RANA’s overall purposes are:

• To operate as a community of practice: enabling peer-to-peer networking and sharing of knowledge.

• Strategic and coordinated advocacy to support investment in the arts, culture and creativity sector across the regions of Aotearoa New Zealand.

• Strategic and coordinated advocacy for the value and ongoing development of the Regional Arts Organisations as key regional-to-national arts infrastructure.

The RAO Network has identified the following shared objectives:

• Cross-pollinate effective practice and models of sector development across regions.

• Facilitate regional-to-national collaboration.

• Broker effective engagement by central government and other stakeholders with regional arts communities.

• Share regional research and intelligence to identify and collate evidence of national sector needs, gaps, aspirations and priorities.

• Support the capacity of regional communities to access COVID-response and other centralised arts sector resourcing.

• Proactively seek opportunities to bring regional voices into decision-making spaces that inform national arts strategy, policy and resourcing.

• Act as a strategic conduit to ensure COVID-response funding is able to reach into communities effectively at a regional level to support recovery.

• Support the development of more responsive national arts strategies and policies, to ensure that centralised arts sector resourcing is fit-for-purpose and aligned to regional needs/priorities.

• Create a more connected platform for arts advocacy and collaborate on efforts to support increased valuing of the arts – particularly in relation to community wellbeing and regional creative economies.