Auckland Museum's popular 'mingling' evenings help singles find their match

Tonight's 'Mingle at the Museum' marks more than five years of people socialising at Auckland's cultural hub, with the evening frequently leading to dates and even long-term relationships. Polly Wenlock talks to the organiser and meets three couples who first mingled at the museum.

"Gosh, there were a lot of people mingling tonight, we could almost set up a singles event!"

It was an offhand comment between friends that kicked off the Auckland Museum's now five-year legacy of live dating events, hosting thousands of attendees and leading to countless succesful matches and an adjacent Pride specific mingle.

The museum's events co-ordinator Jo Brookbanks organised the first Mingle at the Museum in March 2020, two weeks before New Zealand's first Covid 19 lockdown when fear of the mysterious new virus was on the ascent.

"We were a little concerned about the amount of mingling that would happen," she laughs.

"The first event sold out super quick, after that we realised there was definitely a market for people hoping to meet in person."

More than five years later the events pull large numbers. Tonight's general mingle event sold out at 450 people this year; while tomorrow evening's Pride event still has some ticket availability.

Brookbanks says the mingles are a conscious departure from the more rigid structure of traditional speed dating as well as the "low-effort" dating that often stems from the apps.

"I was doing reading and listening to podcasts on the single experience, and it seems to be moving towards people doing things that are generally fun, with everyone else doing it also just happening to be generally single."

She points to her team of ice-breaker hosts as being instrumental in creating a safe, welcoming and inclusive space for singles to engage in low-stakes activities like group quizzes, bingo challenge cards, drawing dates and games.

The events aren't exclusively for dating. "People are super busy and it can be hard to make new friends so this is getting people out there to do that as well," Brookbanks says.

But there are structures in place to help attendees identify who's open to meeting a potential future date. "They get a little heart sticker if they're actively looking for a romantic connection."

Brookbanks encourages people not to be goal-oriented about the evening. "To me, apps are very goal oriented: there’s a process, whereas the mingles are more about flexing socialisation muscles and practising making connections.

"Meeting people in real life takes away that tick-box approach you get on the apps where you have a strict idea about what your person should be."

The museum's Pride mingle came about from feedback given to organisers after some of the early events.

"We started off having a very inclusive mingle for anybody who wanted to come... But what we found was the majority of people attending were heterosexual and that in turn meant that people in the rainbow community couldn’t find each other."

So Brookbanks and her team designed a separate, adjacent event focused on creating community for LGBTQ+ attendees.

Helen, a 55-year-old intermediate school deputy principal, attended the museum's first ever general mingle, but found love at one of the more recent pride nights.

"Life was a lot of focus around work," she says. "I liked to keep busy, I was at that stage in my life where I wanted a partner but I was also happy with myself – with being alone."

When Helen told her coworkers she was going to attend the Pride mingle, one of them said, "You never know, you might meet the love of your life".

"Yeah right," said Helen.

Shortly after arriving, she found herself shoulder-to-shoulder with Janine, a 48-year-old senior health and safety advisor for a disability organisation.

Janine had ended a relationship three years earlier and had given speed-dating a go but was dissatisfied with the direct and forced feel of that approach.

Janine, who'd taken a friend along to the Pride mingle, hadn't been there long when she spotted Helen.

"We were standing at the beginning of the event listening to the instructions for the night, I remember turning to my right and Helen had appeared next to me.

"She had this really lovely blue velvet coat on, and I thought 'that’s a nice coat' and then I looked at Helen and thought 'Oh, and she’s quite nice too'."

Distracted by the instructions being given, Janine looked away for just a second, and when she looked back Helen was gone!

"My friend asked me 'who are you looking for?' and I said, 'there was this woman I really wanted to talk to – she’s gone!'"

As fate would have it, Janine and Helen found each other shortly after, they chatted – prompted in some part by the drag queens helping run the event – and browsed the exhibits on show, both features of the event they credit as being helpful in keeping conversation flowing.

At the end of the night Helen secured their connection: "I said 'I'll get your phone number if you ever want to go for a walk".

Two days later their first date was a walk on Takapuna Beach followed by dinner at Tuk Tuk Thai, but the romance was really secured last December 23rd when they went to see the Franklin Rd Christmas lights.

Janine asked Helen: "Is it OK if I kiss you?"

"I was thinking it would go one of two ways" she recalls. "That she would either say 'OMG no, I was thinking just friends' or 'Yes that’s exactly what I wanted' and that's what she did.

Ten months later the two are inseperable, having spent no more than three nights apart.

Janine and Helen both enthusiastically recommended their museum mingle experience.

"It's such a positive experience, even for someone who is not quite ready to look for someone but is ready to get out and about and start socialising again" says Janine.

Helen agrees. "What’s the worst that could happen? You make friends or you meet the love of your life – as my work mate told me – I didn’t believe her and I was wrong."

Ashlin, 28 at the time, attended one of Auckland Museum’s mingles as a wing-woman to a recently separated friend.

"I hadn’t dated that much," she says. "I wasn't keen on getting out there because I didn't want to use dating apps, that just wasn't my thing.

"I just thought it would be really cool to go to the museum at night, it sounded like a fun, kind of classy place to hang out."

Ashlin and her girlfriends were mingling in the atrium when they were approached by a group of men, including José, then 31.

"He did this move where he introduced himself to my friend to get to me, and so we got to talking a bit."

For José, the meeting was less low stakes: "I saw her from the corner of my eye and I was smitten from then on. I said 'that's going to be my wife."

Ashlin couldn't focus completely on José as she had a role to fulfill supporting her friend. But the museum’s many organised activities gave the couple plenty of opportunities to check in with each other before the night's end.

"We caught up around three times and at the end of the night I said 'I'm flying to Australia tomorrow, but I’ll be back in two weeks, I would love to take you out to dinner," says José.

When he was back, Ashlin and José went to popular restaurant Jerome for dinner – the two weeks apart meant no love lost.

"When I saw her coming towards the restaurant, I just knew that was it," concludes José.

Two and a half years later, he says, he feels exactly the same way. The couple are now living together in their new home of Perth.

Both endorse the museum event, but recommend to go in with no expectations:

"Know you can't push it, if it’s going to happen for you it could happen anywhere," advises José.

Ashlin sums it up: "It's a cool place to make history, the museum."

Chloe, 31, met their partner Sean, 38, at one of the museum’s Pride mingle events, shortly after the pandemic.

Chloe was "very happy and content" in their single life, attending to support a friend involved in organising the event, but also as "an excuse to hang out with friends in a fun and silly environment".

Sean was over the dating app experience and "keen to try and find someone to be in a more permanent relationship".

He thought the type of people he'd like to date might attend an event at the museum. "So that was the draw for me."

Neither were expecting the free-flow yet activity-filled format of the event, but felt pleasantly engaged by the tasks.

"It was lovely in the sense that if you did like someone's vibe and wanted to get to know them a bit better you could just kind of walk around the museum together…You could spot lots of people doing that, it was very cute," says Chloe.

Chloe's first words to Sean? "Do you know Raoul?"

Five years on, it's a reference that still has the couple laughing.

Chloe explains: "My friend had found a random unclaimed name tag for a bisexual looking for love called Raoul and challenged me to find him.

"So the whole afternoon I had been (jokingly) seeking him out, asking everyone, Sean responded though."

Sean laughs, "I said 'I'm really sorry but they're dead' — I could tell this wasn’t a serious search so I figured let's just make this something fun."

As the bit continued, they decided Raoul must have been murdered at the singles event and hidden in the paper mâché volcano.

"So it meant they weren't my true love, so Sean must've been" jokes Chloe. Then on a more serious note continues, "It was that for me, the fact that, even now we’re more friends, we have banter."

Sean agrees. "Commit to the bit is the secret."

Chloe leaves me with this advice: "There’s no perfect person, but you can work together to make your relationship perfect... Creating a really good communication base from the beginning to navigate challenging times, because there will be challenging times."

With five years together under their belts, both have clearly committed to that bit.

Tickets for the Mingle at the Museum Pride Edition, tomorrow night (Thursday, October 9), are still available. Tonight's event is sold out.