A Heritage Strategy is a document that guides how Council will plan for the protection, management and celebration of heritage. It should prioritise projects to be done and key stakeholders to work with. It should be a ‘whole of Council’ strategy with full Council support to ensure the diverse aspects of our city that are important us now can also be appreciated by future generations. 

The current Heritage Strategy was prepared in 2013. It provided a framework to ensure the continued protection and enhancement of all the elements of Melbourne’s heritage. Since 2013, the focus has been on the completion of heritage reviews to address inconsistent and outdated heritage controls. This large undertaking is nearing completion. A range of other actions have been progressed, including heritage grants through the Melbourne Heritage Restoration Fund, and updates to the local heritage policies in the Planning Scheme. It is now time to review our approach and plan for the next 10 years and beyond.

Much has changed since the 2013 strategy was published and new challenges are ahead. We have an opportunity to go beyond heritage protection and think differently, exploring how heritage can contribute to our wider work. We need to do more to understand how different people engage with and experience heritage across the municipality.

To begin the process of creating a new Heritage Strategy, we prepared the Heritage People and Place Discussion Paper. This included new ideas that could address new challenges and opportunities being faced by the city. These ideas and topics in the paper were a prompt for conversation and helped to guide the community consultation in February and March 2024. The feedback received on the Discussion Paper from residents, workers, visitors, community groups, industry, and Traditional Owners informed the development of our Draft Melbourne Heritage Strategy. 

The Draft Melbourne Heritage Strategy includes five priorities areas which are:

• Aboriginal Heritage – ensuring Aboriginal culture is prominent in all our heritage activities.
• Powerful Experiences - sharing the layers of knowledge, history and stories of Melbourne.
• Distinctive Places – appreciating heritage that can continue to be legible and inform city growth.
• Climate and biodiversity emergency – exploring how embodied energy can be valued and places can be adapted to operate more sustainably in a changing climate.
• Stewardship – caring for our heritage places and appreciating their wider public value.

An inclusive engagement approach on the Draft Melbourne Heritage Strategy has been planned. We want to reach a diverse range of stakeholders, including those that do not typically engage with heritage projects and allow time for their input to be properly considered.

Feedback received on the Draft Melbourne Heritage Strategy will inform the development of the final version. In particular, it will help us to determine the actions we should be focussing on over the next 10 years and beyond. It will help us to determine which actions should be prioritised, and who should be involved in their delivery.