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Emerson<\/a> has achieved a lot since winning the solo-duo category at Smokefreerockquest in 2024, including a national tour, festival slots, and co-writing sessions with Ladyhawke and Gin Wigmore<\/a>. She was also singer\/guitarist for indie rock band Fan Club, before they called it a day in 2025. <\/span><\/p>\n Emerson found it was a heavy lift, however, to get from competition success to finding her own place in the local music scene. That\u2019s why she was grateful to receive help from T\u0101maki Makaurau Auckland not-for-profit studio\/venue Big Fan.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere are definitely some gaps between success in a competition and building a sustainable career as an artist,\u201d she tells Rolling Stone AU\/NZ<\/em>. \u201cThe biggest ones for me were recording music sustainably, finding opportunities to perform, collaborative songwriting, and understanding how the wider music industry works. Those are all areas where Big Fan played a really important role in my development.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Image: Emerson performs at Morningside Mixtape Credit: Bryan Lowe<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Big Fan was launched in 2022 by super-producer Joel Little (Lorde<\/a>, Taylor Swift) and his wife Gemma. They created the combined studio\/venue space to help foster young talent. This aim inspired Big Fan\u2019s current project, New Fans, which engages young people in every aspect of the live experience \u2014 whether it\u2019s booking the shows, working as crew on the events, performing onstage, or just being a member of the audience.<\/span><\/p>\n This program builds on Big Fan\u2019s previous efforts to bring young people into the music scene, and the organisation\u2019s general manager Savina Fountain is sympathetic to the challenges of starting out. She formed a high school band with friends in the late \u201990s and, when they entered Smokefreerockquest, they found they were the only female musicians in the East Auckland region. After two years of the competition, Fountain realised that her terrible stage fright wasn\u2019t improving and instead directed her love of music into putting on all-ages shows.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Savina first met Joel when they were both studying at MAINZ, and she later booked his pop-punk band Goodnight Nurse<\/a> for an all-ages show. She joined Big Fan in the early days and shared Joel and Gemma\u2019s vision of creating an all-ages venue where young people could feel welcome, whether as performers, technical staff, or fans. The venue does have a liquor licence, but often closes the bar during youth-focused events such as the mentorship program Ignite.<\/span><\/p>\n