The Latest from YANZ 🗞️👋🏽

Hope all of your summers have been full of whatever type of cup-filling activities you needed. I (Chloe) spent a lot of time reading and pulling up weeds in my vege garden, so if anyone wants to talk about the Empyrean series or has any tips for taking care of an apple tree, let me know.

At YANZ, January has been filled with a lot of dreaming and scheming about what we want this year to look like. We’re still running a lean, 2-person operation, but finding pockets of ways we can use our resources to their full potential. For example, we started running “Freelancer Fridays” out of the Movespace event space just downstairs from our office.

We have also been hosting our first online internship with Noah, a Business Major at Massey University. It’s been a really productive past few months working together, and we’re excited to show you what we’ve been working on with him very soon.

In this newsletter we have a donation update from the PVH Christmas Campaign, news from Te Kāhui, and a list of our upcoming events.

After 7 years, with a bittersweet heart, we are announcing the indefinite hiatus of Te Kāhui Creative Writing from the 5th of February 2026.

Te Kāhui will enter a period of much-needed strategy, rest, and reflection to consider how we can continue to best serve rangatahi in community and correctional settings, while ensuring equitable access to creative expression. 

It’s been a challenging few years for our small rōpū. A combination of factors, including a constrained funding ecosystem exacerbated by significant changes in public funding to arts and culture budgets, has made sustainability a challenge. After implementing various strategies to maintain our high-quality programming, including voluntary hours reductions across an already lean team and community fundraising, Te Kāhui Creative Writing has made the difficult decision to enter a strategic period of indefinite hiatus. 

We do not make this decision lightly. We recognise the duties and privileges that come with facilitating creative spaces for our underserved communities. That has always been our focus. We are grateful to all the rangatahi and whānau who have shared their creative selves with us, and thank all of our mentors for their steadfast belief in this kaupapa. To every single one of our community supporters and funders: thank you for your ongoing trust, guidance, and generous support. 

We are proud of the work our team have done. We step away with our hearts filled with treasured memories, having shared space with some of the most talented, honest, and real storytellers. We’re ending strong, having worked with over 1000 rangatahi and tangata whaiora. We have published two poetry and prose anthologies, collaborated with 14 of 18 correctional facilities, and held workshops with a collection of community organisations across the motu. 

Te Kāhui Creative Writing enters our hiatus knowing that creatives and organisations will continue to advocate for impact in arts accessibility, youth and community, abolitionism, restorative justice, and decolonial spaces. Many hands keep the fire burning. Our liberation is interconnected. As artists, you’ll still see us in the space, just serving in different ways and forms over this quieter period for Te Kāhui Creative Writing. 

We have one final project to celebrate with you over the next few months, with a Tāmaki Launch event in the works. As previously mentioned, Wāhine Inside, our second publication, is an anthology of prose and poetry featuring storytellers from Christchurch Women’s Prison. We are planning a launch for this pukapuka in Tamaki Makaurau in the next few months. Find out more, and order a copy (digital and physical) on our website. As a not-for-profit kaupapa, donations and funds from this project will continue to go towards initiatives that support incarcerated wāhine and their whānau. 

Our inbox: [email protected], will remain open and checked periodically throughout this hiatus period as we strategise our re-emergence. Please reach out to us with any thoughts or questions; we’d love to hear from you. 

Till then, 

Te Kāhui Creative Writing

Ngā mihi for reading and for being a supporter of YANZ.