Bill Sheat

Bill Sheat applied his legal and organisational skills across the arts in Aotearoa, to influential effect. He was pivotal in establishing the NZ Film Commission, and was its first chair from 1978 to 1985. Sheat also spent time as chair of the Queen Elizabeth ll Arts Council, helped fund John O’Shea's 1960s musical Don't Let it Get You, and played a role in ushering Geoff Murphy’s Goodbye Pork Pie to the screen.

There can be few branches of the arts that have not benefited from Bill's energy, experience and knowledge over the past 60 or more years. Chris Ryan on Bill Sheat, in an NZ Law Society profile, February 2015