Saturday is the final day of the Wellington Pride Festival. Photo / Supplied
Saturday is the final day of the Wellington Pride Festival. Photo / Supplied
Two flagship events will draw the Wellington Pride Festival to a close this weekend, but organisers hope it's started a conversation around diversity in the queer community.
On Saturday the annual youth-led Pride Hīkoi will march from Frank Kitts Park to the Michael Fowler Centre, with the help of Māori wardens and glamaphones.
From there Out in the City, formerly Out in the Park, will kick off an extravaganza of music, dance, drag and performance.
Wellington Pride Festival chair Vivian Lyngdoh said Out in the City was collaborating with Cuba Dupa on the weekend.
"With Cuba Dupa as one of the main festivals, Out in the City [will be] at the bottom of Cuba Street being the rainbow excellence space."
"Out in the City, the concept of it with the stalls still stays the same – we have community stalls, community organisations, having stalls there to either sell or talk about their organisations.
"We're going to have entertainment at Out in the City, and we have tried our best to make sure there's quite a range of diversity of people in the entertainment section."
The Pride Hīkoi would be led by queer rangatahi, and Lyngdoh said the festival itself would continue for another week for rainbow youth.
"Next week itself is a youth-dedicated rainbow pride that we've implemented this year," they said.
"Just because the youth feel quite pressured on time, so we decided to extend Pride another week for our youth in Wellington."
The Pride Hīkoi will take place on Saturday morning. Photo / Supplied
The focus of this year's Pride had been to centre people of colour, and Lyngdoh hoped this conversation would continue.
"To see it all come to life and build on the legacy of past chairs of committees, and broaden the horizon of what we want to see in the Pride Festival has been amazing to witness … engaging in conversation that might not have been there in the past.
"Hopefully in future years, it just gets bigger and bigger with more representation and more different perspectives from other parts of society within the queer community."
Lyngdoh said the feedback they had received from young queer people of colour had encouraged them to continue pushing for minority representation.
Wellington Pride Festival chair Vivian Lyngdoh, pictured at the Festival's opening gala. Photo / Supplied
In particular they had been approached by a young person following an event called Let Them Speak, a panel discussion from refugee, asylum and new ethnic migrant backgrounds.
"For them being a refugee and being queer was difficult and seeing us as leaders in the community sharing our stories was quite heartwarming for them," they said.
"And that just shows we need more events that are catered to every intersectionality.
"It's difficult, it's very difficult to cater to everything, but if you can try your best to do your best to ensure that everyone is heard, that someone can get inspired by your stories is important."
