Waikato Queer Arts Festival brings together Hamilton’s rainbow communities

Waikato Queer Arts Festival organiser Mel Martin-Booker. Photo / Tom Eley

A grassroots initiative to unite Waikato’s fragmented queer creative scene has led to the launch of a new festival in Hamilton.

The Waikato Queer Arts Festival started yesterday and runs until tomorrow.

Festival organiser Mel Martin-Booker said the idea came from personal experience and inspiration from similar events elsewhere.

“I come from a real grassroots community background, so I just wanted to know that we would be able to use the space too,” she said.

After attending a drag event in another city last year, she began asking herself why nothing similar existed in Waikato.

“I reached out to a few different groups, and the queer communities here are quite fragmented.

“There are lots of little groups and they don’t really interact with each other.

“I think that is probably why there’s nothing like that yet, because there’s nobody going, ‘I’m going to bring this all together to do a big thing’.”

The result is a multi-day programme of performances, exhibitions and community events aimed at creating visibility and connection.

For Martin-Booker, queer visibility is one of the key purposes of the festival.

“There is a bit of that in our generation of like, why is it a thing? But it’s a thing because we’re still not 100% safe,” she said.

“I have to figure out whether I can hold my wife’s hand in the supermarket ... Until the day I don’t have to think about that, visibility matters.”

The festival blends that message with celebration and creative expression.

“I’m an artist, and we love creative things, so it’s about bringing it all together and celebrating queer arts.”

Rather than a sprawling programme, Martin-Booker describes the festival as “a handful of events”.

Among them is a rehearsed reading of her own play, The Tira Family, which explores themes of connection and belonging.

The work has been shortlisted for the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award, with results due during the festival.

“It’s about that adorable possibility that someone understands you,” she said.

Other events include a cabaret-style showcase featuring a range of performers, hosted by drag personality Patty Smack.

There is also a tattoo flash day with Camel Rose Tattoos and a drag showcase titled House of Mana that will spotlight Māori and Pasifika performers.

The festival culminates in a headline drag show featuring some of New Zealand’s best-known performers alongside international guest Queen Kong from Australia.

“I really believe in local performers getting opportunities to perform on the same stage as international performers and learn from them and build camaraderie in the green room.”

Martin-Booker hopes that while modest in scale, the festival marks the beginning of something bigger for the region.

“This is just the start,” she said. “It’s about building something that brings people together.”

Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. Before he joined the Hamilton-based team, he worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive. He previously worked as a journalist at Black Press Media in Canada and won a fellowship with the Vancouver Sun.