Each year, our co-designed activity is based around free creative play and making workshops for the Club’s children and young people on home Game Days.
Rumbalara is a vital gathering place for Yorta Yorta families across sport, health and education, and Polyglot pays its deep respects to the Club’s leaders and community for their friendship and support. Our reciprocal relationship provides invaluable creative and cultural development opportunities for Polyglot’s artists and staff, enriching how we work and the art we make and share.
Our workshops offer unique creative self-expression opportunities for the Club’s children and young people, alongside Game Day sports, with regular participants (often those who are younger or perhaps less engaged in sport) experiencing a meaningful sense of connection and belonging. Kids always have full agency over their participation, dropping in and out as they like. In this safe, relaxed atmosphere they are deeply engaged, often using art and play to process life events.
Our 2025 activity was anchored around the creation of Rumba Café. Delivered by a team of Polyglot artists who have all been part of the nine-year partnership, it encompassed a variety of artistic offerings: painting, including on ceramics and textiles; clay sculptures; exploring the Munarra garden herbs to make tea blends; storytelling and radio broadcasting.
The Rumba Café Grand Opening took place at the final 2025 Game Day workshop, with families, community members, Elders, and Polyglot artists and staff coming together to witness and celebrate the children’s creations.
Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony and speeches, the kids prepared fantastical culinary creations to order in their cardboard and paper kitchen, serving visiting adults. The Listening Lounge offered an opportunity to hear the children’s stories in their own words, gathered over the season. Special t-shirts and tea towels carried the memories home.
Our relationship with the Club began with First On The Ladder, a three-year art-meets-sport collaboration between Polyglot and Beyond Empathy, in partnership with Rumbalara and the Moree Boomerangs in northern New South Wales. First On The Ladder ran from 2017–2019 and centred on the young people from these two First Nations sports clubs – celebrating their culture and achievements through a range of creative experiences including filmmaking, street art, radio broadcasting and play workshops.
The opportunity for Polyglot to work collaboratively and to co-create and exchange would not have been possible without the infrastructure, generosity and vision of Rumbalara and the Boomerangs. We are privileged to have had access to the strength of family and culture and the power of sport within regional communities, and to the breadth of engagement these clubs make possible. For Polyglot, working with Rumbalara and the Boomerangs has furthered our understanding and appreciation of how art can speak, work and act.
First On The Ladder had tangible and positive outcomes for Rumbalara. There was growth in confidence and connection in the participating children and families, resulting in stronger ties to community and culture. Rumbalara and Polyglot identified the strength and value of our partnership, and the benefits to its continuation.
First On The Ladder (2017-2019) was assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts funding and advisory body. Rumba Shop! and Rumba Gallery (2020-2024) were generously supported by the Newsboys Foundation. Rumba Play! (2025) was part of Polyglot’s Creative Kids Thrive! project, supported by VicHealth through the Growing Healthy Communities grant.
