Tandara Pa Rainbow is a community care focused not-for-profit born from Rainbow Muse. Its a space for creativity, connection, culture and collective care. Sometimes people just need to to express themselves, engage with community, feel supported and enjoy the magic of other humans.
I created Tandara Pa Rainbow for intersectional identities. It celebrates all cultures, identities, abilities and bodies. The focus is on dismantling the ideologies that leave us feeling “othered.”
In this and in all my work I centre the needs of First Nations people, Black people, and People of Colour, and are a committed to accessibity and amplification of LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent and disabled communities.
I founded Rainbow Muse in 2019. After working in mental health settings for over a decade, I wanted to find another way to do therapy – a way that was creative and fit for people who don’t like boxes. This dream exploded beyond what I imagined.
Very quickly our clinic and all its therapists were full and our waitlist was overflowing to the point we had to close our books. I was sitting in our clinic, looking at the “by appointment only” sign outside, knowing our website said no new clients. My heart ached realising how inaccessible this setting is for a lot of communities.
I got to wondering how I could work with community and find other ways to be part of humans creating together and making meaning. Years in community development showed me the power of community, togetherness, creating, moving, playing and sharing.
We need spaces of kindness and acceptance where people can be supported in coming together to be creative, express themselves and co-construct meaning within the context of their experiences and identities – from a place of equality and openness.
The answer was Tandara Pa Rainbow! It is a love letter to my mother Eunice and an expression of her heart. She died in February 2022. The grief I felt is the most heart wrenchingly painful thing I have ever experienced but I learned quickly that this it is the price we pay for love.
My mother was my first safe space, my first place of belonging, and my biggest teacher in what it means to be love in this world. We always need love, to be connected and to be a part off. For anyone who didn't know Eunice, its my lifes work to pass on the love she raised me with.
Tandara is the embodiment of my loving, creative, hilarious, generous and kind mother. She loved fearlessly and hard and she valued community and togetherness. In her honour birthed an expression of radical love and imagination. A space for celebrating culture, art-making, social justice, creative expression, wellness and community care, with a multi-systems advocacy approach that acknowledges systems and prioritises community building and the collective.
I hope to get to Tandara with you