Emily's Staging Area

I'm the boss backstage!

- Fleur Mealing

From a fairly young age I had a passion for watching sport, and I spent a lot of my high school years on the sideline in different support roles.

I studied Applied Sports at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), but as much as I loved it, I didn’t end up being as interested in the anatomy side of things. What I did love was our event management practicum with North Harbour Rugby. I really enjoyed organising it and getting stuck in.

Fast forward out of the study and I ended up in my first event coordinator job at a youth organisation, where I spent about 10 years. It was a great job while my two kids were young. I still kept involved in other events on the side too, doing different festivals and stuff over the summer.

I’ve always loved music too and was exposed to quite a range growing up. My high school friends and I loved going to gigs, whether it was someone unheard of or a big artist playing a stadium. We tried to get to as many as we could.

We also started this habit of collecting mementos from shows and befriending the crew was a really easy way to do that. Whether it was a set list or a drum stick or a guitar pick, we used to ask them, ‘Can you grab that thing off the stage before the cleaners get rid of it?’