The death of an artistic powerhouse should remind us of the force of NZ creativity and why it still matters

While colourfully dressed festival folk and family talked, danced and drank cider in the orchard, Van Zon (1952 - 2026) lay in state in her and partner Gregg Fletcher’s home, resplendent in orange. Some say orange is the colour of energy, joy and sunshine - of creativity - and it had long been Carla’s trademark. Like a festival, the whole event was being carried out by a devoted crew to Carla’s instructions.

Van Zon had passed away at home two days earlier, aged 74. Alongside the devoted Gregg were her two sisters and whanau. She was a beloved aunty, and also “Aunty Carla” to many across the arts. Carla worked for more than 20 years with the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts (as it was called when it began in 1986). She was executive director from 1996 to 2000, and artistic director from 2002 to 2006. Then, after working for Creative New Zealand – taking New Zealand back to the Venice Biennale after a break in 2009 – artistic director of Auckland Arts Festival, 2013 to 2017.

A creative powerhouse, I’ve never known a producer of such energy, passion, and to-the-point honesty. It was all about love. A love of our arts, and of people. Carla was the great networker. Dedicated to uplifting our indigenous voice and securing the biggest, most acclaimed out-of-the-box international arts projects – from Canadian Robert Le Page theatre epics to British installation artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey making an alley-width cut through the old Circa Theatre building in Wellington and sowing the walls with grass.

She was an international jet-setting whirlwind, proud of travelling fast and light. And she brought corporate funders, international producers and the public along with her; the belief was infectious.

In the early 1990s I was a young Auckland arts critic and 95bFM broadcaster. My enthusiasm for the international festival programme saw me sleep on floors in Wellington every two years (Auckland Festival wasn’t to revive until 2003). I was witness to Carla’s remarkable late-night energy. She welcomed bolshy critics as a vital part of the arts ecology – at least to your face. So much so, that by 1999 I’d made my one career-cross to the comms world: media for the enormous New Zealand Festival 2000.

Keeping up with Carla was exhilarating and exhausting. That year it wasn’t just the famed wooden Spiegeltent brought back from Europe but – for the first time in its 50-year history – the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Carla and deputy director Alex Reedijk turned up at Edinburgh Castle and got the deal over the line by promising to build a life-size replica castle. Which they did. For me it led to all-night stints in Wellington contacting UK press for an Edinburgh Castle press conference. And they pulled it off – 80,000 tickets sold in just two-and-a-half hours when they went on sale.

Van Zon’s belief in commissioning major New Zealand work was unusual then, and now. But her background suggests the origins of such belief. Growing up in West Auckland, Carla’s mother, Boukje Van Zon, was a pioneer in contemporary dance, running a school for 40 years. Carla became a dancer, and never lost the verve, stamina and grace that profession demands. In what she has described as a life-changing experience, in the 1980s as a fledgling arts administrator, she toured marae nationally with pioneer Māori contemporary dance company Te Kanikani o te Rangatahi (later named Taiao Dance Theatre).

Carla’s commitment to Māori work was unusual enough in the early ’90s to earn her the nickname around the festival office “Kia ora Carla”. She went on to commission countless works for the festival, including Hone Kouka’s play Waiora Te Ūkaipō – The Homeland, Witi Ihimaera’s Woman Far Walking and Vela Manusaute and Anapela Polata’ivao’s The Factory. Many of the works have gone on to long lives here and overseas, and Waiora had a 30th anniversary revival this year at Auckland and Wellington festivals. Typically, the commissioned works were ambitious but she brought her teams and the public with her. Van Zon’s first Auckland Art Festival in 2013 (with another close festival partner, chief executive David Inns) saw the previous festival’s box office doubled.

The community at the Ōtaki orchard reminded me how the arts festival world can feel like one big family. But it was a family hurting in other ways as well. Two weeks earlier, newspaper The Post revealed Wellington mayor Andrew Little and councillor Nicola Young’s concerns about the 2026 Aotearoa New Zealand Festival. It was smaller and lacked, they said, the big events that create a buzz and draw visitors. The overall feeling, Young remarked, was that the festival had “lost its way”.

Carla Van Zon would have been hurting too. She was a friend and mentor to current artistic directors Tama Waipara and Dolina Wehipeihana, who had worked with her at Auckland Festival and have done much impressive work. While there were acclaimed new works at the festival, certainly noticeable were the number of returning artists and revived works rather than new commissions or larger international pieces. Absent was the ambitious reach of free public programming that saw Lemi Ponifasio, Laurie Anderson and Bret McKenzie as artist curators in 2020, or a fleet of waka hourua arrive in Wellington Harbour in 2018.

Yet the festival landscape has changed dramatically since the ’90s. Our national film festival has also struggled to adjust. There is such a spread of events year-round. Our attention gets divided, our dreams minimised. Corporate funding has deserted the arts. Globalisation itself does not deliver to us innovation and quality, we need festivals to go out globally and network hard to get it.

Carla Van Zon’s passing reminds us that it is our infectious, energetic creative agency out in the world as New Zealanders that often excites us. A “zizz” as Len Lye put it. Reinvention is something we are known for, and right now something our festivals need to bravely consider. I suggest wearing orange to remember it.