Ka kite Katya and Kite Day 📖🪁

The last few months have been filled with Open Mics, Youth Week celebrations, new team arrangements (Chloe and Harrison in the same country!), NZ Music Month shoutouts, high school community outreach, saying hi and goodbye to an amazing intern, and lots of creative coworking.

It’s safe to say YANZ is in an exciting place of growth, both for our internal organisation and our creative community. 

I have personally been the most excited by the new folks who have been getting involved with our kaupapa - whether it’s through performing at our Rangtahi Open Mic, or joining a Freelancer Friday coworking session - the amount of fierce creatives I have met recently is reminding me about why we do what we do.

Noho ora mai, take care,
Chloe x

A couple of months ago YANZ drove out to the airport to pick up Ekaterina Keyzerova, who'd flown all the way across the world to join the passionate little team at Youth Arts New Zealand (YANZ) as our Community Engagement & Media Intern.

From day one Katya felt a part of the whānau, like she'd been with us for years. During her 6 week stint she adopted a new team culture, ran a Youth Week mural experiment, represented Youth Arts NZ at a community careers day, learnt what "whakawhanaungatanga" meant, was a regular at our Freelancer Friday coworking event (as well as planned and ran one herself), designed our new business cards, grew our community, brought a new and engaged perspective to the team, and so much more.

Chloe and I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Katya for a zine she put together across the internship spotlighting some of YANZ's alumni. During our chat it became apparent pretty quickly just how intimately she understood our kaupapa, in the thoughtful questions she asked and the way she interrogated the work.

At YANZ we often joke about whether something is "YANZ'y". I think it's truly rare to find someone as YANZ'y as Katya. Working with her shaped what working here will look like far into the future. She asked incredible questions, took initiative, and got so so much stuff done.

Mā te wā, Katya! You will be missed!
Harrison

Katya interviewed four YANZ creatives as part of her zine project titled Youth Arts New Zealand: Rangatahi Voices - Jimmy Earle, Danielle Hao-Aickin, Abbey Barlow, and Tristin Katoa.

Below is an excerpt. Keep an eye out for the rest of the publication, available limited in print versions and digital versions.

We have a number of Rangatahi On Stage gigs lined up for July.

What is Rangatahi On Stage?

We are in the process of rebranding our artist booking system to be titled Rangatahi On Stage - or ROS, for short.
It’s the same approachable, bridgeway career kaupapa, just with a new title. And a new website! Ngā mihi to Harrison for all his mahi setting this up for us.

If you are a designer / artist / cool creative person who might be keen to help us flesh out the ROS brand - get in touch!

Or, if you’re an artist who wants to be part of the ROS community - sign up here!