October 3, 2023
In this update you’ll find:
- 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.
- We have supported the new Kensington Reconciliation Action Group with a Connected Neighbourhood small grant to run a National Reconciliation Week film screening, and other activities.
- We're working to consult further with Wurundjeri Traditional Owners to inform our response to concerns about historical display boards in the conference room at Kensington Town Hall. In the interim, we have installed a framed copy of our Declaration of Recognition and Commitment to Aboriginal Peoples, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags in the room, and a warning notice for people looking to book or enter the space.
- 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
- We are running a People’s Panel on Affordable Housing in October and November 2023. This panel will include 40 people who are representative of our resident community, to hear from the experts, learn about affordable housing in the community and explore new and innovative ways to truly make Melbourne a city that everyone can call home. Recruitment has begun and randomly selected people who receive an invite can now register for the panel. Outcomes of the panel will be shared to Council and the general public.
- Through one of our grants, Anika Legal developed self-Advocacy guides for renters in 10 priority languages to help local residents experiencing disadvantage navigate changes in rental laws and seek assistance for housing related legal problems.
- '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.
- We engaged not-for-profit organisation Lively to deliver digital literacy programs for older people. Lively trains and employs young jobseekers to provide support and connection for older people. It also builds meaningful intergenerational relationships that foster greater understanding and respect. Lively tech helpers provided one-on-one technology training and support for people to use their smartphone, tablet device, laptop or computer. People were supported in their homes, at Connect Cafe session at the Kensington Neighbourhood Centre and Tech Help pop-ups at public housing estates at Carlton, Kensington and North Melbourne. A total of 589 older people took part.
- In June Council considered a report called ‘Improve internet access in City of Melbourne's community facilities and for hard to reach groups’ and agreed to develop a Digital Inclusion Plan. This will include establishing a standard for Wi-Fi at Council facilities and looking at a model for the City of Melbourne to support a device donation scheme, allowing hard to reach groups access to devices.
- Each month City of Melbourne Libraries induct new people to access library makerspaces. These makerspaces provided access to technology, creative infrastructure and programs that support digital literacy and skill development. Libraries deliver specific Digital Literacy workshops to support employment, financial and wellbeing needs. Individuals can also Book a Librarian for a one-on-one digital literacy support program that is tailored to user’s needs. Our Library outreach team also takes part in regular Chatty Café sessions on Thursday afternoons at Kensington Neighbourhood Centre.
- 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. They run a regular weekly session based at the Kensington housing estate.
- For older people we offered a range of programs through the Kensington Neighbourhood Centre including our new weekly Chatty Café activity, gardening group, Tech Connect and more.
- Kensington Neighbourhood Centre held an expression of interest process to help new groups access and activate the space. It’s also running our weekly Chatty Cafe sessions to support access to and activation of the space.
- Our community use of town halls scheme (CUTHS) supports not-for-profit community groups with in-kind support for the use of the Kensington Town Hall and other facilities. We're exploring opportunities for further activation of Kensington Town Hall.
- Construction of Kensington Community Aquatic and Recreation Centre was delayed due to improvement work on contaminated soil. This is now complete and construction is underway.
- 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.
- City Swimm(h)er, a partnership between us, Islamic Council of Victoria and Australian Muslim Social Services Association, received external funding to pilot women’s only open swim sessions every Saturday afternoon, as well as structured swimming lessons at Melbourne City Baths.
- We provided Connected Neighbourhood Small grant funding to Kensington Junior Soccer Club and Kensington Flemington Colts Cricket Club to help increase their engagement and reach.
- We supported a refresh of Davis Street Garden through new garden beds and working bee activities. We’re also supporting both the Davis St Garden and Eastwood St garden through Connected Neighbourhood Small grants.
- We’re supporting the Kensington Stockyard Food Garden to run mushroom growing workshops and an upcoming Mushfest event to learn food growing skills and help celebrate their five year anniversary.
- An engagement process was carried out with users of Kensington Community Garden on Westbourne St to explore how access to the gardens could be extended to a broader group of people. In response to the feedback, plans were put in place to improve equity of access at the gardens, including re-designing and increasing the plots available, introducing communal spaces, and upgrades to improve access for people with disabilities or mobility issues.
- Kensington Community Fresh Food Market continues to run on the first Saturday of the month, offering locally grown fresh produce for the community to enjoy for free or by donation.
- We partnered with all tiers of government through the Inner Metropolitan Partnership to promote food security and social cohesion. We have distributed food vouchers through a range of community centres and service providers including Kensington Neighbourhood House and The Venny.
- We’ve worked collaboratively with the Victorian Government and partners to plan for high-quality, climate-adapted urban renewal areas. In Macaulay, we lodged Amendment C417, requesting the Minister for Planning authorise the Amendment for public exhibition.
- A new translation function was added to Participate Melbourne, supporting users to translate content into the top 10 languages other than English spoken in the municipality.
- Works were completed to improve access at a range of facilities including Kensington Community and Children’s Co-operative. These included changes to doors and door controls, visual indicators, accessible toilets, and hearing augmentation (technology that enables people to access quality audio through their hearing device, which is particularly helpful in places with lots of background noise). In addition, there were also 43 access audits completed and the findings from these will form the basis for future access improvements.
- Our Family Services team has a new inclusion and access officer role to provide inclusive and responsive support for families. The officer will help families from culturally diverse backgrounds access support and services.
- The Lord Mayor’s Iftar dinner was hosted at the Queen Victoria Market. This event strengthened connection amongst the Muslim community and demonstrated Council’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. A social enterprise that employs migrant and refugee women, Meals with Impact, provided the catering. With 80 guests, this year was the largest Lord Mayor’s Iftar dinner to date.
- We made progress this year on disaster preparedness and building organisational and community resilience. Community Resilience Assessments were delivered in three of our neighbourhoods including Kensington, where community members shared their resilience priorities.
- With local partners we've supported the development of the Kensington Community Fresh Food market to help tackle food insecurity, climate justice and build neighbourhood systems – more than 600 kilograms of freshly grown local produce has been harvested and distributed to community since the project started in November 2022. We've help create a case study of this partnership approach to inform future work.
- We’re committed to reducing the threat of extreme urban heat for all, particularly vulnerable people. We are working to create a ‘heat safe city’ with our goal that the city provides places of respite for residents, workers and visitors during extreme heat events. Earlier in the year we consulted with community on heat health priorities and ways we can create a heat safe city. This feedback is helping us develop heat safe city principles and advocacy positions which will guide actions for future summers, such as design of streetscapes and open space, location of shading and services to support vulnerable community members. Keep an eye on the Heat Safe City page page for further updates.
- Work is well underway to replace the Stubbs Street pump station and increase drainage capacity and help reduce flooding in low-lying areas of Kensington. Work is expected to be fully completed next year.
- We're undertaking a circular economy precinct pilot study to better understand benefit and opportunities for investment into recycling and waste reduction. Several precincts were investigated with Kensington selected as the area to focus further study and modelling on.
- Through our Connected Neighbourhoods Communities Small grant we're supporting community led composting initiatives, including improving practices and engagement activities around compost hubs in Kensington.
- The Kensington repair hub continues to run regular monthly sessions to fix items and share skills. The Waste Wisdoms program led by Unison Housing, Kensington Neighbourhood House, Transition Town Kensington with support from other local organisations received Sustainability Victoria funding to continue and expand their work in and around the housing estate.
- We continued our tree planting program with 2554 trees planted this year. There are more than 80,000 trees in the public realm, and our canopy cover was mapped at 25 per cent this year. In Kensington we undertook the following work:
- We released our new Greening Melbourne permit system which enables community-led greening on council-owned footpaths. Visit Greening Melbourne to read more about this initiative.
- 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. We identified further areas for future neighbourhood batteries and ran a city-wide online survey and pop-ups. A team of Community Champions also explored the topic with their personal and professional networks. This helped us understand how people feel about potentially having a neighbourhood battery in their area, the kinds of benefits they want to see, and their location ideas. Follow Power Melbourne for more updates.
- More than 150 kW of battery capacity has been installed across the municipality, primarily at residential properties in Kensington, North Melbourne, Parkville and Carlton. Capacity figures were taken from data updated by the Australian Energy Market Operator in March.
- 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 Docklands.
- As of June, the Victorian Government was still reviewing the Draft Moonee Ponds Creek Implementation Plan
- We’re funding Kensington Business Association for business development initiatives, consumer advertising, marketing and promotion campaigns and local activations that promote the Kensington trader area to visitors.
- Our business concierge team had 8089 contacts with business across the City of Melbourne between February and September.
- We responded to community concerns about lack of compliance to the Tobacco Act in local shopping strips.
- 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 and increase the occupancy rate of shopfronts across the municipality.
- Inclusive employment program Game Changers, supported eight young people to gain employment at our recreation facilities. This program, delivered in partnership by North Melbourne Football Club's The Huddle and YMCA, provides free support to young people seeking employment, including resume writing, interview practice, 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.
- We began early-stage design investigations for the Chelmsford Street open space in Kensington. We're preparing to consult with community to inform planning for the park later this year.
- We're supporting Kensington Neighbourhood House with a grant to deliver From the HeART intergenerational art activities to local people and groups in Kensington.
- We’re also supporting our talented creative community through our Annual Arts Grants Program. The 2024 funding will celebrate 102 excellent one-off projects that will employ over 1,000 artists and attract 360,000 people. All art forms have been supported with an investment of $950,000 by Council. During September we opened grants for our 2024 Aboriginal Arts projects and quick response arts grants that will seed small scale projects and help artists to test and develop new creative ideas. We look forward to these being visible over the next 4 months after approval in November.
- 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.
- 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.
- Melbourne’s heritage is a rich tapestry of Aboriginal and much later colonial and contemporary stories. We are celebrating all things heritage across the city and invite you to join us. Share your stories, photos and videos celebrating #timelessmelbourne. There are plenty of ways to get involved including self-guided walking tours, learning about history of neighbourhoods and exploring the arts and heritage collection.
- We held three ‘dogs in the park’ events in Princess Park, Fawkner Park and Riverside Park, chosen based on the results of an online poll, with these locations being the most favoured.
- Community consultation on the Parking and Kerbside Management Plan was carried out from March to April. Overall, there was a high level of support for the direction of the draft plan. There was also strong support for a strategic and data-led approach to kerbside management and equitable and inclusive access to kerbside space. Council endorsed the plan in May and we're currently implementing parking improvements in the CBD. We'll shortly be engaging with residents and businesses, and improving parking across our neighbourhoods.
- We are proposing to install protected bike lanes along Arden Street and Macaulay Road in North Melbourne and Kensington. These works are part of our program to deliver a network of new, protected bike lanes across the municipality, providing a safer journey for all bike riders and road users. In April and May we undertook community consultation to help refine our plans.
- We launched Biketober 2023, a bike encouragement program, in collaboration with RACV, Banyule, Glen Eira, Bendigo and Ballarat. Biketober will run through October and is open to businesses and community members for free.
- We are working through the M9 Active Transport Behaviour Change Working Group, made up of other inner-Melbourne councils, to support collaboration on sustainable transport behaviour change initiatives. This work has seen Open Streets and e-Bike subsidy schemes expand across multiple areas.
- As part of Metro Tunnel works, the precinct around South Kensington Station is being upgraded. Work has almost finished near the western tunnel entrance with new landscaping, shelter, seating and decking, plus extra bike storage hoops.
- We're running weekly Chatty Cafe sessions, a new social connection program at Kensington Neighbourhood Centre every Thursday from 1-3pm. The free sessions offers a chance to connect with other local people, light refreshments and a range of activities from the Melbourne library teams, arts and more.
- Our Connected Neighbourhoods Small Grant program provides funding to support connection and community-led responses to the neighbourhood priorities. In the last financial year, 16 were funded in Kensington, including:
- 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.
- A ‘drug safety in the city’ flyer has been developed to support businesses and key stakeholders.
- We hosted the Melbourne Licensees Forum in June, where licensed venues shared information and discussed matters impacting them. This forum shared learnings and information about the late night liquor license freeze and public intoxication law reform.
A self-confessed mushroom lover, Emma Wasson will host Mushfest in October, with support from a City Of Melbourne neighbourhood grant. The event is a celebration of the Kensington Stockyard Food Garden’s fifth anniversary, along with a chance to learn more about mushrooms.
There are few better ways to connect with people than over a good meal. This is something that the Vietnamese and Indochinese Elders Social Group knows to be true. The group is a place for older women from these communities to connect and share culture. They have been meeting regularly at Kensington Neighbourhood House for more than 35 years.
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, Kensington
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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.
