Fans gear up for Fletcher's first NZ gig

Queer pop singer Fletcher will grace Auckland's Powerstation with her first and only New Zealand show yet this Friday night - and her Kiwi fans are gearing up for it.

Many Fletcher fans, predominantly young queer women, have joined Facebook group chats with plans to meet up with others to go to the concert together.

Rather than going with a group of friends as might be more expected, many attendees are going with people they do not yet know.

The unusual approach comes from members of the 3100+ strong Facebook group, The Queer Collective, originally created for LGBTQIA+ women, though is now open to everyone from the community in New Zealand.

Georgia Walker, a 20-year-old student at Auckland University of Technology, is going to the concert with her sisters, but thinks such social media connections are beneficial for members of the queer community.

As her free time is so limited - she also works two jobs - Walker said she found it difficult to connect with other queer women.

“If you aren’t always available, it’s a bit harder to go to those things sometimes.

“I do think it’s really good for people who have just moved into the city or don’t work as much as me.”

She also plans to meet up with some friends at the venue, several of whom expressed homophobic views while with her in high school, though have since began to identify as queer themselves.

“I think it’s allowing people to reconnect . . . since COVID, or create bonds with people who are going to the concert who feel like they haven’t got anyone else who feels the same way they do.”

AUT student and peer mentor Georgia Walker, 20, turned to queer icons like Fletcher as a teen to find a sense of belonging. Photo: Sophie Founé

Sarah Carter, a 23-year-old from Orewa studying at the University of Canterbury, is going with her girlfriend.

They are flying up for the occasion.

“Probably a big chunk of the female queer community is going to be there, so we were like, ‘How can we not go?’”

While Walker grew up and went to school in Christchurch, Carter moved down to the Garden City for university.

Walker said she lived in a "very [hetero-normative] area".

She said she went online to find community and discovered Fletcher through the queer YouTube scene in 2014, back when Fletcher’s then girlfriend, Shannon Beveridge, was posting videos with the singer who was just starting to release her music.

“There weren’t many queer open spaces back then. I think I went onto that era of where you had those lesbian YouTubers really big out there.

“I went to the media, like films and YouTube and that kind of stuff, because, you know, my school wasn’t very open about it.

“It was a lot of hate, a lot of bullying, so that was my safe space.

“That’s why Fletcher’s kind of important to me as well because it was that safe area.”

Walker said she believed this week's concert was an especially good opportunity for queer women who were from more rural areas to meet up.

Carter said: “There’s definitely not as much of a queer community in Christchurch as there is in Wellington and Auckland.

“I heard from other people that it’s pretty white and straight here, which has also been my experience,” she said.

Carter realised she was gay in December last year and says her road into the community has been through attending events such as those run by Qtopia.

Qtopia is an organisation supporting groups and events for young people in the Rainbow community in the wider Canterbury area.

The Queer Collective is currently private and to join you must agree to rules set by the group’s creators to keep it a safe space for members.

Individuals in the group are mostly in their late-teens to late-20s.

Fletcher has been releasing music and rising to fame since the mid-2010s.

In the early years of her public recognition, she appeared in YouTube videos of her now ex-girlfriend, Beveridge.

Cari Fletcher, the full name of the artist, hails from Asbury Park, New Jersey, close to Long Branch, Bruce Springsteen’s hometown.

WATCH: Fletcher performs Undrunk.