Help HUM weather the storm

UPDATE 25/01/24: Contemporary HUM has received an incredible amount of support for our Boosted campaign, and we are beyond thrilled to have reached 100% of our target! Our deepest gratitude to everyone who has donated to our campaign. Your support will keep Contemporary HUM online in 2024, and afford us the valuable time to research and pursue new models of income regeneration to strengthen our organisational foundations for the future. For those who are interested in donating but haven't had the chance yet, any additional funds raised will go towards writers fees, so HUM can maintain a reduced programme of publishing while we focus on strengthening our organisational model. Thank you again for your support of HUM! Ngā mihi nui!

Despite outstanding feedback, HUM did not receive public funding for 2024. This unfortunately forces us to suspend our publishing programme until we have the funds to continue. We need help from our communities now to see us through this rough patch, while we strengthen our foundations for a more sustainable and financially resilient future.

Contemporary HUM is the first—and only—platform dedicated to documenting and discussing the international activity of Aotearoa artists. Since our inception in 2016, and becoming a registered charitable trust in 2019, we’ve championed the international projects of Aotearoa arts practitioners through critical, nourishing, and freely accessible publishing, as well as through public events and multimedia partnerships that have enabled us to connect our arts communities across the globe.

In 2023, for the seventh year running, HUM enabled meaningful conversations between Aotearoa artists and leading international curators, respected writers and their peers, all while connecting a global community with artistic projects by Kiwis in every continent. After a year of significant blows to arts funding, felt by the entire sector in Aotearoa, we need your help to ensure the HUM project doesn’t stop here.

Keep HUM online!

By donating to our Boosted campaign, you will keep HUM humming at an operational minimum until such time as we can apply for public funding in 2024, giving us another chance to resume our publishing programme in late 2024. Your contribution will directly enable HUM to strengthen our foundations by undertaking dedicated work towards embedding sustainable practices in all aspects of our organisation, including developing new funding models to support and develop our existing work. Your donation will allow us to:

• Sustain Contemporary HUM’s continuity as a unique platform
• Build partnerships with cultural institutions worldwide
• Establish diverse, sustainable revenue streams with the help of experts
• Grow capability to have a stronger impact in our work championing Aotearoa arts internationally

Your contribution will also allow us to prepare to reapply for public grants in mid-2024, so that we can resume the production of our programme.

Why give?

HUM has grown exponentially over the past seven years, and so have our connections; when you support HUM, you also support a diverse community of today’s most forward-thinking writers, artists, curators, knowledge workers, and arts appreciators who have had their work written about on HUM or been connected through our network.

Without a platform to document, share, and champion Aotearoa arts abroad, our arts ecology suffers. Contemporary HUM is an essential conduit between the New Zealand and international art worlds – a function that is even more necessary in our increasingly fractured world – and one that increases the global visibility of Aotearoa arts, expands opportunities for arts practitioners and writers, and enriches our cultural discourse.

Let’s keep on championing the work of Aotearoa arts practitioners – whether it’s $5, $500 or $5,000, your support for HUM’s next chapter is essential. Larger contributions and match donations are very welcome; please email us to organise if you are interested!

Your support will see us through this precarious period and enable us to spend valuable time researching, reconnecting, and strategising, so that we can establish a diverse and sustainable organisational model.

And, all donations on Boosted qualify for a 33% tax credit.

What our communities think:

Dane Mitchell, artist, represented NZ in Venice in 2019, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland / Naarm Melbourne:

“HUM has been instrumental in connecting my work into a global network — I've experienced the team's generosity and willingness to make personal introductions to colleagues within their networks, as well as helping source excellent writers in various corners of the world who were able to engage with my shows. Without this vital work, the reach of my own work would indeed be less.”

Dr. Chelsea Nichols, Senior Curator, The Dowse Art Museum, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington:

“In today’s increasingly interconnected and digitally-driven art world, it is becoming more crucial than ever before to raise the international visibility of New Zealand art and its relevance to global art discourse.”

Amit Noy, artist and writer, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington

“I have long followed the trajectory of Contemporary HUM with keen interest and appreciation. As a tauiwi artist and writer from Aotearoa now operating abroad, I feel the urgency of HUM’s kaupapa personally.”

Feedback from our CNZ grant application:

“Given the paucity of platforms for critical arts writing in NZ today Contemporary HUM play a significant role in the art sector. As a New Zealand organisation supporting local artists living and working abroad they occupy a unique and valuable space in New Zealand art history.”

“This is a well-considered space by a bunch of talented people and I hope we can continue to see this grow.”