As well, Nick Dixon wants to help develop a festival in Dunedin that would rival New Plymouth’s Womad, attracting visitors from around New Zealand and overseas.
Just over a month into his role, the Dunedin City Council Ara Toi group manager says Dunedin is already "full of people who are doing cultural and artistic activity out of passion".
His role, he says, is to help them connect and interact.
Mr Dixon (56) was born in Christchurch, but left with his parents as a baby in the early 1960s for the United Kingdom.
He grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, and went to university at the London School of Economics, then underwent curatorial training at the Bristol Museum.
"Three weeks into the job as a trainee I did the records search into the British end of a request for repatriation of Maori tattooed skulls.
"As a Kiwi, that was my first connection with the country."
He had spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working "in the museums profession" in institutions ranging from the Manchester Jewish Museum to the Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester, where he was industry curator during the 1990s.
Coincidentally, Otago Museum director Ian Griffin later directed the latter.
"We’ve been following another around a bit."
Later he worked in the Middle East at institutions including the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture in Saudi Arabia, and more recently in Asia as the executive director of the Art Science Museum in Singapore.
He says his decision to return home to a country he has visited throughout his life is partly because family are here, and also because he is interested in his "roots".
"My decision to return to New Zealand was basically I wanted to make a go of it in my home country.
"I wanted to return to my home country, and I thought I might have a contribution to make to the cultural sector given my international experience."
As well, "New Zealand is a great place to be right now".
His first job here was "a crash course in the unique bicultural nature of New Zealand", as director of a programme at the National Library of New Zealand focusing on the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi and the Women’s Suffrage Petition.
"That really put fire in my belly.
"I first of all learned a lot about this country, but also really want to be part of that process."
Mr Dixon said the council could not make culture happen, but it could empower what existed.
"I’ve been completely energised by the range and variety of stuff here.
"What’s really exciting about this city is that the place is just full of people who are doing cultural and artistic activity out of passion, because they just have to," he said.
"When you’ve got a population like that, and an environment like that, then a council can do some great stuff."
His role in Singapore had been looking at the creative processes behind the arts and sciences.
"It was making the case the creativity behind the arts and the sciences is the same stuff; it’s us as creative people."
Mr Dixon said there were moments in time and space where the level of human creativity was "spectacularly above the norm".
Examples were Tudor London with Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Renaissance Florence and Silicon Valley.
People had studied those eras, and discovered they were times and places where there were creative people in a relatively small space, who "bounce off each other, steal ideas and duel over lovers".
"It’s this interaction — everybody being part of this community, everyone feeds off each other," he said.
Tech companies had office layouts that forced employees to "bump into each other".
"My point is connectivity is important, and really that’s what I see my role as."
He also hoped to do more in the events and festivals area, perhaps coming up with something of "national significance", the equivalent of Womad in New Plymouth.
"I’m definitely thinking of that level of ambition.
"I’m not ready to tell you what my very early-stage thinking is on that."
However, it had to be based on finding a distinctive part of Dunedin’s personality that would attract people from around the country and overseas.
"I guess going through those explorations and coming up with answers to those questions is what my job is."
He was also keen to bring, for example, science into art and vice versa.
"Let’s get talking and see what we can do."
