I came on board as the Creative Director of Auckland Pride in 2022. The mission was to support the organisation in the delivery of the festival and to develop its identity as a platform where arts and culture might thrive. In my time, I launched the
       
     
Pride Elevates 2023 (Pilot) For 2023, Auckland Pride wanted to deepen our relationships and partnerships in Tāmaki Makaurau's arts sector - empowering a more authentic and abundant queer arts ecosystems that nurtures emerging talent and elevates e
       
     
Pride Elevates 2024 In the second year of Pride Elevates, we envisioned how the programme might sit in conversation with the festival’s theme: Ki Tua | Beyond Paradise. We chose artists for Pride Elevates that toyed with notions of world-building
       
     
I came on board as the Creative Director of Auckland Pride in 2022. The mission was to support the organisation in the delivery of the festival and to develop its identity as a platform where arts and culture might thrive. In my time, I launched the
       
     
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I came on board as the Creative Director of Auckland Pride in 2022. The mission was to support the organisation in the delivery of the festival and to develop its identity as a platform where arts and culture might thrive. In my time, I launched the Pride Elevates programme, which included fundraising for it, as well as curating artists for it. I successfully saw through two iterations of Pride Elevates (2023 & 2024) , as well as a collaboratively developing the framework for the third iteration (2025), before I left the organisation to pursue my MFA in Playwriting.

Alongside, Max Tweedie (Executive Director of my first year), Julia Croft and Hāmiora Bailey (co-directors for my second year), we re-imagined the possibilities of Auckland Pride as a platform and leader in uplifting our independent queer artists.

Pride Elevates 2023 (Pilot) For 2023, Auckland Pride wanted to deepen our relationships and partnerships in Tāmaki Makaurau's arts sector - empowering a more authentic and abundant queer arts ecosystems that nurtures emerging talent and elevates e
       
     
+

Pride Elevates 2023 (Pilot)
For 2023, Auckland Pride wanted to deepen our relationships and partnerships in Tāmaki Makaurau's arts sector - empowering a more authentic and abundant queer arts ecosystems that nurtures emerging talent and elevates excellence. 

We did this through Pride Elevates, a curated programme of ten elevated works that supported over thirty artists in the 2023 Auckland Pride Festival.

From voguing and poetry to improv comedy and clay fisting, the range of disciplines represented was vast. Not to mention artists we managed to bring into the city from Wellington, Christchurch, and even Brussels. 

See the archive here.

Pride Elevates 2024 In the second year of Pride Elevates, we envisioned how the programme might sit in conversation with the festival’s theme: Ki Tua | Beyond Paradise. We chose artists for Pride Elevates that toyed with notions of world-building
       
     
+

Pride Elevates 2024
In the second year of Pride Elevates, we envisioned how the programme might sit in conversation with the festival’s theme: Ki Tua | Beyond Paradise.

We chose artists for Pride Elevates that toyed with notions of world-building or false utopias. We had afrofuturist narratives, we had the colonial image of the Wild West, we had futures not yet in existence, as well as past periods thrust into the present, projects that built images towards Paradise lost or found. We had works and projects that contain an attempt to move towards Paradise in their processes. 

As well as curating artists around the theme, we had further developed Pride Elevates by recognising artists as those who have established practices that have shaped our community (Established) and those who we see as the future of tomorrow (Emerging).

See the archive here.