October 3, 2023
In this update you’ll find:
Wurundjeri and Bunurong heritage and culture
- On 21 March, Melbourne City Council endorsed a motion in support of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, and the ‘yes’ campaign for the Constitutional Recognition of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. As part of our ongoing commitment to truth-telling, we have compiled a set of resources about the Voice to Parliament, the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, and the upcoming referendum. We will continue updating these resources as the referendum approaches, including information in multiple languages. We encourage you to bookmark this page to stay up to date.
Authorised by Sally Capp in Melbourne on behalf of Melbourne City Council.
- In May, Yirramboi festival brought us an incredible program of First Nations creative exploration for community to experience across the city. In May and June as part of National Reconciliation Week, we hosted a range of events to promote truth-telling, learning, healing and change, including an oration by 2022 Melbournian of the Year, Anotinette Braybrook which is available to view. In July we celebrated National NAIDOC Week and offered a range of activities to embrace and deepen understanding of our Aboriginal history and culture including a Deadly Books Giveaway, NAIDOC in the City event, Finders Keepers Market and more.
- Several art and library programs are delivered at Library at The Dock. The Maker space at the library allows people to use tools such as sewing machines, 3d printing machines, embroidery and computers free of charge, to enhance their skills.
- Inclusive employment program Game Changers, supported eight young people to gain employment at our recreation facilities. This program, delivered in partnership by The Huddle and YMCA, provides free support to young people seeking employment, including resume writing, interview practice, and career planning and goal setting. The program has helped improve diversity in the recreation facilities’ workforce with 26 per cent living in the City of Melbourne, 25 per cent born overseas, 15 per cent identifying as being a part of the LGBTQI+ community, and 9 per cent with a disability.
- TalktoMe was an application developed by St Vincent’s hospital and funded by us to facilitate brief, sentence-based, non-clinical information in multiple languages when communicating about day-to-day topics relating to healthcare.
- An inclusion and access officer role was created in our Family Services team to provide inclusive and responsive support for families. The officer will help families from culturally diverse backgrounds access support and services.
- We received a High Commendation award at the Victorian Multicultural Awards for Excellence, for the holistic organisational approach to supporting international students during COVID-19, and newly arrived refugees evacuated from Kabul.
- Support for local young people continued through our partnership with The Drum, which provides inclusive services and programs for young people from all genders, religions, cultural and identity backgrounds. This partnership also supported Queerspace Youth, a peer-led program for queer, trans, intersex, gender diverse or questioning people aged 16-25 years old.
- Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Training was completed by 518 'Red Coat' volunteers and 74 staff members. This training helps volunteers and staff to be aware and support people living with non-visible disabilities.
Neighbourhood greening and parks
- The Victoria Point Podium Greening project received a $500,000 matched-funding grant from the Urban Forest Fund to transform the Marvel Stadium concourse from grey to green. The project was completed in July. The project has transformed this underutilised podium area into a welcoming space with the addition of five new garden beds, canopy trees, habitat plantings, seating areas for relaxation, and upgraded lighting for safety. Once established, the new plantings will lead to a total of 2850 square metres of green cover.
- Point Park dog park has had new bush and fence borders installed to provide a visual barrier for dogs during off-leash hours to deter them from nearby path and cycleways.
- We’ve installed a new temporary pocket park at Yanonung Quay. A short-term action from the Docklands Summit was to deliver immediate beautification across Docklands to lift the quality of the space through greening. We have finalised work on this, with 10 planter boxes being relocated to New Quay Promenade and Harbour Esplanade.
We have also worked with Metro Tunnel Creative Program and re-homed their award-winning Albert Road Reserve pocket park to Yanonung Quay in Docklands.
This temporary pocket park will provide additional landscaping and seating options for visitors and ferry patrons to enjoy waterside views, and space to grab a coffee and admire the Cow Up A Tree artwork.
The parklet has been donated to the City of Melbourne by Metro Tunnel Creative Program and installation is funded by the Melbourne City Revitalisation Fund, a partnership between the Victorian Government and City of Melbourne.
- We continued our tree planting program with 2554 trees planted this year. There are over 80,000 trees in the City of Melbourne, and our canopy cover was mapped at 25 per cent this year.
- Tree planting examples can be found on;
Ron Barassi Senior Park and Docklands Drive: 70 trees were planting within the park and surrounding nature strips, including coast banksia.
Spencer Street: We completed the final stage of Spencer Street project with a total of 250 metres of soil improvement and 33 replacement trees.
Pearl River Road: We replaced 48 cubic metres of soil with premium tree planter mix.
Better waste management
- All residential single-unit dwellings and low-rise multi-unit dwellings in the City of Melbourne had access to a food waste recycling service in 2022-23. This has resulted in more than 5600 tonnes of food waste being diverted from landfill and recycled into compost.
Works have progressed so remaining households can access food waste recycling, including trialling options for recycling within high-rise buildings, which includes food waste dehydrator technology. This program diverts organic waste from landfill while minimising waste truck movement within the city.
- Programs to minimise waste from businesses within the city have also started, including educating small to medium businesses about the benefits of minimising waste and opting for reusable and recyclable packaging and products. Food waste recycling has also expanded within the city for businesses, utilising electric bikes to collect and divert over 146.59 tonnes of food waste.
- We’re supporting Docklands Chamber of Commerce with funding for business development initiatives, consumer advertising, marketing and promotion campaigns and local activations that promote the Docklands trader area to visitors.
- Our small business grants program supports new businesses to get started and existing businesses to expand and grow. This year we have a special focus on supporting small businesses that enhance the city’s vitality by increasing the occupancy rate of shopfronts across the municipality.
- Since the Shopfront Activation Program began in September 2021, there have been a total of 67 improvements across Carlton, CBD and Docklands, with 19 of those being in Docklands.
- Our Business Concierge team had 8089 contacts with business across the City of Melbourne between February and September.
- Now or Never festival was delivered across our city for 17 days with a wide range of artistic exhibitions on offer. We welcomed approximately 135,000 people from all around Victoria to enjoy the exhibitions.
- Through the shopfront activation program and several premier events such as Firelight Festival and the upcoming Now or Never Festival, we have reports of an increase in the number of people visiting Docklands.
- The Docklands Stakeholder Group has been established as a key action from the Docklands Summit. It provides a forum for information sharing, improving community connection, identifying opportunities to leverage existing grants, and understanding each group’s priorities and potential alignments. The group meets ever two months and is currently working on actioning key priority areas for Docklands.
- A new raingarden and permeable pavement have been installed in Fishplate Lane which support greening and remove pollution from stormwater.
- New rubbish deflector pontoons have been installed at Yarra’s Edge by our Wateways Team. Floating wetlands have been installed in Victoria Harbour and Yarra’s Edge.We are also working with external stakeholders, including Melbourne Water and Parks Victoria to reduce pollution .
- We continue to expand our Rapid Response Clean Team to fast-track graffiti removal, dumped rubbish, cigarettes, street sweeping and syringe collection across the city. Residents, workers and visitors continue to play an important role in reporting graffiti and rubbish across the city using Council’s QR code reporting system. From January to August this year we received 25,549 requests to respond to graffiti and cleaned more than 70,000 square metres of surfaces of graffiti.
- The Excellent City Series of forums explored what design excellence means if you live in, work in, learn in or visit Melbourne. A key objective of these forums was to engage directly with the community to hear their perspectives, to inform and improve outcomes in the built environment.
- The 2023 Melbourne Boat Show is coming back to Docklands for another year along Harbour Esplanade as well as activation along Victoria Harbour.
- Additional berthing will be installed at VH06 for on water businesses.
- As part of our continued advocacy to the Victorian Government, we wrote to the Minister of Planning and the CEO of Development Victoria regarding plans to reinstate the Moonee Ponds Creek trail in Docklands. As of June, the Victorian Government was still reviewing the Draft Moonee Ponds Creek Implementation Plan.
- We're exploring ways to improve opportunities for women, girls and others who experience barriers to participation in community sport and recreation. To achieve this, we’re developing a Fair Access Policy. Public consultation was also carried out during September and October to better understand the barriers, as well as enablers to inclusion. Find out more about this work and how to get involved.
- Four park paths were upgraded to provide safe, clear and well lit accessible paths of travel at Point Park, Princess Park (Icon Park Path), ArtPlay Playground boardwalk, and Princess Park (north) board walk.
- A new pedestrian crossing has been installed in Docklands Drive.
- Community Resilience Assessments are being conducted in North and West Melbourne, and Docklands to understand and respond to the physical and social vulnerabilities that communities face before, during, and after a disaster.
- 'What you need to know to survive on the streets’ is a short information booklet produced every two months by a group of people experiencing or with lived experience of homelessness, published by our libraries in partnership with Cohealth. Participants have also been supported to learn and care for each other and the community, building social, emotional, and practical skills.
- Our library social worker outreach program continues to support community members through outreach and connection to social services.
- A ‘drug safety in the city’ flyer has been produced and distributed to key stakeholders and businesses.
- A Local Safety Committee Meeting was held on 23 June, which covered the Melbourne West area, including the western part of the CBD, North Melbourne, Docklands, Parkville and Carlton. Representatives from each of these neighbourhoods were present.
- We hosted the Melbourne Licensees Forum in June 2023, where licensed venues shared information and discussed matters impacting them. The forum shared information about the late night liquor license freeze and public intoxication law reform.
- A translation function was added to Participate Melbourne, supporting users to translate content into the top 10 languages other than English spoken in the municipality.
- Firelight Festival created a social story to support participants to understand and plan for what they would see, hear and do at the event. Social stories are particularly helpful for children and people who are neurodiverse or have a neurological disabilities as they help to lessen the anxiety of the new by introducing the event ahead of time. The festival also provided accessible entry points with specific drop-off and pick-up zones and staff had communication boards to support conversations with people with limited language skills.
- The Connected Neighbourhoods Small Grants program provides small grants to support connection and community-led responses to the neighbourhood priorities. We recently funded a local mahjong games night to engage residents with one another, which is run fortnightly at a local restaurant.
- We will encourage short-term accommodation operators to shift their properties onto the long-term rental market to deliver more homes for people wanting to live in Melbourne. At the 29 August Council meeting, Councillors voted to begin consultation to inform the development of new local laws that are designed to encourage the flip of short-term accommodation into long-term rentals. Consultation opened in September for feedback. New regulation is likely to be introduced in February 2024.
- Our Power Melbourne project will install a network of neighbourhood batteries around the city to help renters, people living in apartments, and those running small businesses access more affordable renewable energy. Last year we consulted with community on where the first batteries could be installed, and the first three locations were approved by Council: Library at the Dock in Docklands, Boyd Community Hub in Southbank, and Council House 2 in CBD.
Mahjong is affectionately known in many Chinese families as the ‘gossip table’. For husband and wife, Shirley Cheng and Paul Vella, who host a fortnightly mahjong meet-up in Docklands, the game is also about community connection.
Our libraries provide a sanctuary of learning, creativity and relaxation across the city. Books are just the beginning of our library services – connect with the community at workshops, unleash your creativity in a makerspace or book one of our many meeting spaces. Visit our Docklands library now.
Grants of up to $2000 are available to increase community participation, connection, equity, diversity and inclusion through our new Connected Neighbourhoods Small Grants. Applications are open all year until the budget has been fully allocated.
Check out other grant opportunities on the Community Noticeboard.
Neighbourhood Partner, Docklands
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Acknowledgement of Traditional Owners
The City of Melbourne respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land we govern, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin and pays respect to their Elders past and present. We acknowledge and honour the unbroken spiritual, cultural and political connection they have maintained to this unique place for more than 2000 generations.
We accept the invitation in the Uluru Statement from the Heart and are committed to walking together to build a better future.
