FREMANTLE Indigenous indie electronic pop act Boox Kid has been named the 2025 recipient of RAC Arena’s Limelight music support fund, securing a package valued at more than $25,000.
Now in its fourth year, the initiative was launched to mark the Arena’s 10th anniversary and is supported by West Australian Music.
It aims to spotlight emerging WA musicians through financial backing, performance opportunities and promotion.
As the major prize winner Boox Kid (the stage name of Jarred Wall) will receive $5000 in financial assistance, a live performance at Telethon 2026, a radio campaign, music equipment, studio time, inclusion in the 2026 WAM Showcase line-up and promotional support.
• Boox Kid, aka Jarred Wall. Photo supplied
“I’m so excited and grateful to be the recipient of this year’s Limelight grant, which will go toward completing my second EP, written in Noongar language,” Kid said.
“I am extremely proud of my Noongar heritage and appreciative of this opportunity and RAC Arena’s support.
“This project is about the strength of culture and preservation of language and to have that backed by RAC Arena and WAM is special.
“Thank you to those supporting me, our old people for their wisdom and congratulations to the two runner up recipients as well.”
Before shifting the focusing to his music, Mr Wall spent spent 15 years working in youth justice, revealing in an interview with Northbridge’s Centre for Stories that he was becoming increasingly convinced the system was failing his young charges.
“It kind of became pretty clear after 15 years when people saying the systems are broken, they’re actually not broken… the systems were never built for us to achieve. They were designed that way.”
His last two years with the Department of Justice were spent working in a youth bail centre, where he felt challenged morally.
“I felt like I was directly impacting kids going into detention, which for me was heartbreaking because the last thing I wanted to see was more of them in custody.
“Like the Uluru Statement says, these are really good kids,” he said.
“We are not innately criminal, and I wanted to achieve the best I could for my mob.”
• To hear Mr Wall’s compelling interview, including his unsettling first encounter with racism in a well-known Ipswich fish and chip shop, head to https://centreforstories.com/stories/hear-our-voice/jarred-wall/
by STEVE GRANT