23rdAug - 29th Aug
LOCALLY OWNED SINCE FOREVER
No 865
LAKES WEEKLY BULLETIN
W I AT PR NT UR ID ER E E I
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It is FABULOUS to be back! Queenstown’s Winter Pride is the largest Winter Pride Festival in the Southern Hemisphere and it’s embraced as the festival in a small town with a bold heart. Winter Pride is a time when we celebrate love, community, diversity visibility, safety and inclusion. Winter Pride is also a festival for locals and visitors alike coming together to celebrate diversity. After 2 years of covid disruption, it is amazing to be able to bring back the rainbow to Queenstown and to celebrate pride together again. The Winter Pride festival is back in full force from Friday for 10 days with 45 events, and something for everyone. The ever-popular ski days, drag shows, games nights, dance parties and community events, and much more are all back and given how many events are already sold out its going to be a huge event for Queenstown, pulling in visitors from all over the country and Australia. With the borders fully open, the Aussie’s are coming back, and this year’s Winter Pride is returning to pre-Covid levels of support especially from across the ditch with more than half our tickets sold to Australian guests. Sales have been strong with some events at record levels, and to cater for both the demand and need for Queenstown to make the most of a major event like Winter Pride, we’ve added more capacity to some and many new events too, so head to winterpride.co.nz and get involved and make the most of the most fabulous winter pride festival in the world - right here in Queenstown.
Andy Carter and Jono Browne along with hundreds of firefighters raced up 51 flights of Auckland’s Sky Tower Saturday, wearing full firefighting kit all to raise funds for Kiwis living with blood cancer. Andy and Jono, as part of Squad 51 raised over 15K for the Leukaemia & Blood Cancer foundation. Overall the event raised 1.3million.
We want to encourage businesses, organisations and individuals to roll-out the rainbow to welcome people to town and to show them that Queenstown and Central Otago celebrates diversity and inclusion and welcomes LGBTTQIA+ guests with open arms. There are some really easy ways to do that such as Fly a rainbow flag, dress your store, do something with your team. Pride is a time to come together and stand together for our LGBTTQIA+ communities and celebrate our differences as a strength. I want to say thank you for getting involved and to all the local venues who are behind Winter Pride this year and to all our sponsors, QLDC, and DQ for their support. We would love to see locals on the mountains wearing rainbows over the festival too. Make sure to check out our theme and event days - these are open to all (you just need a lift pass). Thank you, Queenstown now let’s, do this. It’s party time! Martin King
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