The troubling backstory and new legal chaos engulfing We Are Indigo

The Spinoff Daily, Monday December 12

Dec 12

Ahiahi mārie, welcome to The Spinoff Daily in partnership with the Brain Drink, Ārepa.

Today on The Spinoff, Stewart Sowman-Lund details how an open letter in The Listener set off a still-boiling international battle over free speech, Morgan Godfery reviews historian Ned Fletcher’s timely book The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi and Holly Thorpe explains what Sport NZ’s new transgender guidelines say, and why they matter.

But first, last week brought a massive new contract and an ominous new legal threat to celebrity-backed agency We Are Indigo. Duncan Greive reports.

“It was a long strange week for We Are Indigo, the agency at the centre of a growing storm within both the innovation and creative sectors. It began with a massive, life-changing win – the announcement that it has been selected by Creative New Zealand (CNZ) to create a huge new $5.3m platform to help digitally transform the arts sector.

But just when We Are Indigo might have been forgiven for thinking it could celebrate, Vic Crone, the ex-chief executive of Callaghan Innovation, the government’s innovation agency, put an explosive post on LinkedIn. ‘Today I speak up,’ she wrote, ‘commencing legal action towards We Are Indigo / We Are Manaaki, and personally against its Directors Andrew Hamilton, Monty Betham and Patrick MacFie.’”

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