Three-quarters of the Pride Wairau organising committee: (from left) Amber Nye-Hingston, Jesse North and Gabe Bertogg. Not pictured is the fourth committee member, Briar Bradfield-Watson. Photo: RNZ / Anna Chin
The organisers of Pride Wairau, Marlborough's inaugural rainbow festival, have been celebrating the unexpectedly large turnouts at its opening weekend.
Hundreds of people attended a dawn ceremony on Friday and Pride Wairau community day on Sunday - and the 250 tickets to the closing party next weekend have already sold out.
One of the Pride Wairau organisers, Gabe Bertogg, said the attendance of politicians such as mayor Nadine Taylor and Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick at the dawn ceremony was encouraging.
But she said the large turnout from members of the public was magical.
"The opening ceremony, there was 250 people there, in the rain, and that just is giving me like little shivers now because it's hard to actually visualise that our town could hold space [for the rainbow community] in that way."
With a population of about 28,000, Te Waiharakeke Blenheim was thought to be the country's smallest town yet to hold a week of queer events.
Pride Wairau has an organising committee of four.
Committee member Jesse North said although local organisations had become strongly supportive of the festival, they were hesitant at first because they thought queer pride belonged in the big cities.
"Blenheim is a beautiful, beautiful place, like, lovely place to live, but they haven't had the opportunity to learn. It is starting from scratch; it is your Rainbow 101 with this community, so having visibility is huge," North said.
"This year, just being able to fly the rainbow flags in the street, for a lot of people, that makes them feel just a whole lot more welcome in their own surroundings."
Thirty rainbow flags were crowd-funded by the committee and have been flying brightly from the lamp-posts in central Blenheim since the start of June.
The intersex-inclusive Pride Progress flag. Photo: ESTELLE RUIZ
The design is what was known as the intersex-inclusive Pride Progress flag, which has elements added to the traditional rainbow to improve representation of trans and intersex people, and queer people of colour.
Further festivities of Pride Wairau include a Skate With Pride event, a poetry and film night with kōrero about takatāpui experience in Te Tau Ihu, and an allyship workshop being run by the rainbow advocacy group InsideOUT Kōaro.
The Marlborough library, Te Kahu o Waipuna, has put up an Out on the Shelves display of queer literature, and one of Blenheim's op shops, The Blue Door, was hosting an after-hours listening session for songs that shaped queer history - run by a local DJ, Fam.
Blenheim resident and writer of sapphic fiction, Jess Rush, said having such action for the rainbow community in the town was amazing.
"Growing up we didn't have any of this, so I hid myself because I didn't want people judging me and I didn't know that there were other people in the community who were like me too, so I hid."
She had published a trilogy of lesbian romance novels under the pen name J C Rowe, and felt that that process had helped her come out.
On Sunday, she was clad in rainbows and running a stall at the Pride Wairau community day and market.
"Just having this here now is amazing, it's overwhelmingly good."
Rush said it made her proud to be a Blenheim person.
In a big city, a rainbow pedestrian crossing might be the next step in raising visibility and a sense of safety for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, takatāpui, intersex and queer citizens.
But Pride Wairau committee members Gabe Bertogg and Amber Nye-Hingston told RNZ that Blenheim was officially too small for that.
"We tried to get a rainbow crossing. You're not allowed a rainbow crossing without traffic lights and sound - they're the rules," Bertogg said.
"It's Blenheim's claim to fame you know, no traffic lights, only roundabouts," added Nye-Hingston.
Pride Wairau will end next Sunday with a rainbow rally and walk along the Ōmaka, or Taylor River, which runs through the town.
