Kiwiana Culture

We all do the same things differently

Adopting Kiwi culture doesn't mean losing your own. Every culture does the same key things differently, and that's exactly what the dreaded "you don't have Kiwi experience" is really about: the cultural differences and clashes that genuinely do exist. Kiwiana fixes that, by teaching the Kiwi way of doing what you already know how to do.

New Zealand attracts brilliant, experienced tech professionals from all over the world, then baffles them with an unwritten rulebook. Kiwiana is AFQY's programme for New Kiwis: everything you need to know about working, networking and belonging here, told straight and with a lot of laughs.

This is experiential, vocational training, not theory. We know the hard part is carrying a lesson from the classroom into real life, so we bring it off the PowerPoint and onto the floor: you do the exercises, practise the conversations and leave able to do the thing, not just describe it.

AFQY founder Ryan Ashton has lived this himself. An award-winning art director, he travelled the world and found he could not get work in his own profession, and ended up pulling beers to get by. He knows exactly how it feels to arrive full of talent and hit a wall that has nothing to do with your ability.

Ryan's belief is simple: we should all get to live our dreams. If you pack up your life and move to another country, understanding its culture is not optional, it is how you get there. A keen learner of languages and cultures himself, conversational in several, he loves helping people adopt and adapt to the Kiwi way without giving up who they are. Culture is something to add, never to replace.

And it runs both ways. New Kiwis bring global-scale experience that New Zealand badly needs, and the moment the barriers come down on both sides, the newcomer and the workplace alike, everyone is happier in their work and their life. That is the whole point of Kiwiana.

This is Fred Dagg, a character created as a commentary on New Zealand culture, embodying the hardcase, yarn-telling Kiwi. Admittedly from the 1970s and 80s, he was part of our pop culture along with Billy T James, rugby and all the other elements that shaped Kiwi identity.

And this is Billy T James, one of the country's best-loved entertainers. His comedy was gentle satire: sketches like these poked fun at the stereotypes and colonial history sitting under the Māori and Pākehā relationship, disarming them by getting everyone to laugh together. A fixture of 1980s pop culture, his trademark giggle is still echoed and imitated across New Zealand today, and his name lives on in the Billy T Award for up-and-coming comedians.

Homework, Kiwiana style: we get you watching Shortland Street. Our long-running soap is a fast track to real Kiwi life, the accents, the slang the way it is actually spoken, and storylines that stay on point with the news of the day. It replicates everyday New Zealand, which makes it one of the most enjoyable ways to learn how we tick. Read more on BusinessDesk.