For Reconciliation Week 2026, Platform Arts and Barwon Water present Beyond the Badge, an immersive arts experience that invites participants to challenge perceptions of identity, authority, and belonging. Led by Platform Arts guest curator, Jessi Rebel, participants will explore works exhibiting as part of Yarrangany and then have the opportunity to participate in a workshop that explores what lies beneath labels and uniforms—centering First Nations voices, stories, and lived realities.

Moving beyond symbolic gestures, this work creates space for reflection, dialogue, and deeper understanding. Beyond the Badge asks: what do we see when we look past the surface? And how can truth-telling through creative practice open pathways toward genuine reconciliation?

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR:

Jessi Rebel is a proud Wiradjuri person, residing on Wadawurrung Country. Jessi grew up on Biripi Country, learning to surf from a young age. Connection to Country and Sea Country is a strong influence on the works they create, reflecting on the relationships we have to these ever-changing and versatile landscapes that hold so much life and truth. Jessi has a background as a youth and social worker so also draws a lot of inspiration from interpersonal relationships and the intersection of all things. Jessi’s artworks often depict flowing line work and bold shapes and colours, each carrying their own meaning and story. Jessi works collaboratively in community, engaging in murals and workshops with youth and students and loves bringing other’s stories to life through art. Jessi has recently graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Therapy and believes creativity and art has the power to heal the world, both within us and around us. 

ABOUT YARRANGANY

Yarrangany is a collective exhibition honouring the deep, living foundations that shape First Nations identities across the world. The word “yarrangany,” translating to roots in Wiradjuri language, speaks to ancestry, Country, language, memory, and the unseen systems that hold us, beneath the surface, across generations, and beyond borders.

Bringing together First Nations artists from diverse Countries, cultures, and nations, this exhibition explores identity as something relational and evolving. Through contemporary and traditional practices, works engage with place and displacement, kinship and community, cultural survival and renewal, growth and becoming.

Yarrangany invites reflection on how we belong, to land, to story, to each other, and how those connections continue to transform in a changing world. Yarrangany seeks to create a shared space of visibility, dialogue, and connection, where roots intertwine, and new growth emerges.

This event is presented by:

Contact the host of Beyond the Badge: Djilang Arts and Culture Precinct Reconciliation Week Event