NEWSROOM

Unleash your stories: Zak Devey

Zak Devey has had an amazing journey from a scholarship psychology and sociology student to co-founder of Youth Arts New Zealand, and is now making his mark at a national level. 

Zak’s story

As creative individuals, Zak and his fellow team members experienced immense difficulty finding opportunities to display their creative pursuits. Fuelled by this experience, Zak was inspired to start an organisation that made opportunities more accessible to youth, so that they would not have to face the same challenges that he once did. Additionally, Zak’s vision was to celebrate the unheralded creativity in minorities and underprivileged communities. And so Youth Arts New Zealand was born.

The core team consists of CEO and Founder Matthew Goldsworthy, co-founder and Creative Director Harrison Sugrue, and Zak himself, co-founder and Director of Communications. Since January 2019, they have added four new team members across New Zealand and have secured funding to take their events nationwide by the end of the year.       

Youth Arts New Zealand has already set multiple programmes in motion with the intent of empowering creative youth. The YANZ team has facilitated eight Creative Open Mic Nights at MoveSpace in Dominion Road, a young artists series called Paint this Piano, a youth-centred and led concert experience called The Thing About Music, and Strange Summer Streets – a month-long youth musician series in the heart of Britomart. The team has current plans to expand and improve infrastructure going forward.

“As an alumnus of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, I have to offer thanks to the space for showing me the part my hands play in molding the status quo – and what those hands can do to facilitate opportunities for others.” – Zak Devey.