By the end of the ideas phase that ran from 1 February to 31 March, the community had produced 970 ideas for the Future of Melbourne and submitted 350 surveys. The program of 31 events engaged over 2000 people and nearly 2000 people registered on this website. All of the ideas generated at the events were shared on the website.

The City of Melbourne engaged research consultants Global Research to prepare an independent analysis and synthesis of the outputs from the ideas phase. They have analysed how the new ideas relate to the existing Future Melbourne (2008) goals and priorities. They have used this analysis to characterise the community’s thinking about the future of Melbourne from the perspectives set by those goals and priorities. They have also analysed the survey results about the community’s views of the Future Melbourne (2008) vision and goals. Read their report on the homepage called Bringing your Ideas Together.

In April the City of Melbourne mailed invitations to be a member of the Future Melbourne 2026 citizens’ jury to the addresses of over 6000 randomly selected households, business owners and employees in the municipality. The City of Melbourne engaged an independent agency to then select 60 people from the pool of people who responded to their invitation. The jury was selected to match the municipality’s demographic profile for gender, age range, business size and location.

The jury’s task is to refresh the Future Melbourne vision, goals and priorities to prepare our city for the next decade. The jury members met earlier in May and have been working together online preparing for their three full day face-to-face sessions on 28 May, 4 June and 18 June.

The Future Melbourne Ambassadors will engage with the jury on the first jury day, provide their feedback to the jury after its second jury day. At the end of their third day the jury will present their refresh of the Future Melbourne plan to the Ambassadors. The Ambassadors will then review the jury’s refresh and consider any changes they think may be needed before they commend Future Melbourne 2026 to Council in August.