Flint & Steel Volume 06 | Magazine Launch | WLG

Join us after work at 6pm for drinks and canapés. At 6:45pm you'll have the chance to hear a bit more about the heart behind the magazine, followed by a conversation and Q+A with one of the contributors to this year's magazine, Leilani Tamu. She'll be discussing vocation and the differences in cultural attitudes towards the balance of work and life in communities across in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Flint & Steel | volume 06 - on vocation, working, and living

"So what do you do?"

These five words are the most predictable starting point of getting-to-know-you small talk in New Zealand. It's a safe, not too intrusive question, but it still aims at a modern understanding of identity—assuming that how someone chooses to earn a living should tell us something about who they are.

This year's volume of Flint & Steel magazine considers the place of paid work in our lives, and where else we look to draw meaning and purpose. While the word vocation tends to conjure up certain jobs or careers with a strong sense of identity—like doctors, teachers, or lawyers—the concept reaches far beyond employment, into family, rest, creativity, and community.

Among the eight new articles, our contributors explore the clash of cultural expectations in New Zealand's workplaces, the way our education system communicates the purpose of learning to generations of future workers, and the differing narratives of family and work for men and women in our society.

Leilani Tamu – is a former NZ diplomat, published poet, Fulbright alumna and the current Manager of Pacific Policy at MBIE. She has a first class Masters in Pacific History from the University of Auckland and was recently nominated as one of their Top 40 under 40 alumna. She is also the director of a small community social enterprise The Food Waste Fairy Ltd and the proud mother of Kahlei (9) and Luka (5). Leilani has ancestral and marital connections to Samoa, Tonga and Niue.