Latest news with #GayGames
Newsroom
30-04-2025
- Business
- Newsroom
Auckland drops out of hosting World Gay Games, can't back Lions tour
Auckland is quitting the race to hold the 2030 Gay Games, and says a lack of funding is also putting a string of other potential major event hostings, including the Lions rugby tour, at risk. The council's culture and events agency Tataki Auckland Unlimited (TAU) said it had pursued the hosting rights for the 2030 games, over 18 months, but a shortage of long-term funds meant it couldn't continue into the next round, in May. Auckland mayor Wayne Brown's proposed reduction in ratepayer funding for major events is one of the factors also creating uncertainty about the future of the Sail GP regatta. And the women's and men's Lions tours and a cricket world cup event later this decade are also beyond Tataki Auckland Unlimited's ability to agree funding. 'It was an immense effort to have Auckland selected in December 2024 as one of three finalist cities to work through to the ultimate round of (Gay Games) hosting requirements,' said TAU chief executive Nick Hill, in a memo on Monday this week to the mayor and councillors, seen by Newsroom. 'The Gay Games is the biggest cultural and sporting event for LGBTQIA+ athletes,' said Hill of the 10-day event staged every four years. Auckland was down to the final three in bidding to host the 2030 World Gay Games. Auckland Council and the government were to share the $10 million cost, for an event expected to deliver nearly 100,000 visitor nights, and contribute $20.8m to the regional economy. Hill said the possible hosting had already attracted significant interest from commercial sponsors, but council's proposed level of event funding did not allow it to commit to hostings beyond each financial year. 'TAU went into the Gay Games bid process (late 2023) in good faith, on the assumption that the issue of major events funding would be resolved by now,' said Hill. The memo also suggested the same lack of longer term funding posed questions over bids for the Women's Lions rugby tour in 2027, the Men's Lions tour in 2029, and the ICC T20 Cricket World Cup in 2028. Hill said the risk to those events had not been made public and was shared with councillors in confidence. The agency is caught between the Government's decision not to allow Auckland Council to create a hotel levy to help fund events and tourism attraction, and the council's own current proposal to shrink major event funding to a record low, of around $7m. This compares with funding for events and tourism attraction of around $28m when Brown's predecessor Phil Goff took office in 2016. Goff halved that amount of ratepayer funding, but his idea of replacing that sum by rating hotel and motel properties for an extra $14m, was eventually dumped after being suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic. That funding was never restored and Wayne Brown, elected mayor in 2022, proposed a further cut, hoping in vain that the Government would approve a regional hotel bed levy. The hotel sector had made an impassioned plea to Auckland Council to restore major event funding, with the strategic director at the Hotel Council Aotearoa, James Doolan, penning an op-ed in March. 'If event attraction and destination marketing is as important as you say it is, please stop wasting money elsewhere,' wrote Doolan. 'Take a tiny part of your annual budget and return tourism funding to where it was a decade ago. This stuff is important to all Aucklanders and it drives future economic growth.' Another immediate event problem looming is the next Auckland round of Sir Russell Coutt's Sail GP regatta in early 2026. The government is contracted to help fund one more round of the series, but Coutts is keen to enter a six-year deal with Auckland. 'We want it to be an annual event on Auckland's calendar,' wrote Hill to the mayor and councillors. 'However, we can only stretch to commit to a one-year deal in 2026.' Newsroom has approached the mayor, Wayne Brown, for comment. At the council's governing body meeting in March, he observed that the Prime Minister had kept telling him local bodies should focus on core essential services and no longer fund 'nice-to-haves'. 'The PM has been giving me a lecture all year – I get incessant lectures – we're not allowed to have anything nice-to-have.'
Telegraph
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style: From Pamela Anderson's famous one-piece to Tom Daley's tiny Speedos
The star exhibit of the Design Museum 's new show Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style is Pamela Anderson 's iconic flaming-red swimsuit from her Baywatch days. But bereft of her big bouncing bosoms, this tiny lycra number, suspended from two wires behind a glass case in the basement of the museum, feels a bit deflated. The only bits of the display faithful to the original are two prosthetic and very pert nipples nestled within the folds of the fabric and seemingly in the wrong place by about an inch. Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style intends to celebrate 'our enduring love of the water over the last 100 years' by showcasing swimming's evolution in its social, cultural, technological and environmental contexts. The exhibition is divided thematically, with each of the three main spaces of the museum's basement dedicated to one of the three major swimming arenas: pools, lidos, and nature. While the carefully thought-out 1950s retro pop ambience initially comes across as vibrant, an imminent sensation of drowning takes hold as one dives deeper into this subterranean hoarder's paradise of any and all swimming-related paraphernalia. At best it is a 'fun' exhibition (not necessarily a bad thing) which ping-pongs the viewer's attention between an abundance of trinkets, advertisements, magazines, posters, goggles, rubber pool slides, costume sketches, swimming pool designs and rather unsightly swimming costumes covering the expanse of modern swimming history. As with all decent British museums these days, a sociopolitical angle has not been neglected, even for this seemingly benign activity. Playing on a loop in the first room is a video about The Subversive Sirens, who define themselves as 'a Minnesota-based synchronised swimming team committed to black liberation, equity in swimming/aquatic arts, radical body acceptance, and queer visibility' and won a joint gold medal for their free combo routine at the Gay Games in 2018. The video of their practice includes members of the team talking about what they enjoy about synchronised swimming: 'Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. We're not gonna wait for the world to be, like this perfect 'da da da da da' to start living free now.' While there are some engaging artefacts in this first room – the first Olympic solo swimming gold medal won by a British woman, Lucy Morton at the Paris Olympics in 1924; the microscopic Speedos worn by Tom Daley at the Tokyo Olympics, where he won gold in 2021 – it was quite difficult to concentrate over the omnipresent sound of the liberation of swimming being played in a running loop. 'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight' go The Subversive Sirens as they practice their neverending underwater routine. How tiring it must be for them to be trapped underwater in the basement of the Design Museum in perpetuity. The Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style exhibition is certainly a spectacle and will be especially worthwhile for those who are swimming enthusiasts, nostalgic for the lido age, or curious about the sociopolitical importance of swimming since the 1920s. Come for the refreshing aquatic levity and stay for the Facekini, Monokini (topless bikini), and a silver swimming thong; if this is the way modern swimming is headed, then let's bring back the bathing machines, none of which are on display. This is a good opportunity for viewers to dip their toes into the nourishing waters of swimming sub-culture; without any risk of verrucas.
