The politicians have gone but debt remains for Polyfest

In spite of the rain this year's Polyfest hit record numbers, but organisers are back to looking for coins down the back of the couch to get it running next year

The cameras have gone, the performers are back at school and the politicians have packed up their floral shirts for another year.

There was plenty of publicity for ASB Polyfest's 50th anniversary festival a month ago, but behind the scenes of the cultural extravaganza, organisers are nervously tallying up the cost.

"It was a record breaking year for us with 77 schools, 291 groups and over 11,000 students involved - and this included visiting schools from Australia and also several schools from outside of Auckland taking part in the non-competitive group performances that run during our breaks," Polyfest event director, Seuili Terri Leo-Ma'uu says.

"It was a massive year. We've gone back to, and exceeded the numbers that we had pre-Covid, so it really shows the impact and the growth of this year's festival."

Seiuli Terri Leo-Ma'uu has been the event director of ASB Polyfest for nine years and every year the cost to run the festival increases. Hers is the only full-time paid position at the cultural extravaganza.

Running it is not cheap, especially as increasingly, summer weather can not be relied upon.

"2025 came close to (costing) $1.7 million and that's half of what we need to comfortably run this festival and have a back-up plan for instance, unprecedented events like what happened with the rain on that Friday. So we could comfortably run it on $3m - that would be helpful to be able to have everything that we need to make sure that the kids and our community get what they need safe-wise as well for this festival," she tells The Detail.

Festival attendance is still being finalised too, and an estimated 80 -100,000 people passed through this year's Polyfest gates for the four-day event.

"We actually had quite a lot of people watching us online as well... because for the first time we introduced paid livestream this year because we needed to with the funding challenges... early figures were showing we had 36,000 inquiries alone during the festival week on our livestream, so it shows that there is an interest from people wanting to access the festival in the comfort of their own homes or they're watching us from overseas," she says.

ASB Polyfest boasts of being the largest of its kind in the world, but organisers don't yet know if they've managed to break even.

Polyfest Trust chair Steven Hargreaves says that information is probably still a month away.

"We do have an insurance claim in because of the extra costs we incurred just dealing with the weather - you know we've got a bit of remediation around the site to do and a few extra bits of equipment we needed to keep the site safe on the Friday and the Saturday because of the weather ... but early indications are that we should break even and fingers crossed we do," he says.

"It's quite stressful actually. It is a concern the fact that we don't actually have all the money in the bank at the time we press go and commit to the next year's festival. And that is not a sustainable way to run an enterprise. You know we are still rounding up money as the event takes place."

Hargreaves explains ASB Polyfest is heavily reliant on gate sales and when bad weather closed one of the event's five stages on Friday 4 April, there were real fears for the impact on the gate takings.

"And you know if we have say 10,000 fewer people through the gate then that's $75,000 that we don't receive and then the event won't break even, so you know they're fine margins that we're talking about for the financial sustainability of the event," he says.

He is also the principal of Macleans College at Auckland's Bucklands Beach, and says some hard decisions have to be made.

"We've almost outgrown the facilities at the velodrome. We're getting very difficult to manage traffic-wise and with participation numbers and how many stages we can fit in on the site there. So yeah we've got some hard conversations I think just about you know, how many days we run for and how we accommodate everybody on site," he says.

"Can we go to an extra day? And I know that that puts pressure on schools. Attendance is a very big thing. We don't want to be pulling kids out of school for any more time than necessary. I think those are hard conversations because it's going to either disappoint some people or mean that people will need to make compromises.

"It would be lovely just to be able to build more stages but there's the cost element and the capacity aspect as well on the site ... the accounts are still being tallied up for this year's festival. We're hopeful we'll break even, we should be around that point which is pleasing. We're a non-profit obviously. It's not about making money but we do need to break even and the last couple of years we have not done that. And we did have some tiny reserves. They are now burned so we do need to break even you know to keep the festival financially viable," Hargreaves says.

Every year organisers say they must go back to the drawing board to find funding for the next year's Polyfest.

Leo-Ma'uu says no government department has given more than $100,000 in a year to help out.

"I don't understand why we have to constantly fight for funding when we've been the longest serving polyfest in this country and the biggest of its kind in the world," she says.

"So we battle for funding because I know we're not the only festival that's going for this kind of funding," she says.

"We try to, you know, push the fact that there's no other festival that is the scope or size as our festival or has the longevity and legacy like Polyfest but we continue fighting that."

In her time as Polyfest director, Leo-Ma'uu has hosted four prime ministers - Sir Bill English, Dame Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins and this year Christopher Luxon; plus two governors-general - Dame Cindy Kiro and Dame Patsy Reddy.

"I mean we did a roll call on Friday of who was there like all these dignitaries, ministers and everything - even had Japanese Consulates there and our Cook Island consulate, and I was just thinking what other festival, secondary school festival has these kinds of people rock up every year?

"This is my ninth season, so every year when I'm speaking to them I feel like I'm a broken record when I'm trying to explain to them again I've struggled to apply for funding, or the funding that I have gained I've worked really hard to get it for this festival and having to justify why we need it," she says.

One bright spot is that the ASB has signed a three-year agreement as naming rights sponsor, and that has at least given certainty on paying the bills through the off-season.

Hargreaves says Polyfest is "very grateful" for funding from Auckland Council and Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board. Creative New Zealand, ACC, MBIE and the Ministry of Pacific Peoples also provided money this year.

"And I guess we have to present a value proposition to them to make it worth their while and I think we have made that value proposition. I'm just not sure the money has matched that.

"I mean I think Polyfest provides community engagement, school engagement. There's all of those positive pro-social benefits of having children and young people involved in connecting with their heritage. They can get NCEA credits. It's a very strong motivator for getting to school, you know, attendance is an issue. It builds student leadership, it grows good young people and it tells this intergenerational story of all of these positive things that have happened over 50 years of Polyfest," Hargreaves says.

"An interesting thing is we always have a huge number of local councillors, politicians and central government politicians of every party attend in numbers every year. This year we had the prime minister, the deputy prime minister. we had the leader of the opposition. You know we had MPs in large numbers and I can only assume that that means they see value in this event and they want to be seen supporting this event and they do with their presence but it would be nice to see that matched in financial terms."

The Ministry for Pacific Peoples has provided $500,000 in total to Polyfest over the past 10 years. Secretary for Pacific Peoples Gerardine Clifford-Lidstone acknowledges that Polyfest is more than an event.

"It's a space where our young Pacific people and their families can uplift their community, can express their identity with pride and build their confidence in leadership and this is all done in performance so it's fantastic."

She says the ministry will be working with organisers over the next year to get clarity on where the gaps are and how they can be addressed.

ASB Polyfest has committed to delivering the festival next year, even with the uncertainty around finances.

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