Thank you to everyone who helped make the Mardi Gras parade a wonderful celebration for our community in March.

Meet the wonderful team behind our Mardi Gras Float! Anyone who has marched with us in the past will know how much work goes into organising our Mardi Gras float. Bern and Di have coordinated the Rainbow Families Mardi Gras float for the past few years and this year have managed to deal with all that COVID has thrown at them!

Organising Mardi Gras is a massive job. From applying for the floats and working with Mardi Gras on our parade places, designing the shirts and props, setting up ticketing, communicating with the community as well as Mardi Gras and our supporters, finding choreographers, organising dance rehearsals and making sure everyone turns up on the night. It’s a massive job that takes months of work.

Bern and Di pull it off with grace and good humour and always have a fabulous time on the night.

Bern talks about why Mardi Gras is so special to her “Mardi Gras is the night of nights for our community and an event I absolutely love being involved in. My house gets turned into Mardi Gras central for a few months every year and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Mardi Gras is a night for our families to be with their community and be proud of who they are.”

Volunteering with Rainbow Families is a rewarding way of giving back to the community "I love rainbow families, and doing the ticketing for Mardi Gras is a way that I can support rainbow families having a wonderful night.  I'm looking forward to seeing all three floats show off their moves and represent our amazing community" explains Di.

Di and Bern, thank you for all the work you have put into Mardi Gras this year. We know it will be a fantastic night!

It’s officially Mardi Gras season, and while some members of our community are working hard at the gym, for parents it’s a time to think about how we can talk to our kids about what Mardi Gras means.

We spoke to an expert in early childhood education, Dr Red Ruby Scarlet, Creative Director of Multiverse Educational Consultancy and Resourcing:

LGBTIQA+ is an acronym festooned with culture. So, like any culture, including it in your early childhood curriculum means thinking about how relationships are formed within communities.

In the early childhood curriculum, we value the ongoing work of connecting with community in ways that recognise the diversity of the families that are local to us as well as the families that we know are part of the broader Australian identity.