ELLIE LIM

A community worker and activist at heart, on a mission to make the world a better place and have fun along the way.

Can you introduce yourself?

Kia ora! Nimen Hao. I’ll start with a list of identities that I’ve worked hard to fully embrace and feel proud of – Chinese, Lesbian, Feminist. And then there is the me who is mildly activist.

I’m a community worker at heart and have just landed a role at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki as a programme producer focusing on cultural communities and youth. 

What role does creativity play in your life and how do you express yourself?

Creativity plays a huge part in my life and I’m always looking for a vehicle to explore different ways to be creative. I love dance, theatre, singing, spoken word and getting hands on with DIY and woodwork, I used to belong to a stitch’n’bitch and have had a few long birthday weekends away with friends where we would fold dumplings and craft up a storm.

I met you when you were the Women's Services and Community Education Coordinator at Auckland Women’s Centre. What was your focus while working at AWC?

That role was a dream job, varied and exciting with a great team. I managed the core services, which included the women’s support service (utilised by women who may have needed support in crisis situations or needed navigation to avenues/agencies that would best meet their needs), an affordable massage service and counselling service.

I trained and supervised volunteers and students who were on placement as part of their social work studies but my favourite part of the job was producing and delivering the community education programme. It was such a privilege working with incredible tutors and reading the feedback about how much participants lives were enriched, changed and flourishing… completely soul nourishing work which kept me at the centre for 12 years.

You are currently working as Programme Producer - Cultural Communities and Youth at Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. It sounds like an exciting role. What tasks do you handle? What are you aiming to achieve?  

This was the next dream job. My role is to deliver public programmes that cater to or celebrate the many wonderful cultural communities in Tāmaki Makaurau including youth and the rainbow communities. This role is huge and connecting with groups and building relationships takes time. I love the variety and project focus of my work. What drives me is a desire to forefront underrepresented voices and to welcome communities who might have found access to the gallery/exhibitions difficult. My long term vision is to build a strong sense of belonging, welcome and connection to the gallery for all Aucklanders.

One of the projects you coordinated was a 5-day residency with Ngā Hinepūkōrero. What was the process from the first contact with them to the actual residency? What did you learn from this group of powerful women?

My darling colleague Lucy had actually made first contact with them through an invitation to perform during this years Pride festival. Ngā Hinepūkōrero also performed at the opening of Toi Tū Toi Ora so their relationship with the gallery predates mine! I felt really lucky to have been given the opportunity to create a residency with them and for that to be one of my first

events was a great learning opportunity. There are many, many miniscule details for how the residency came together which would take about 200 bullet points and may not be of interest

to your readers but I can wholeheartedly say that watching them perform was magical and seeing how they engaged with young people in their workshops was inspirational.

Biggest learnings:

• They don’t swear in their poetry and they are POWERFUL (Note to self, stop swearing)

• These are the voices of our future leaders, YAY! (19 is waaaaaaay smart and smarter than a lot of 50-year-olds)

You’re also actively pursuing an acting career and you’ve been acting in plays like Have You Ever Been With An Asian Womxn? and In Review: An Extraordinary Meeting. Can you tell us about how plays like this come to life? 

I love theatre – the fringe is where social change is born. It is where we can show unique perspectives and shift the focus and viewpoints of the audience and eventually the mainstream. Asian Womxn was a devised show – Gemishka, Elaine and I gathered a few times a week for three months to work out what we wanted to put in the show, what stories we wanted to tell from our lived experiences and how much the oversexualisation and fetishism of Asian women has affected us.

My friend Aiwa Pooamorn who I was on stage with in another show, Other: Chinese, pulled me into being in Asian Womxn and she featured in a hilarious video hitting stereotypes of online sex sites. Working with an exclusively Asian female cast was amazing. We didn’t have to explain racism, sexism or othering, we had all lived inside of it, each of us finding ways to survive and push against it. We formed a sistahood and even if we don’t see each other much I know we’ve got each other’s backs. It felt very much like that too working on Other: Chinese with Alice Canton.

The core cast of that show will forever be my Chinese whanau and the depth of 3 months of diving into the racism felt as Chinese New Zealanders has bonded us for life. For many of us we reclaimed our Chinese-ness with pride, for all of us we found belonging.

In An Extraordinary meeting, I was the only POC so it was a very different experience. Less of the heart connected bonding and more experience in acting and working with audiences. The piece was based on writer Alex Bonhams’ thesis subject and was very political. Audience participation was a huge part of the show so it differed every night depending on what the audience contributed, it was thrilling in that their thoughts were to be delivered to an actual Council meeting after the show’s run had concluded. Literally changing the world.

Recently you performed at Feminist Rage Night at the NZ Comedy Festival. Was it your first comedy festival? Did you improvise or was it acting?

Absolutely it was my first time on stage at a comedy gig... never thought I’d do that in my lifetime! Luckily it wasn’t exclusively comedy that night so a few of us were asked by Michèle to offer something different. I offered a spoken word piece that my partner and I crafted called the ‘Racist Rap.’

How do you feel before you get on the stage? Do you have any rituals?

Normally I am having an internal freak out. I need quiet, a chilled-out space. I know now to sit myself in the dressing room and not be out the front saying hello to friends. I’ll be going

over lines, going to the toilet, drinking water, going to the toilet again… I’m a mess. I don’t know why I do it to myself.

I saw your first show reel, Out, with Talia Pua, which made me cry. It feels very real. Can you tell us about the video and how did you feel while making it?

Wow, I’m honoured you felt connected to it. The topic of coming out as a Chinese womxn and the huge helping of cultural expectation put on us meant that I felt really connected to the storyline. My tears were completely real and Talia did such an amazing job playing my daughter that everything felt real. Basically I spent an entire morning crying with my friend

Ben, saying, “Don’t cry yourself out. You’ll go dry.” The show reel came about through an offer from Angle 3 Pictures to the graduates of Fresh Crop, an acting bootcamp initiative from Proudly Asian Theatre (P.A.T) and Pan Asian Screen Collective (P.A.S.C). Daryl Wong and Benjamin Teh crafted the storyline and a small crew shot it within one morning at a quiet park in Remuera. They were all divine to work with and the whole experience was very special.

You are also very active in fighting for LGBTQ rights. Do you think there is still a long way to go in terms of wider acceptance of the Rainbow community? What do you think we humans collectively must do to achieve equity?

There is a wee way to go in wider acceptance of the Rainbow communities. Some of the fights are the same as they have always been – for individuals, these are having the courage and safety to be out, to live freely and love who you love. Culture and religion can contribute to worrying about rejection from family, friends and social groups. That hasn’t changed for the individual but thank goodness we have some great characters and shows on Netflix that are mainstreaming Rainbow lives in ordinary ways that have never been accessible by mainstream NZers before. In the last two decades we have been fighting more and more for Trans rights, awareness and safety and in the last decade for gender fluid, gender diverse and non-binary identities to be accepted. What must we do collectively to achieve equality? Love, accept and respect. If we all just did this we would disrupt power, privilege, homophobia, racism, sexism, ablism and all the other “otherings.”

To me, you are an embodiment of an activist because you address wrongdoing immediately. That’s something that inspires me about you. Have you always been like that or is it life experiences that made you an activist in heart?

It’s taken a long time for me to find the words to challenge harmful conversations. I’m not always as articulate as I want to be but I’m always learning and honing my words. People will not always respond in an open-hearted way and I know that sometimes it’s not about the delivery – it’s about the shame of being caught out, or feeling they have to defend their position and prove me wrong. Sometimes it’s a word dance that ends well, sometimes not.

I have always had an innate response to address wrongdoing but as a migrant, as a womxn, and definitely in the years where I was dealing with internalised homophobia I have not always felt brave enough to speak. It is only since finding my communities of belonging and having experiences of not being “othered” have I found the strength to speak out.

What is your motivation to change things around you?

Things need to change. There is so much hurt and pain in the world. So much physical and sexual abuse, so much unwellness, so much suicide. Doing nothing contributes to the problem. Doing something contributes to change.

If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

One? Haaaaard! Eliminate sexual abuse.

Who is the most important woman in your life? 

Two important womxn – sorry, I can’t just pick one so now I’m breaking the rules. My mum, for her courage in migrating to New Zealand with a young child when she spoke little English and had to learn a whole new culture. My mum’s journey, her strength and resilience are inspiring. And my partner is my daily inspiration. She is a phenomenal parent, she is curious and open to everyone’s point-of-view and happy to reform her opinion if someone else has a more researched opinion. Her influence gives me the strength to achieve the big dreams, to not worry so much about being right but to always work to do right.

Photo by © Emily Raftery