This text file contains detailed information about an audio recording on PrideNZ.com. It includes the following sections: DESCRIPTION, SPEAKERS, SUMMARY, KEY CONTENT TIMESTAMPS [HH:MM:SS], TRANSCRIPT WITH TIMESTAMPS [HH:MM:SS], HUMAN VERIFIED TRANSCRIPT, KEYWORDS, REFERENCES, RELATED CONTENT AND FOOTNOTE. 

## START DESCRIPTION
The title of this recording is "Out On These Streets - episode 4". It is described as: In this fourth and final episode, hosts Gareth and Roger of Walk Tours NZ look at what happens on the day of the walk tour, how to manage participants and reflect on some exciting outcomes. It was recorded in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand on the 22nd July 2025. The duration of the recording is 21 minutes. The content in the recording covers the decades 2010s through to the 2020s.
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## START SPEAKERS
This is a podcast recording and features the voices of Gareth Watkins and Roger Smith. These names are spelt correctly, but may appear incorrectly spelt later in the document.
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## START SUMMARY
In this final episode of the Out On These Streets podcast series, hosts Gareth Watkins and Roger Smith of Walk Tours NZ walk listeners through the actual day of delivering a Rainbow walk tour. They provide a wealth of practical tips on managing the group, staying on time, creating a warm and engaging atmosphere, and making the experience memorable for all involved. The episode opens with a recap of the first three parts of the series, which covered the inspiration behind the tours, the process of research and writing, and promotion and registration management. Now, the spotlight turns to what it’s like on the ground, the day the tour goes live. They start by addressing a listener question about feeling overwhelmed by too much information. Roger recommends using AI tools like NotebookLM, Claude, or ChatGPT to help summarise research into key points. These can be especially helpful for building timelines, bullet points, or mind maps to distil complex information into something manageable - though they note it’s always vital to fact-check the results. Listener Kim chimes in with a reminder about sensory elements, such as perfume, used during tours. Gareth and Roger mention that on Carmen’s tour they spray Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds, Chrissy Witoko's favourite scent, to evoke a sense of place and time. They highlight how appealing to multiple senses - sound, sight, smell - deepens the historical experience and emotional engagement. Preparing for the tour starts early. On the morning of a tour, Gareth and Roger rehearse their scripts, especially since they only run each tour infrequently. Practising helps warm up their voices, refine delivery, and ensure they remember the structure. Roger notes the importance of smiling while speaking, as it naturally warms the tone and creates a more welcoming vibe. Before the tour, they also do a reconnaissance walk of the route to check for any obstacles like roadworks or clashing events, and they aren’t afraid to alter the route if needed. Tour atmosphere begins the moment participants arrive. The hosts make a point to greet everyone - even passersby who occasionally end up joining the tour spontaneously. They arrive early, display a rainbow-themed flipbook as a visual signal, and aim to start and end punctually, which people appreciate. The tour begins with a welcome, a brief overview of the route and duration, and a chance for attendees to say their first name and where they’re from. This helps everyone connect and gives the hosts a sense of how to tailor content depending on the audience - be it locals or international visitors. Housekeeping includes safety reminders like sticking together at pedestrian crossings, not blocking public paths, and forming semicircles around speakers at each stop to avoid wind and noise interference. Throughout the walk, they recommend keeping the group together and being flexible in response to the pace of walkers or changing conditions. Roger keeps a running count of participants to ensure no one is left behind. They also give regular time updates, such as how many stops remain or how far through the tour they are, helping participants manage their energy. Adaptability is key. Roger and Gareth often adjust content on the fly depending on the group. They welcome questions and are open to corrections, having been enriched by participants who share new information or personal experiences tied to the places and people featured on the tour. The philosophy behind their approach is communal learning - they don’t position themselves as all-knowing experts, but rather as facilitators of shared knowledge. Timekeeping remains crucial, even while fostering this relaxed and open environment. At the end of each tour, they thank participants for their presence and energy, acknowledge the shared experience, and promote upcoming tours or invite attendees to complete a short feedback survey. Their free SurveyMonkey survey asks how people found the tour, why they attended, and whether the timing suited them. Motivations for attending range from learning about rainbow history, to meeting new people, supporting loved ones, or simply discovering more about Wellington. They share glowing feedback from attendees who felt energised and grateful, praising both the content and delivery of the tours. One participant called it a “masterclass”, highlighting how a good walk tour balances informative material with engaging presentation. The episode closes by reflecting on some of the bigger, unexpected outcomes of running the tours over a eight year period. One early tour was attended by someone from Heritage New Zealand, sparking the creation of the Rainbow List - believed to be the first national register of rainbow heritage sites in the world. Others have planned trips to Wellington around the tour dates. They’ve also developed virtual walk tours for those unable to attend in person and included NZSL interpreters to improve accessibility. Perhaps most importantly, the tours have inspired others to launch their own local versions, which helped motivate Gareth and Roger to create this podcast series. They’ve been humbled and uplifted by learning from participants, hearing new stories, and keeping rainbow histories alive. Their final thoughts reflect pride in the diverse audiences they’ve connected with, joy in offering something meaningful for free, and a renewed sense of how everyday places hold powerful, hidden histories - if we only stop and take the time to look.
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## START TRANSCRIPT WITH TIMESTAMPS [HH:MM:SS]
Kia ora, my name's Gareth. And I'm Roger. And welcome to Out On the Streets Pride in Place, a four-part podcast series, exploring how we create Rainbow Walk tours from dreaming and planning to walking and reflecting. So this is the fourth and final part of the podcast. So what have we covered in the last three episodes? We've looked at the whys and the where falls of uh, walk tours, why they're so fulfilling. We've stepped through the history of Walk Tours [00:00:30] nz and we've begun to start the process of creating a new tour. Then we looked at researching and writing and identifying our stops and ways of handling tricky topics. And then last episode we looked at the promotion and marketing of walk tours, managing registrations. And enhancing the tour with things like visual flip books and audio clips. And in this final episode, we're gonna be looking at, uh, what happens actually on the day of the walk tour, how to manage participants, and then we'll reflect on some of [00:01:00] the really exciting outcomes that we've experienced through running Walk tours over the last seven or eight years. First though, we've got a question from c and Cath asks. I'm overwhelmed by the amount of information. How do I distill it down into key points? And I think Kath's talking about when you, when you do the, that original research, uh, into either a topic or a person, and you are bringing in all of these different, um, pieces of [00:01:30] information, potentially biographies, um, podcasts, et cetera. How do you, how do you find those kind of five elements? Well, it can be overwhelming, but. Fortunately, there is help, uh, in the form of ai. Uh, and one of the things that I've used really successfully is, uh, an AI application called Notebook lm. And that allows you to upload a whole bunch of, uh, textual information about. Uh, any [00:02:00] topic really. Uh, and then it can pull that together in the form of summaries. So it can literally, it can, um, distill pages and pages and pages of information down to a paragraph or two if that's how much you want. So it can create timelines, it can create bullet points, uh, it can do mind maps, which help identify themes. So it can be a really, really useful tool. Um, but again, as always, with ai, it's. Always a case of [00:02:30] once you've got the output from ai, just making sure that you fact check it. A notebook. Elm isn't the only application that that will do this, although it's very good. Uh, but there are also things like Claude uh, chat, GT uh, Gemini, a whole range of different kind of language models, uh, that will allow you to summarize content very, very quickly. Um, and will give you, uh, maybe not the finished product, but actually it's a great starting point in terms of if you've got [00:03:00] so much information that you just need to work out, what, what does it all mean? We've also had a comment from Kim and, uh, Kim wrote in saying that we forgot to mention the perfume. And, uh, what Kim is, uh, referring to is, uh, when we were talking about things that we do on tours. So for instance, we, we have little audio snippets, uh, we have flip books. On some tours, we also use perfume and, uh, in a particular tour. [00:03:30] So we, on, on, uh, Carmen's tour, uh, we, we spray Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds perfume. Uh, and it really does conjure up a time and a place. It was a favorite of Chrissy Tuku. And Chrissy was a contemporary of Carmens. Um, and it really does, uh, conjure up a, an earlier time and a place for, for people. So think about. Audio, think about flip books. Think about, um, uh, handouts. Also think about are there smells that you can recreate? Yeah. [00:04:00] All that sort of sensory stimulation thing can be incredibly powerful for conjuring up, uh, memories and giving a real sense of history to whatever it is you're wanting to talk about. So we've arrived at the day of the war. Look, one of the things that we do, uh, at home is to practice, uh, and do a practice run of the speaking stops. Um, this is on the morning before the tour. Uh, we do that before every tour, uh, because we only do them once a [00:04:30] month. There's a chance that we might have forgotten what we said or some of the tours. We only do two or three times a year. So it helps us remember what is in the tour. It also gives us a chance to warm up our voices. Um. And with that, uh, something that I'm struggling to do now, but I must remember to do, is to smile when I speak. Because when I smile, when I speak, uh, it makes me sound like a much warmer and more approachable as a person. It just helps to warm up the voice and the mood and the atmosphere and the energy a little bit too [00:05:00] with speaking. And so it's much easier to hear that than, um, somebody who's scowling or sounding really. Stern and whatever. So I, I, I think, uh, yeah, on, on the morning we, we would run, uh, the entire talk. So that's around about 40, 40 minutes of talk. Um, well before we actually do the walk tour in the afternoon. It's a great warmup exercise. I. Also before the walk tour on that same day, if you get a chance to, uh, do a bit of a, a ricki and look at some of the stops, uh, to make [00:05:30] sure that there aren't any kind of roadworks going on, or there aren't other other festivals going on that you may need to detour. So don't be afraid if you need to make a detour on the route. Just do it because actually, um, it's better to kind of detour than kind of barge through someone else's festival. Uh, and remember that the mood of the tour starts from when you are welcoming people as they arrive, and it's really important to welcome people. I. When they arrive, even if in fact they're not there for the tour. And we've, [00:06:00] we've had people that we have welcomed to have not been there for the tour, but have just been passing through. We have even had a couple of occasions when people have joined our tour because it sounds like a good thing. They weren't intending to do it, but they were there and thought, why not? How do people know? We are the tour. Good question. We try and be at the location of the tour at least 10 minutes before it starts because people are often there early and you want to be there before they start arriving. And we open our flip [00:06:30] books to a page with a large rainbow and the words walk tour. Um, and you could also use a, a flag or something just to show that you are there. It's really important to really try and engage with everyone as they, as they come forward and, and, and make them feel welcome. Uh, make them feel welcome, but also, um, I think people really appreciate, uh, sticking to start and end times. Um, so if you mean to start at one o'clock, start at one o'clock, there'll always be a number of people that will come a little bit later, [00:07:00] but that's okay. Um, but always start on time and hopefully always end on time. Uh, people really appreciate that. Usually there's a bit of housekeeping to do at the beginning of the walk tour, so you'll be at the first stop for a few minutes anyway after the. Notional start time of the walk tour. So gather people around in a semicircle, introduce yourselves and give a short overview of the tour, um, how long it's gonna be and where it will end. It's a really nice thing to invite members of the group [00:07:30] to introduce themselves and say where they're from so people can start making connections immediately. And when we say like, um, introduce themselves, it's, it's like, uh, uh, say your first name and where you are from today. And it just gives people an idea and it gives us the idea of actually. How do we need to pitch some of the information? So are there, um, international visitors, are they all locals? Uh, what, what have you. So it's a great way of, um, finding out actually who's with [00:08:00] us today. Um, we don't ask them, um, why they're on the tour. It's, it's more about just saying, hi, I am Gareth and I'm from Wellington. And the getting to, it's a good idea to go over any health and safety concerns. So one of the key things for us is to cross at the lights together. Very important to make sure that we all get through the walk tour alive. Uh, make sure that we don't block the path so that other pedestrians have got a chance to get through while we're, um, giving our talk. Um, and also always [00:08:30] watching out for traffic. It's good to cover what will happen at the. Various stops in terms of, uh, how people stand. Uh, we, we often say, look, uh, just form a semicircle around the hosts. Um, and we'll talk, uh, from, from that point. And what we'll be talking about will be behind the hosts. So, uh, people will, can look at, um, the sites that we're talking about and we will talk to them. And then it's, it's kind of off we go to our first stop. Now [00:09:00] it's a really good idea to take into account the speed of your walkers and to adjust your speed. Keep the group together, uh, as you walk, particularly when crossing the roads, and make sure that you don't leave people behind so that if, if only half of your group gets across the road, wait until the next cycle of lights, uh, and everyone can catch up. Then I think also if the group splits up, it's really important for the first part of the group to stop. And wait for the rest of the group. Otherwise, you get this kind of divided group, which is, it's, it's not, not, [00:09:30] not, um, easy to manage. One of the things that I do at the beginning of, uh, every walk tour is count up how many people we have and just keep a running check on how many people we still have throughout the tour. And almost always, it's the same number at the beginning as at the end, which is great. Yay. It's always useful also, I think to signpost how long the next bit of walking is going to be. So telling the group, oh, this is a five minutes walk. Also good to note how far through the tour [00:10:00] we are. Uh, so, you know, we've got two more stops before the end or we are halfway through. It just gives people, um, uh, an idea of where you are at and so they can manage their own energy levels. So when you reach your next stop, bring people into a semicircle. Uh, and don't be scared to adjust your positioning so that you're not talking into the wind, or, um, make sure that you can remove yourself from traffic noise if need be. Also, don't be scared to switch up your presentation [00:10:30] depending on the audience. So, for instance, you may need to give more context if, if you have international visitors, people. Actually don't know what's what's in your script. And so you can always drop things or reorder them. Uh, invite questions and comments and be prepared to accept corrections. We've had a number of corrections during our walk tours from people who have actually been in the places that we've. Talked about that no longer exist or have met some of the [00:11:00] individuals that we talk about that, that, uh, are no longer around. Uh, and have been able to speak with some authority on what actually happened or where something actually was. Uh, and so always be up for that and be prepared to, uh, learn as much as you can from your walkers. Because often, uh, we find that Walkers know a lot about, um, some of the things that, that we didn't know about. Uh, I think the key for us is that. We are all learners that, uh, we are doing this as part of a [00:11:30] community, uh, experience. And, uh, we are learning at the same time. So, uh, I, I, I really, uh, think, you know, keep keeping it on a level playing field. So we are not the, uh, experts and parting information that actually we're, we are learning this together. Uh, so questions, comments and corrections are all fantastic. Uh, but we also need to keep to time. And so the experience for everyone should be relaxed and natural. But actually for the [00:12:00] hosts, it is also a controlled experience. And so we need to get to the in stop at the right time. Yeah. And above all, uh, we all need to enjoy it too. So that's a key thing to Absolutely. I mean, if we're not having fun, well certainly if the hosts aren't have having fun, uh, the audience won't be having fun. Yeah. Okay. So now at the end of the tour. Remember to thank people for having taken the tour. It's actually been a privilege to [00:12:30] have the Walker's ear for 90 minutes, and so it's important to say that to them. Without them, there is no tour, so thanks to them as well as thanks to us for having achieved. What we've done. It's a great opportunity too at the end to promote future tours. So if you've got another one coming up in the next month or the next week or whenever, then you can mention that. Um, but also it's an opportunity to talk about the survey if you have a survey developed to get feedback for your walk tour. We've got a [00:13:00] basic survey, um, through the website, SurveyMonkey, and this is the, um, the free version. So you can only ask a, a certain amount of questions, but we've got questions like, um, have people attended a tour before? How did they find out about the tour? Is it the right time of day, the right day of the week, and why they attended. And in terms of why they attended, there's, there's quite a number of reasons actually, to be honest. Um. Just looking at the survey here, it's, it's like a, a lot of people attend, uh, to find out [00:13:30] about local rainbow history, which is, um, you'd think, well, that's the, the obvious one. Um, but then there's quite a number of people there that are wanting just to meet other people. I. Uh, to get to know Wellington a bit better and to support family, friends, and colleagues. So there's a whole variety of reasons why people attend and um, again, it comes back to that thing we were saying in one of the early episodes of you just never know who is in the audience and you never know why they're there. And [00:14:00] another thing that we get through the surveys is comments from some of the walkers. Uh, one of them was, uh, from a walker who said, by sharing Wellington's rainbow heritage, with an increasingly diverse audience, you sustain the vibrance of our shared space. I feel energized and deeply grateful for your work. Another comment was, it was amazing. It was well-paced and very informative, as well as sensitive when it was needed. A fantastic walking tour is [00:14:30] 50% content and 50% delivery. Gareth and Raj gave a masterclass. They were fun and had great energy, and another one said. They are brilliant tours and I look forward to attending more. They're important, valuable, interesting, and entertaining. Next time I'll bring friends, which is exactly what we want to hear. Amazing. And it's, it's that kind of, uh, wonderful, uh, short comment where it says, you know, you, you're going to not only get a repeat visitor, [00:15:00] but they're also gonna bring people that they respect as well. And so. That says to me that they've had a, um, a joyous, informative time. Um, and that just is wonderful. So what have been some of the positive outcomes for you for the walk tours? Good question. Well, over seven or eight years, we've had some amazing experiences and, and very unexpected outcomes. I think probably the largest unexpected outcome was, uh, on one of our. First [00:15:30] Walk tours, we had somebody from Heritage New Zealand and that was one of the kernels for Heritage New Zealand, developing what is now known as the Rainbow List. And so the Rainbow List is a list of sites which are, uh, of specific interest and relevance to the rainbow community throughout New Zealand. Often they are, uh, inherited. Bases or heritage buildings, although not necessarily, [00:16:00] uh, but it's amazing to think that there is this now national list, a national list of sites that are related to the rainbow community and rainbow history in New Zealand. And as far as I know, this is the first national rainbow heritage list in the world. I know there are some cities that have heritage lists, but I think New Zealand is the only one that has a national. Which is amazing. Amazing national list. Yeah. Amazing. Uh, another really, um, [00:16:30] wonderful thing for us was we, we've had a number of people from overseas planning their travel to Wellington based on our walk tour dates. So we put the walk tour dates up, you know, three or four months in advance and people have actually said to us, they are in Wellington on the stay. Because of this tour. And it's like, oh, that's, that's so nice. Which is amazing. It's amazing, really. Yeah. Another thing that we've developed and we've been, uh, able to develop from our walk tours, uh, virtual walk tour [00:17:00] events. So sit down walk tours so that, um, people don't necessarily need to go on a walk tour. They can, um. Participate in a walk tour without, without moving. Um, and this sort of came out of COVID really when we did some virtual walk tours, but we've been invited to do a number of presentations, uh, in front of groups of people, uh, which are virtual walk tours developed from the, the physical walk tours. So that's great. But they have, [00:17:30] um, they have quite a different energy, uh, because obviously you, you're, you're not walking around the city, but. Uh, they are still really exciting and it's just really neat to be able to reuse the material that we've generated for the walk tours in other contexts and, and to give, uh, people potentially with, uh, mobility issues. Um, the opportunity of interacting with those tours, um, is, is really fantastic. And of course we've had, um, sign language tours as [00:18:00] well. We've had, uh, sign language interpreters on our tours a number of times, and that's. Again, um, really increased the accessibility of, of the content. We've had a number of people who've been on how Walk tours want to start up their own tours, uh, maybe in their own cities or centers around New Zealand, and they've been in contact with us about how to do it. And uh, and that's really what's inspired this podcast series. Uh, and that's great that other people are so inspired by. [00:18:30] The fact that there's a, a, a walk tour in Wellington that they can do something in their own city is fantastic. I think one of the, the biggest, uh, positive outcomes for, for both of us is that we have learned so much from the walkers. Uh, whether it's new stories about historic figures or whether it's just different views on, on, on different aspects of, of the tours. I mean, just interacting with a whole lot of different people has been so [00:19:00] uplifting. And that's just, um, just one of the, the many things that, that I'm quite proud of as far as the walk tours go. Another thing is really surfacing and paying tribute to our rainbow heritage and keeping some of those memories and stories alive. You know, I think we both feel that that's really important. I. I'm really proud of that. The walk tours, uh, they cross a whole range of different communities in Wellington and, uh, and, and wider. And so we're not just talking about one kind of niche [00:19:30] community. Uh, it it seems to attract, um, a whole lot of people for a whole lot of different reasons. Uh, and that diversity, uh, of ages of demographics is, is just really wonderful. And I think also for me, there's something really special and joyful about doing something for free. Doing something fun and for free and sharing that with other people is great. I. I think the, the, the kind of mindfulness [00:20:00] of the walk tour is, is really interesting as well. The, the idea that you, uh, rather than walking through a city, which, you know, we kind of do on a daily basis, we're actually stopping and looking and, um. Looking at things that maybe aren't there anymore. But actually there's a, there, there are resonances there, and it might just be a door, or it might just be, um, an empty space at the, at the time, but you can actually bring that to life through a photograph and a [00:20:30] story. So that kind of mindfulness of stopping and just paying attention is, is really cool. That, that really wonderful reminder that history is all around us all the time. And that, I think is a really lovely place to, uh, stop this. Um, not stop because we're not stopping. It's, but, but, but pausing this conversation, pausing this, this podcast series and saying thank you so much for listening over the last four episodes. And [00:21:00] also thank you to everyone that has taken part on the hundred. Plus tours that we've run in in Wellington over the last eight years. Uh, it really means a huge amount to us, uh, um, and we hope that you have, have gotten something out of it as well. So really, it remains just for us to wish you all the very best for creating your walk tours. And don't forget to invite us because we'd love to come along. Thanks again.
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## START KEYWORDS
2010s, 2020s, Aotearoa New Zealand, Coming Up, Events, Gareth Watkins, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, People, Rainbow List Project, Roger Smith, Space, Walktours NZ, Wellington, accessibility, audience, books, chatgpt. com, community, connections, conversation, diversity, energy, exercise, family, friends, fun, future, health, heritage, history, hope, language, listening, love, marketing, mobility, notebooklm. google, opportunity, other, passing, perfume, podcast, privilege, rainbow, research, respect, running, safety, sign language, smile, support, survey, time, travel, voice, walk tour, walking, website, wind, wish, work, writing.
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## START REFERENCES
The original recording can be heard at this website https://www.pridenz.com/out_on_these_streets_episode_4.html.
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Generated 2025-07-24T19:44:35+12:00.
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