manifest in a different way. (Interviewee 3)

In response to such tensions, WCC is working on short-term and long-term initiatives to improve access to affordable spaces for living and working. Action Plan 3.1 in Aho Tini 2030 works to “improve, enhance and broker creative sector access to the council-owned or council-enabled venues and facilities network across the city and suburbs” (WCC, 2021b, p. 6). This action plan includes providing spaces in community centers or temporarily utilizing public, commercial, or vacant spaces by creative practitioners. A recent example is the temporary use of a hockey stadium in one of Wellington’s suburbs by a theater and film-making company brokered by the city council. Aho Tini has also suggested considering the needs of artists and the creative community in future affordable rental developments (e.g., the Te Kāinga Strategy) in the city. As a growth strategy, the district plan proposed to increase the number of housing units in the central city and suburban centers. Although not focusing on creative development, city officials and planning authorities hope that the intensification proposed in the district plan will lower the pressure on space and increase affordability—a desired outcome for artists. For example, the city center zone, which includes Te Aro, can now accommodate high-density residential and commercial buildings.

While such initiatives signal an attempt toward improving affordability in Wellington, they still lack a robust approach for addressing the issues of space for the creative sector. For example, the Te Kāinga housing strategy supports family-friendly affordable accommodations for long-term workers but does not specifically target the creative sector. The intensification approach in the city center area and other suburban centers also appears to be a blanket up-zoning without a robust protection mechanism (i.e., mandatory inclusionary housing and anti-displacement protections) for existing local creative communities (Davis, 2021). Therefore, there is the potential to further fuel gentrification pressures, increase property values, and continue displacing the existing small cultural producers and creative firms, as landlords are often enticed to build high-end residential developments (Davis, 2021). The other tension that remains unresolved is that the increasing residential density will reduce the number of working spaces for the creative community. The increasing demand for commercial and residential development might also cause conflicts with existing creative sites, as discussed in the following sections.

Availability and stability of the city’s cultural and creative infrastructures

An inclusive creative city can be described as one that is well-equipped with sufficient cultural and creative physical forms of infrastructure. These range from formal cultural and creative facilities, developed based on top-down policy implementations, to informal bottom-up spaces that emerge as a result of the practice of local actors and initiatives (Mengi et al., 2020). Formal cultural infrastructure often includes high-profile institutions and buildings such as museums and galleries that serve as markers of the city’s cultural capital and/or often as tourist attractions (Stevenson & Magee, 2017). Informal or grassroots creative spaces, on the other hand, provide entrepreneurs, freelancers, self-employed artists, and local communities with a diverse environment that is suitable for interaction and collaboration in creative and innovative endeavors (Mengi et al., 2020).

In the case of Wellington, the city has strong arts-related tertiary education institutions (schools of drama, music, film and media, fine arts, and architecture) to train the future creative workforce and provides a good number of cultural and creative infrastructures to support creative activities. However, there is still a shortage of appropriate venues, production spaces, and sustainable bottom-up creative spaces.

As part of its action plan, Aho Tini 2030 announced an intention to “improve access and enhance infrastructure to enrich audience, community and creative sector development” (WCC, 2021b, p. 4). This plan focuses on improving council-owned and council-enabled venues, supporting new music and performing arts venues, and reopening a closed theater. However, there is no clear and detailed initiative in place to support informal, low-cost, bottom-up spaces, and smaller venues that support grassroots arts communities. For example, three major earthquakes in New Zealand—in Christchurch (2010, 2011) and Kaikōura (2016)—have resulted in tighter building regulations to protect against earthquake damage. This earthquake risk awareness has necessitated lengthy and expensive strengthening upgrades for large city venues. For example, the St. James theater reopened in mid-2022 after 3 years, but work on the Wellington City Library and Town Hall is still to be completed. However, according to our interviews, many of the smaller grassroots creative organizations did not have enough resources to upgrade their buildings and have been forced to close.

Some of the top-down policy choices have also affected the availability of small performing arts spaces. In recent years, alongside the film industry and other arts activities, WCC and other partners have adopted craft beer as a promotional tool to help promote Wellington as a “cool, creative capital city” (Murray & Overton, 2016, p. 177). As a result of this endeavor, Wellington is now promoted as the “craft beer capital of New Zealand” (Murray & Overton, 2016, p. 184). One of our interviewees alluded to the interplay of the promotion of the craft beer industry and the decline of small performing arts spaces: “since craft beer became super fashionable, there are not as many pubs that are making live music, and it’s hard to find venues that like [where] you can play your performances” (Interviewee 4). These less formal spaces are an integral part of Wellington’s creative ecosystem, as they facilitate innovation, and are of equal importance to formal spaces such as larger arts venues and theaters (Mengi et al., 2020). We argue that within Wellington’s arts and cultural strategy, WCC can place more emphasis on promoting and supporting such informal spaces.

Having a well-balanced development of consumption and production spaces is also a requisite for a creative city (Sasaki, 2010). This necessity is particularly evident in Wellington’s central area, which is becoming more consumption-oriented. Luckman et al. (2009) warn that the growth of consumption cultural infrastructure “may appear creative to the touristic eye of creative industry consumers” but “may not be the kind of resource that the actual creators need to enable and sustain their creativity” (p. 77). The interviews also highlighted the lack of production spaces:

There’s less space for people to do the rehearsal or the art studio or the kind of common space. (Interviewee 6)

[Nowadays] loads of the stuff [artists working and creating spaces] actually never finds its way into the central city … There’s heaps of cafes and stuff [e.g., bars, restaurants, retail and chain stores, consumption-based creative spaces], but the role they play in terms of the actual production of creative content, I would sort of question. (Interviewee 2)

As mentioned in the discussion on the affordability of space, WCC is reactivating underutilized sites and reviewing the existing model of council-owned creative spaces to provide suitable infrastructure for artists to experiment and perform, and to better address their needs. Nevertheless, cultural production and small-scale manufacturing and its related zoning considerations have not received much attention in the city’s creative policy. Wellington has great potential to diversify its creative activities based on small-scale maker and manufacture spaces of cultural production. There are important (although few) examples of small companies working in studio workshops producing products (garments, bags, jewelry, etc.). One of these is Nisa, a small manufacturer of underwear in the center of the city, which not only provides jobs for women with refugee and migrant backgrounds but also pursues core values of empowerment, community, diversity, and social and environmental sustainability. Putting small urban manufacturing on the radar of Wellington’s creative policy could encourage place-based design, involve diverse communities, and contribute to local employment.

While our mapping has revealed diverse creative spaces and infrastructures, we suggest that differences in the types of creative spaces could be expanded by including criteria such as informal and formal creative spaces, as well as production and consumption infrastructures. Such details could further inform policy decision-makers about the spatial configuration of Wellington’s creative ecosystem and support the better integration of production and informal creative infrastructures into the city’s plans, strategies, and policies.

The built environment and its relationship to the city’s creative dynamics

Recognizing urban characteristics that are supportive of creative activities and integrating them into urban design practices through policy tools is crucial for fostering the creative dynamics of cities (Stevens, 2015). Action Plan 3.10 in Aho Tini 2030 commits to “ensure the district plan rules, review design principles, and the design and review process, enable creative input and outcomes” (WCC, 2021b, p. 5). However, neither the action plan nor the district plan have explicitly invested in identifying and intentionally building on the suitable urban characteristics and locational preferences of creative workers and businesses.

Some of the objectives and strategies of the district plan (and other urban planning and design documents), such as improving pedestrian friendliness, emphasizing active modes of transport, and encouraging urban compactness, align with enhancing creative activities (Afsari Bajestani et al., 2022). For example, in terms of the city center, accessibility and walkability have been beneficial for creative clustering and these qualities have been envisaged in future urban developments of Wellington:

As a city, Wellington and Te Aro are very good for running festivals because you know you have so many venues so close that people can walk to, whereas you don’t have the same say in Auckland. It doesn’t work as well. It doesn’t work as well in Christchurch at the moment either. (Interviewee 15)

However, further exploration of these characteristics is needed within both the city center and suburbs, as well as how they can be incorporated into urban design practices. For example, as discussed in the literature, suitable morphological characteristics (e.g., building height and lot sizes) differ between different types of creative activities (Wood & Dovey, 2015). For example, the building morphology of the northern end of the CBD with high-rise buildings and medium and larger lot sizes has appealed more to advertising and new media (software-related) sites and co-working spaces (see Figure 3). In contrast, small and medium-sized lots that provide occupancy and ownership diversity are more prevalent in the southern part of the CBD in the Te Aro neighborhood (Wood & Dovey, 2015; see Figure 3). This diversity has made possible the existence of smaller-scale, culturally oriented creative activities such as small music venues, artist-run galleries, and crafts spaces. The interplay between the rising density (stated in the district plan) and its potential impact on the availability of quality public urban spaces is also a point of concern. This interplay is particularly important as urban spaces play a crucial role in facilitating the conviviality and synergy that creative development relies on (Costa & Lopes, 2015).

Figure 3. The relationship between physical attributes (lot sizes, building heights, and other functions) and different types of creative activities.

Source: Authors. The base map is adapted from WCC (2022b) with permission.

In line with the ongoing investments in creating a high-quality and attractive built environment, the symbolic dimensions of the built environment such as the city’s creative image, authenticity, and creative feel are under pressure to become more polished and curated: “it has become much more bougie … it used to be a little bit more gritty, slightly more abrasive, and now it’s all very, but more polite, well-mannered and kind of good food and you know professional people going about their lives” (Interviewee 17). This pressure on the symbolic dimensions of space limits the types of creative activities taking place in the city, putting the city at risk of becoming more homogenized. The pressure is particularly felt in the Te Aro neighborhood, which has been a unique creative quarter:

Our city spaces oftentimes become over-curated … and over-prescribed in terms of like what you can and can’t do and a lot of that isn’t explicit … But essentially, what all of that is doing is it’s pressing down so that the range of creative activities that are easy to do are constrained … So that pushes out all the informal, all the kind of like grassroots activity, like people just starting out or people kind of in the early stages of career and it really only leaves room for the kind of like the well-established … late career arts and things like that. (Interviewee 7)

Cuba St. [in Te Aro neighborhood] has got less and less kind of diverse, it’s got more international shops now … there are more shops that are like chains … It’s like any high street. It’s only when it gets up a bit further, it gets a bit more interesting so that never used to be like that. There were no chain stores … it’s being homogenized … because those international stores, they push out the more bespoke, more creative, more unique stores because they can’t afford the rents. So, I don’t think it’s going in the right direction. (Interviewee 8)

The pressures on space also affected other symbolic qualities of place such as a sense of community. We saw such effects in the recent exodus of local fashion stores specializing in New Zealand–designed and made clothes from Cuba Street to nearby Ghuznee Street Local fashion store owners expressed that qualities like brand similarity to adjacent businesses, the community feel of like-minded people, and space affordability was what had originally drawn them to the Cuba Precinct (particularly Lower Cuba Street) and the northern end of the CBD (i.e., Lambton Quay). However, these qualities are not as easily attainable as they once were:

I just wouldn’t want to be there anyway [e.g., Lambton Quay and Lower Cuba Street] because there are not many neighboring businesses around there that kind of fit with the same type of ethos that we have here [Ghuznee Street] in terms of how we want to run our business and how we want it to feel … that corporate end of town, it’s just not who we are. (Interviewee 9)

In conclusion, future urban development needs to be conscious of the specific urban characteristics across different dimensions (physical, functional, and symbolic) that can help to nurture and sustain creative development.

Celebrating and supporting Indigenous culture and creative expression

Creative city discourse as a planning approach can have a significant role in opening up spaces toward decolonizing outcomes and articulating Indigenous rights to the city (Puketapu-Dentice et al., 2017). As Luckman et al. (2009) note, “this [supporting Indigenous culture and expression] would require more than simply accommodating ‘safe’ alterity or archaizing a tokenistic recognition of past colonial misdeeds through museum displays” (p. 80). Of particular significance is the capacity of Indigenous identity, values, and principles to negate entrenched Western imaginaries of place and culture, and recognition of the potential for Indigenous and western philosophies to work collaboratively in imagining decolonized places (Kiddle et al., 2020; Luckman et al., 2009; Puketapu-Dentice et al., 2017). In Wellington, the representation of creative industries is predominantly Pākehā-oriented (New Zealanders of primarily European descent). However, this situation is changing, with creative city development as an important contributing factor:

… Wellington is like, a quite Pākehā kind of community and especially in that creative industry, and that’s kind of changing at the moment so it’s kind of growing, so that’s definitely happening and the creative industries are the ones that are leading that shift. (Interviewee 6)

That [the incorporation of Māori culture in creative development] is a big desired outcome from future plans, I’d say in the past not very, you know probably slightly … but in the future, it’ll have to be, it’s an essential part of any future plans … through kind of these visible manifestations of like the history of the place or the stories of the place or kind of like the future identity of Māori in the urban environments or how Māori want to be in urban areas. (Interviewee 7)

Currently, in Wellington, significant events are held to celebrate Māori and Pasifika culture, such as the biennial performing arts festival Kia Mau. In 2022, Matariki was marked as the first national public holiday to celebrate te ao Māori (the Māori world) in New Zealand. In large cultural events and practices, such as the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts, it is crucial for organizers to engage in partnership processes with mana whenua (people of the land—Māori people who have historic and territorial authority over the land). In 2022, WCC and mana whenua signed an agreement (Tākai Here) to ensure a strong shared commitment to the partnership between mana whenua and the council (WCC, 2022a). In terms of creative city development, this agreement supports mana whenua to take a leading role in events, practices, and celebrations that are central to Māori. This means that mana whenua are fully and actively engaged from the outset in the design, delivery, and evaluation of such practices (WCC, 2022a).

In the context of Māori creative industries, Aho Tini 2030 specifies the importance of ensuring the visibility of ngā toi Māori (Māori culture, creativity, and the arts) and te reo Māori (Māori language; WCC, 2021a). Supporting ngā toi Māori helps to contest dominant Pākehā cultural representations through fostering the sustainable creation and distribution of original, contemporary Indigenous cultural products and supporting Māori artists to have viable careers (Luckman et al., 2009). Our interviewees noted that there is currently little physical infrastructure in the central city specifically centered on Māori arts, culture, and creativity (examples include Pipitea Marae, Wharewaka center, Te Papa museum, Te Aro Pā, and Te Aro Park). A short documentary made in 2020 noted that out of the 110 Wellington monuments, only 10 represent Māori narratives (Renews, 2020). This lack of visibility and physical manifestation has implications for urban planning and development to better embed Indigenous cultural values within the built environment (Puketapu-Dentice et al., 2017).

Supporting inclusion and diversity

Wellington has adopted creative events and practices that celebrate different genders and sexual identities, ages, and ethnicities to some extent. Events like the Wellington Pride Festival and infrastructure such as the rainbow crosswalk (painted in 2018) that invites citizens to “glide with pride” across Cuba Street celebrate the LGBTQ+ community in Wellington. Other events celebrate cultural diversity, such as the Lunar New Year Festival, the Japan Festival of Wellington, the Wellington Pasifika Festival, and the Diwali Festival. These events celebrate the city’s cultural diversity, seek to improve understanding and acceptance of diverse cultures, and provide a platform for local communities to show their talent and traditions. In terms of age inclusivity, while the most visible age group is young people, there are considerable provisions for other age groups, including children, older adults, and middle-aged people:

I guess, like most things, is tailored towards a kind of consumer age group of probably like 25 to … 35 or something. It’s that kind of … middle part where people have jobs, you gotta have some major spend and don’t have commitments and can go out and do something … but also there’s like tons of places for if you got, I’ve got a 2-year-old girl and we can go and do stuff in Te Papa or whatever. (Interviewee 2)

There is a reasonable amount of provision for age activities for older people, middle-aged people, young people, a lot of very visible activities for young people. (Interviewee 10)

Other dimensions of inclusion and accessibility such as socioeconomic differences and geographic locations may need more purposeful strategies. There are many cultural events that are free and open to the public (e.g., Matariki Festival, CubaDupa Festival, Newtown Festival, discussed further below), and a small number of creative studios (e.g., Vincents Arts Workshop and Pablos Art Studios) that are low cost. However, throughout the city, “there is a tendency toward providing activities … toward upper, middle to upper-class income” (Interviewee 10). It is important to note that this lack of socioeconomic inclusion is not limited to just creative industries:

New Zealand has a class system … there is a slice of people who are in emergency housing who are present, but that’s kind of a weird special case. But other than that it is fairly elite-driven, especially now. It’s so expensive, less diverse socioeconomically than they used to be. (Interviewee 3)

Concerning the locational distribution, as our mapping (see Figure 2 and Table 2) shows, the suburbs (especially the northern, western, and southern outer suburbs) have received little attention compared to the city center and its adjacent suburbs. This spatial distribution of creative activities and spaces can raise the question of whether the creative city serves as a community anchor or a creative class magnet (Murdoch et al., 2016). Our interviews also confirm the lack of inclusivity in terms of locational distribution:

But it’s [the potential of suburbs for creative development] never really been used by Wellington, which … I think that’s partly because Wellington’s focus has always been to develop the waterfront and the city and their businesses in the city … so any initiatives rarely focus on bringing more foot traffic into the suburbs … my personal feel is that a good capital city has to have really strong suburbs, and each suburb should have its own identity and that there should be investment in each suburb, but because of the way that the rates structure works, with the higher rates being paid by the central CBD, businesses, and the council have kind of hamstrung themselves a little bit with trying to help develop the suburbs. (Interviewee 18)

In Aho Tini 2030, both inclusivity based on socioeconomic and locational distribution have received relatively little attention. For example, there is only one policy related to the locational distribution of creativity concerned with suburbs that states: “creative vibrancy in city and neighbourhoods” (WCC, 2021a, p. 25). However, there is no further exploration of how suburbs can nurture creative dynamics and explore their creative potential, except that the council will work toward improving accessibility to council-owned and council-enabled facilities across the city and suburbs and developing a plan for community centers to respond to community needs (WCC, 2021b).

Securing reliable funding resources and supportive regulations and processes

Having access to reliable funding is important for creative workers whose labor is typically precarious. The existing arts funding model in New Zealand is based on contestable grants, in which applicants compete with others for funds with few major players (e.g., Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Creative New Zealand, and local councils). There is a limited amount of funding without assurance of obtaining grants even for events and festivals that have run for several consecutive years: “these relationships between our festival and council have been going on for 11 years now. We’re still in a position where we have to seek funding each year and funding is not assured” (Interviewee 10). Focus area 4 of Aho Tini 2030 (successful arts, creative sector, and careers) describes an action plan to “consider and review level of grants being made to Wellington-based project-funded arts companies” (Action Plan 4.5) and collaborate to “secure central government and other funding opportunities to support the sector” (Action Plan 4.7; WCC, 2021b, p. 11). However, Wellington’s creative groups have faced several challenges in terms of accessibility to funding resources and supportive processes. These include the lengthy process of applying for funds and the requirement for specific skills and expertise during the application. Further challenges are encountered in the council’s changing political landscape that influences priority areas and limitations in funding criteria that may exclude less conventional creative practices. There also tends to be a bias toward supporting significant events that promise economic benefits, typically involving individuals well-versed in the funding processes. Regarding the tendency to favor more conservative creative practices and significant events, one of the interviewees explained:

If I can be frank that the council does a lot to support small grassroots organizations, but they bank on these larger … projects and events that are assured to bring in, like the Aotearoa Festival of the Arts or World of Wearable Arts, for example, and that may not be quite as nimble and innovative and we are nimble and innovative as a festival because we’re forced to be, because we don’t have guarantees about how much we can afford to provide for artists, for interest, infrastructure, for staff, etc. (Interviewee 10)

Diversifying sources of funding, for example through integrating art practices with other forms of social or environmental action, could reduce the dependency on the few arts funds available (Froelich, 1999). For example, one of our interviewees alluded to the Seeds to Feeds festival, which celebrates locally grown and community-building food systems. This festival had sought funding from the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Health. He suggested that such sources of funding offered multiple opportunities: providing alternative resourcing, integrating the arts with different aspects of life, and drawing different communities to participate in creative activities. The U.S. Creative Placemaking program is also a good example of how fundraising for creative practices can be perceived as community development services, wherein the influence of arts and creative practices can extend to offering solutions and insights on critical issues related to housing, urban planning, public safety, health, and food access (Guo, 2022). Given the aspirations of Wellington to be an inclusive, sustainable, and creative capital, expanded opportunities for cross-agency partnerships and increasing the funding pool for the arts and creative sector appear crucial.

Our interviews also demonstrated that the lengthy process to obtain permission to hold events in public spaces and challenges around noise complaints from adjacent residents or businesses have put constraints on creative groups. While these issues are acknowledged as something that needs to be addressed in creative city planning (specifically in Action Plans 3.8 and 3.9 of Aho Tini 2030—“enable easy access and activation of city public spaces” and “make it easier to hold events by improving the council processes, permits, grants, advice and information”) they are not accompanied by any further details (WCC, 2021b, p. 8). As mentioned above, in the face of urban densification proposed in the district plan, existing creative communities might face more restrictions (e.g., noise restrictions for music venues or challenges holding events in public spaces). The district plan has not included any specific zoning and planning rules (e.g., zoning for sound) to protect existing creative communities. Some of the grassroots music groups also made submissions to the proposed Wellington’s district plan about the possibility that future urban densification may have an adverse effect on Wellington’s live music venues. The principle of Agents of Change in the UK National Planning Policy Framework is an example of a recent initiative to protect existing businesses, like small music venues, against some of the restrictions and pressures that new urban developments may place on them (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 2023).

Grassroots community groups as innovators

In Wellington, grassroots community groups are developing innovative mechanisms to enhance social inclusion, address urban problems, rethink models for dealing with crises, and create new definitions of creativity. Some early examples of these innovative activities were seen in the 2000s in response to a series of infrastructure projects—such as the construction of the motorway in Te Aro—under the Creative Wellington: Innovative Capital City strategy (Parkin, 2007). During that time, a group of artists and other individuals (i.e., a community advocacy group called Save Our Streets) attempted to generate public support and oppose any unsympathetic developments to the existing creative character of Te Aro through protests and activist programs (Parkin, 2007). Although such efforts did not stop the implementation of the projects, they represent an important example of socially innovative initiatives that assert agency and work to transform top-down power relations in urban renewal and regeneration projects.

The strength of socially innovative approaches by grassroots communities is that they are particularly responsive to place and context: grassroots groups in Wellington have sought innovative ways to address the lack of space, unaffordability, and lack of cultural and creative infrastructures in the city. For example, instead of focusing on conventional and well-established cultural venues, grassroots creative groups highlight less conventional and informal venues, as in the case of Wellington’s Fringe Festival, which makes use of small music venues, artist-run galleries, bars, and restaurants. In this festival, numerous events are held across more than 37 venues and streets of Wellington over three weeks, including theater, circus, dance, music, visual arts, and comedy.

These activities by creative grassroots groups can be seen as innovative forms of engagement, institutional structures, and conceptualizations of creativity. For example, Urban Dream Brokerage (UDB) is a social entity that mediates between property owners and creative practitioners to temporarily broker the use of public and commercial space for innovative practices while the property is vacant and the owners are in search of tenants. The central ethos of UDB is to change “the idea of consumption, … to encourage places that are truly open, and that there’s no monetary exchange … to introduce and understand a different economy” (Interviewee 1).

Another example of activities by grassroots creative groups includes the curated street art and music festivals of CubaDupa (2 days, held in Te Aro) and Newtown Festival (1 day). For both festivals, some central neighborhood streets are closed to vehicles and are transformed into lively, colorful, and interactive places, featuring music stages, theatrical performances, craft, food, and beverage stalls. The responsible trusts for both festivals seek a model of participation where various stakeholders, including artists, local business owners, council, and residents, come together. Artists are encouraged to express their interest in participating and, upon doing so, they will be paid by the trust. The city council provides grants and manages the public spaces (other trusts and organizations also offer grants). The community is invited to attend and participate in creative activities that reflect the multi-cultural nature of the communities. Local businesses are encouraged to register and move part of their business outdoors into the streets during the festival. The power of these initiatives also lies in realizing and reminding people of the value of streets as public spaces:

What I love about CubaDupa is the way it discovers public spaces in and off Cuba Street and turns them into wonderful events like the courtyard around Hannah’s building … in CubaDupa, it [a public space] comes into its own. It becomes a stage and all sorts of things. (Interviewee 11)

These initiatives also contribute to economic growth and employment: “for CubaDupa, for example, most businesses say that they’ve increased their turnover by 65%” (Interviewee 15).

Another example of social innovation is recognizing the value of suburbs as creative places. In one of the suburbs of Wellington (Brooklyn), a group of local creatives and residents resisted the planned conversion of a former bowling club into an infill housing project and bought the building instead. With the help of a resident theater group, they formed the Vogelmorn Community Group (VCG) Charitable Trust. They converted the building into a multifunctional center to host theater shows, music rehearsals, film launches, a local cafe, a restaurant, and a range of other community activities. Vogelmorn Bowling Club is an innovative model and “very much the role model of what that could look like in communities” (Interviewee 1) in recognizing the value of underutilized assets for creating a local creative hub and bringing the community together outside of the central city.

Finally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, while most of the public venues and large events were shut down, creative grassroots groups were able to act quickly and seek innovative solutions to maintain creative energy in Wellington. Some examples were innovative adaptations to COVID protocols, finding alternative spaces, and changing the types of creative activities:

One of the things I will say that I found quite interesting was that this time coming back into Level Two [Covid-19 Alert Level 2], it was only very, very small venues that don’t make very much money that are more community-focused would commit … they would continue the event. And they just put the restrictions of the seating and things in place, whereas a lot of the bigger venues didn’t want to invest in having music ‘cause they felt like it was more of a financial risk. (Interviewee 4)

So we have gigs here in this room, just small things. And usually one or two events a week and also more recently, particularly during COVID we’ve been putting stuff on like outside of this physical space as well, so using a couple of different venues and also doing stuff outdoors. (Interviewee 2)

The examples above show that grassroots community groups in Wellington can offer alternative approaches to the creative city that are not provided through central or local government or larger commercial creative businesses. In the Aho Tini Action Plan, under the focus area of successful arts and creative sector, and careers, Action Plan 4.1 states to “create as many opportunities as possible for increased involvement by Wellington-based/affiliated creative sector artists and organizations in council” programs and facilities (WCC, 2021b, p. 10). This action plan entails their involvement in major buildings and infrastructure development, placemaking projects, the temporary activation of space, and construction sites (WCC, 2021b). To be effective, this involvement should be part of collective decision-making and imaginings of future urban scenarios (along with urban authorities, iwi (tribal federations; the largest social units in New Zealand Māori society), urban planners, and designers), transforming the understanding of urban creativity. As one interviewee put it, there is a need to devise an official mechanism to support such socially innovative initiatives:

So there are all kind of like small initiatives that are really trying to push against this wave like you know, inaccessibility to space, and so I think there’s a potential that there was a much bigger project around that, but this [was] centralized through council or through a large kind of logic of organization, trying to create this and make those things happen or a specific policy around—you know—a really big incentive for landlords, to more property owners, to if they have an empty building to rent it out cheaply and fill it at any time [as in the case of UDB explained above]. So not quite sure what those final mechanisms are. (Interviewee 6)

Discussion and conclusion

In this paper we analyzed creative dynamics in Wellington, New Zealand, a capital city transitioning to a more inclusive and place-based cultural policy. Our analysis has considerable relevance for other cities seeking to transition their policies and practices in similar ways.

The emerging approach in Wellington is grounded in principles of social and cultural inclusion, accessibility and community participation, celebrating diversity, and particularly embracing Indigenous Māori identity. Following Borén and Young (2013), this paper focused on identifying the opportunities and tensions in pursuing such a progressive creative city policy approach. To do so, we explored the shifts in Wellington’s creative city policy and simultaneously considered the existing creative dynamics of the city. We drew on 18 interviews with arts practitioners, managers, and city developer experts to deepen our understanding of contemporary creative dynamics in the city.

Our analysis revealed seven key themes that were essential in enabling this kind of approach in Wellington but are likely to resonate in other cities as well: (1) availability of affordable spaces; (2) availability and stability of the city’s cultural infrastructure; (3) the built environment and its relationship with creative dynamics; (4) celebrating Indigenous culture and creative expression; (5) supporting inclusion and diversity; (6) securing reliable funding resources and supportive regulations and processes; and (7) grassroots community groups as innovators.

As Wellington is still transitioning through this significant policy shift, it is too early to assess its outcomes. However, the policy signals clear commitments in key areas. Notable among these is WCC’s commitment to potentially contribute to decolonization by partnering with Māori and mana whenua in developing creative practices and protecting Māori cultural values and concepts. We suggest that this approach to valuing and celebrating Indigenous identity is important to city planners globally, particularly in settler-colonial states. There is also an effort to reactivate underutilized infrastructures, provide temporary creative spaces, and maximize the potential of alternative and informal venues. In these efforts, WCC works with and takes the lead from grassroots creative groups. These groups demonstrated a capacity to innovate and adapt during the pandemic and worked outside some of the constraints felt by larger cultural organizations as a result of three significant earthquakes. The council and these innovative groups are finding ways to deal with the lack of spaces and increasing unaffordability in the central city.

However, significant tensions remain. Challenges such as unaffordability and limited space for living, working, and creating are compounded by conflicts between commercial and residential areas and creative spaces. Additionally, there is a growing trend toward more commercially oriented creative activities, which undermines two essential conditions for fostering a socially and culturally inclusive creative city: a balanced system of cultural production and consumption and stable engagement of the creative workforce in creative production (Sasaki, 2010). Long-term strategies are needed to address these challenges. Increasing housing density could, for example, be accompanied by mechanisms such as mandatory inclusionary housing and anti-displacement protections, planning policies and regulations for managing conflicts in communities, and specific zoning considerations for creative activities, particularly for small-scale cultural producers. These strategies would help to protect local creative communities and businesses against the possibilities of further gentrification.

Our study also confirms the findings of Alsayel et al. (2022) that “cities appear to be cherry-picking what aspects of inclusion they wish to adopt and which not” (p. 10) in creative development. Wellington has supported some aspects of inclusion, perhaps those most associated with the idea of “tolerance” in Florida’s (2014) creative class concept (particularly gender, age, and ethnicity) but has invested less in other areas such as locational distribution and income inequality. The lack of locational distribution equity found in this study at the scale of Wellington is consistent with the findings of Morrison’s (2011) study on the distributional consequences of Wellington’s creativity in its greater region (see Figure 1). Morrison’s (2011) study showed that the spatial concentration of fostering a “creative class” in Wellington’s central city has deepened social inequality and displaced the lower-income service workers to smaller towns and larger suburban tracts. To pursue a more inclusive and community-oriented creative city policy, city planners and policymakers must look beyond the inner city and recognize the potential of suburbs as new geographies of creative development.

Considering the value of creative grassroots groups in developing innovative solutions to existing problems and facilitating participatory processes and governance, Wellington has the potential to explore how urban policy-making and urban planning can become more creative activities (Borén & Young, 2013). This transformation would require the development of policies, regulations, and legal and financial instruments to support and legitimize creative communities’ engagement. Finally, the city could invest more fully in the power of socially innovative initiatives and their ability to offer alternative meanings of culture and creativity based on collective action. Socially innovative creative and artistic practices can help to go beyond satisfying material needs toward responding to higher levels of needs such as self-realization, equity in decision-making, and democratic governance (Sánchez Belando, 2017).

To sum up, with respect to the recent calls in the literature to reconceptualize creative city policy, the case of Wellington provides an example of how cities are navigating from a neoliberal, creative class strategy toward a more inclusive and well-being-oriented creative city. The case study also offers insights into the tensions and opportunities the city is facing in its move toward a more progressive creative city policy, with implications and recommendations for policymakers, cultural professionals, and urban planners and designers in other cities and contexts.

The present study has some limitations that open up opportunities for further research. Exploring a greater variety of cities concerned with more inclusive creative city policies, comparing their adopted strategies, and considering their city-specific features could enrich results and enable findings that move beyond the single case study. We interviewed 18 people involved in Wellington’s creative development, representing various roles, including creative practitioners, arts managers, and policymakers. In addition to these interviews, we complemented our research by document analysis, field observations, and mapping. Future research could further explore insights from local community members and residents. Another avenue for extending the results of this contribution would be to individually investigate each of the identified themes in greater depth.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sepideh Afsari Bajestani

Sepideh Afsari Bajestani completed her PhD in Urban Planning from Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her PhD research focuses on inclusive forms of creative city policy and creative placemaking. Her work has also been published in the Journal of Urban Planning and Development and the Journal of Place Management and Development. She is currently working at the University of Waikato, as a postdoctoral research fellow, specifically focusing on reducing flood risk and adapting to change and teaching planning courses.

Polly Stupples

Polly Stupples is a senior lecturer in Human Geography at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Her research centers on creative agency. With Professor Katerina Teaiwa, she edited the book Contemporary Perspectives on Art and International Development (2017).

Victoria Chanse

Victoria Chanse is the Landscape Architecture program director at Victoria University of Wellington. She focuses her research, teaching, and practice on solving problems associated with sea level rise, flooding, and stormwater. Her work focuses on participatory, community-based approaches to develop local responsive designs that consider community needs and landscape changes under different scenarios of sea level rise and stormwater management. Past and current projects have faced critical environmental concerns: design and planning adaptations to sea level change, the use of green infrastructure in addressing stormwater issues, and engaging communities in addressing both equity and environmental problems. Prior to arriving in New Zealand, Dr. Chanse was an associate professor at the University of Maryland and an assistant professor at Clemson University.