Arts don’t just decorate knowledge, they deepen it

Last month, I stood before Aotearoa’s top researchers at the Royal Society Te Apārangi Research Honours Awards in three cities – Dunedin, Auckland, Wellington. As their poet and host, I did something different: I wove their scientific achievements into verse. For each brilliant mind in that room, I crafted a poem that captured their work, their passion, their impact.

The response was humbling. Professors Richard Bedford, Geoff Chase, and the Royal Society’s Chief Executive Paul Atkins – leaders who’ve weathered countless ceremonies – said they’d never experienced anything like it. Researchers and their families were moved to tears, seeing their life’s work reflected back through poetry. Complex science became accessible, human, real.

That’s why the Government’s announcement to remove funding for the humanities and social sciences from the Marsden Fund hits particularly hard. Let’s be clear about what this means: they’re cutting funding to the very disciplines where Māori and Pasifika researchers are most strongly represented. This isn’t just about disciplines – it’s about who gets to research, whose knowledge counts, whose stories matter. As a Pasifika woman scholar, I see this decision for what it is: another systemic barrier for women, Māori, and Pasifika researchers in academia.

As Co-Director of the University of Auckland’s Centre for Arts and Social Transformation (CAST) with Professor Peter O’Connor, I’m steeped in evidence of how arts create more equitable societies. Since our establishment through the Chartwell Trust’s gift in 2019, we’ve been proving it. Our Creative Schools Index transforms learning environments. Our research guides schools in 140 countries in using arts-based approaches to bring children back to learning . Through Arts Beyond Borders, we watch students become engaged citizens through artistic expression. Just last week we launched groundbreaking research on the barriers Asian survivors of sexual violence face in accessing services. Our partners, Asian Family Services, see enormous value in research that challenges and moves thinking on deep rooted societal issues.

When I crafted those poems for each awardee, I wasn’t just making art – I was demonstrating what CAST’s research proves: arts don’t just decorate knowledge, they deepen it. They don’t just entertain, they explain. They don’t just complement science, they complete it.

As New Zealand’s Hub for the International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC), we see this truth echoed globally. From creating mental health education programmes in over 200 schools with the Sir John Kirwan Foundation, to UNESCO partnerships, we’re showing how arts-based approaches tackle society’s toughest challenges.

Here’s what’s at stake: when we cut arts funding, we don’t just lose poems and paintings. We lose ways of knowing, understanding, communicating. We lose tools for building empathy, fostering innovation, creating change. Those researchers at the awards functions? They didn’t just get poems – they got their work translated into language that makes hearts listen while minds learn.

My evidence-based plea is simple: before we decide arts and humanities aren’t “real” enough for Marsden funding, come see what we do at CAST, in the Faculty of Arts and Education, in the rest of the world. Watch our research in action. See how arts transform classrooms, communities, conversations. Listen to the scientists who felt their work truly understood – maybe for the first time – when captured in verse.

Because when poetry shows up, science shines brighter. When arts and humanities work alongside STEM, knowledge grows deeper. And when we fund both, New Zealand’s research community doesn’t just survive – it soars.

The proof is in the poetry. Just ask the scientists who heard theirs.

The Long Light

In quiet labs when others sleep
Through data streams that run deep
One question leads to thousands more
Each answer opening another door

Dawn breaks through library windows tall
Where systematic reviews stand wall to wall
Your eyes are tired, but your mind still burns
With every page your research turns

Some days you walk this path alone
Through failed experiments you’ve grown
Other days your team surrounds
Their insights echo, break new grounds

Grant applications, peer reviews
Rejection letters, paying dues
Yet still you rise each day to face
The questions that give your heart chase

In communities where research lives
In every insight that it gives
From code of ethics held up high
To evidence that guides our why

Through expert panels’ careful thought
To public knowledge dearly bought
Excellence isn’t born in bursts of light
But built in fragments, day and night

In conversations over coffee cups
In breakthrough moments – just look up
In stats analysis and standards clear
In making complex issues near

Some discoveries shake the earth
While others whisper of their worth
Both matter in our nation’s sight
As Te Apārangi holds the light

For those who dare to seek and find
New paths to ease our human kind
For knowledge isn’t lonely long
When shared it turns into a song

That echoes through our islands’ days
Informing all our future ways
Through science, technology’s gleam
Through humanities’ deepest dream

So here’s to those who dare to seek
Who climb each intellectual peak
Whose work makes tomorrow clearer
Whose findings bring the distant nearer

Whose dedication lights the way
For Aotearoa’s brighter day
Through international acclaim
Through local impact all the same

This is how we grow and learn
This is how new pages turn
In service of our nation’s good
In truth and wisdom understood

For research excellence demands it all—
The stamina to catch each fall
The grace to share success with teams
The strength to chase impossible dreams

The wisdom to guide our sight
We keep tending our heart’s long light.