There’s a particular moment that always stays with me after a large gathering.
When all that remains is the quiet choreography of people stacking chairs, sweeping empty beverage cans, and rolling cables into crates. The afterlife of the event.
It’s in this moment I feel closest to the real work of community.
There is of course an obvious pressure on spectacle. We measure cultural value in attendance numbers, ticket sales, Instagram reach, moments that can be captured, clipped, and circulated. Pride, like so many other movements, is often understood through this same logic.
But queer life, especially Takatāpui life, has never been sustained by singular moments alone. It has been sustained by what happens around them long after the music stops.
In te ao Māori, we speak of Te Kete Tuauri, the basket of sacred knowledge and all that is hidden, and of arriving in this world already loved, already bound to whakapapa that precedes us.
Ngā Uri E! is not, for me, a festival theme so much as a way of relating to time. It asks us to understand ourselves as part of an unfinished conversation, accountable to our ancestors and responsible for those who will come after us.
This is why I have become increasingly interested in what remains once the event is over.
But queer life, especially Takatāpui life, has never been sustained by singular moments alone. It has been sustained by what happens around them long after the music stops.
What remains is not just the memory of a good night out. What remains are the relationships built between artists who may have never met before. The young person who finds their first sense of belonging in a community space. The pakeke who sees themselves reflected in a new generation. The divas who did it all, committed to the vision.
This kind of work is rarely visible. It doesn’t photograph well. It happens in spreadsheets, hui, contracts, budgets, conflict resolution, mentorship, long conversations over iced plant-based milk coffee. It is the difference between a culture that appears and disappears, and one that endures.
Queer communities have always been masters of this kind of stewardship. Our forebears – particularly our queens – did not just create moments of resistance, they built conditions for survival. They fundraised when no one else would. They organised when it was dangerous. They created culture in the absence of safety, recognition, or institutional support. Kuinitanga, to me, is not a performance of glamour. It is a lineage of governance. A way of holding people, telling the truth, transmitting knowledge, and staying accountable across generations.
I feel this most strongly when I think about Out of the Gutter, a gathering we will hold later this summer in Beresford Square. On the surface, it looks like a party. But it is deeper. A ritual of return. A public act of memory. It brings together five generations of artists, activists, and community members. Icons and emerging voices share a stage not as nostalgia, but as continuity.
Queer communities have always been masters of this kind of stewardship. Our forebears – particularly our queens – did not just create moments of resistance, they built conditions for survival.
What moves me about this kind of gathering is not the spectacle, but the transmission. The vibe. The way knowledge passes through proximity. The way young people learn that they are not alone, not accidental, not disposable. That they belong to a lineage that has always existed, and always will.
In a world increasingly defined by algorithms designed by tech oligarchs to isolate us, I find myself drawn to the quieter question: what are we actually leaving behind?
Not content. Not brand impressions. Not moments of visibility. But conditions.
Conditions for artists to grow without being rushed. Conditions for communities to gather without being commodified. Conditions for memory to be held collectively rather than individually. Conditions for the memory of care to outlive the ecstasy of charisma.
I am proud to say, in reflection of our team, board, membership and Ropu Maori Auckland Pride: We are not the event. We are what remains after it. We are the ones who stay to pack down the chairs. Who carry stories forward. Who hold our centre when everything else pulls at the edges. Who understand that the real work of culture is not in how brightly it flares, but in how long it can be sustained.
WORDS — HĀMIORA BAILEY
