Mentorship is an essential part of nurturing emerging talent within fashion and the arts. When insight that can only be learned through real industry experience is shared, it creates opportunities for new perspectives, and a more vibrant and diverse industry as a whole.
The value of this often reciprocal exchange of knowledge is what The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi’s Springboard programme is all about. Now in its fifth year, it will pair seven early-career artists with established figures to help guide them kick-start a sustainable career in the arts. Ensemble is proud to be the media partner for this year's Springboard.
This year’s duos, announced today, are an outstanding group of artists across a diverse range of disciplines: Emily Parr (moving image), mentored by Laureate Tanu Gago of FAFSWAG Collective; Emma Hislop (literature), mentored by author and icon Patricia Grace; Flo Wilson (music and sonic arts), mentored by 2008 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi New Generation recipient Jeff Henderson; Hash Perambalam (film; mentor TBC); Joshua Faleatua and Tyler Carney-Faleatua (dance, film), mentored by 2021 Laureate, filmmaker Florian Habicht; and Louie Zalk–Neale (visual arts), mentored by Arts Foundation Laureate Bridget Reweti of Mata Aho Collective.
As well as invaluable mentorship, Springboard recipients also receive a $15,000 gift that artists can choose to put towards a project, or help to pause and reflect on their practice. In a statement, Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi general manager Jessica Palalagi said that this year’s group continues to build an amazing alumni of early-career artists, bringing together a powerful cohort of creatives from across the disciplines.
She acknowledges that this essential support for artists is only possible thanks to the generosity of families and individuals, including a new Springboard package this year gifted by Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate Dr. Fiona Pardington.
Previous Springboard mentor Oscar Kightley says the programme creates a pathway where there isn't one, and forges valuable mentor-mentee relationships for life.
“It’s also good for the mentors to see the issues that are still the same and to see where maybe you were, and to be able to offer a way through and be able to say ‘it's all right, this is normal, this is exactly as it should be – and you're going to get through this, you just have to stick at it,” he says.
This year's Springboard group was selected by an independent panel, chaired by Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi trustees Anne Noble and Tanea Heke and including Nathan Pohio (senior curator – Māori Art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki), Melanie Oliver (curator, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū), Samuel Holloway (composer, educator), Dolina Wehipeihana (choreographer, co-director – Tāwhiri), Chris Tse (current New Zealand Poet Laureate), Ant Timpson (director, film producer & New Zealand Film Commission Board), and James Gatt (curator, Te Uru).
