Ignite our Site!

Contemporary HUM is the first - and only - centralised platform dedicated to documenting and discussing visual arts projects from Aotearoa New Zealand abroad, and since launching in December 2016, we’ve expanded in every direction. 

We’ve increased our coverage to now include art projects in Asia and the Americas, as well as all across Europe; we’ve added four board members and three associate editors to our core team; and have diversified our publishing activity. We’ve also become a registered charitable trust, meaning all donations we receive from supporters in Aotearoa are tax-deductible. 

As an online publication, our website is the core of what we do and now, after four years, 77 texts commissioned, and over 360 calendar listings, our current platform (which was built with modest means) has reached the outer limits of its capacity. 

For us to keep providing you the best possible coverage of Aotearoa art abroad, we need to make the switch to a new, dynamic and forward-thinking website.

We’ve already secured funding from Creative New Zealand, but we need your support to fill up the rest of our tank and get us over the finish line.

What’s our destination?

$10,000 before December 1st, that will go directly towards the cost of our new user-orientated website - HUM’s new home for New Zealand arts abroad.

Our collaborators

We’ve partnered up with Lyttelton-based Sons & Co; one of the best web designers in Aotearoa, and the team behind the sites of The Dowse, CoCA in Christchurch, Enjoy Gallery, Athfield Architects, Silo Theatre & many more, so we know our new site will be a firecracker. 

Our mission

HUM’s new platform will be designed with you (our readers and supporters) in mind, allowing you to access and navigate our publications easier and quicker. We’re adding brand new functionalities so you will be able to search our content by artist, subject, or country; we’re completely overhauling our calendar, making it straightforward to find upcoming international exhibitions or events; and improving how artists and galleries submit their own events to our Calendar.

We invite you on board!

If you’re a fan of artists and creative practitioners from Aotearoa, if you’ve read one of our publications, or browsed our calendar (and want to see more), we invite you to ‘Ignite our Site’ and donate to our Boosted campaign.

And as a small thank you from us, when you donate over $50, you'll start receiving our special HUMcards - a regular mailout produced in collaboration with different New Zealand artists offering exclusive insights into an international project of theirs. (Past HUMcard artists include Maddie Leach, Dane Mitchell, Talia Smith, Mata Aho Collective, Judy Millar, Simon Denny & many more.)

We know COVID-19 has affected the livelihoods of many people this year, so if you are unable to contribute financially at the moment, we’d still appreciate your support. Sharing our Boosted campaign on your own forums (social media or forwarding our newsletters to a few contacts) will help us make a bit more noise and get us to our goal.

If we exceed our target?

We will dedicate any additional funds to planning our yearly publishing schedule, developing future panel discussions, and making sure our contributing writers, editors, artists and all our invaluable collaborators keep receiving a fair fee for the work they do - because when you support HUM, you directly support the global network of New Zealand creative practitioners.

We look forward to welcoming you on this journey with us, as HUM blasts off into a new era of online art publishing!

Illustrations by Wellington-based artist and designer Amy van Luijk