about

Regen Melbourne is a platform for ambitious collaboration, in service to Greater Melbourne.

we are the host of bold projects for a regenerative Melbourne.

THE MOMENT IS NOW

Despite the many strengths of our beautiful city, we are facing a web of social and environmental challenges including climate impacts, housing access, inequality, food security, insecure work, loneliness and declining trust. We can all remember the smoke that covered Melbourne during the Black Summer in early 2020, and the unequal way different parts of this city suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

We live in a metacrisis of interconnected challenges. 

Systemic problems need systemic solutions. Single actors don’t solve systems problems. We need coherent action by alliances of unusual actors, from business, non-profit, government, universities and the general public.

The trouble is that our current system is not built for this type of epic collaboration. We urgently need to break out of our siloes and increase our collective ambition. We need new structures that reactivate and reorganise our system. And we need radically ambitious and tangible projects that chart a collective course to a regenerative and resilient future.

We need new approaches. The moment demands it.

our vision

Our vision and purpose were co-created through a 6-month community engagement process that began in late 2020. Our vision:

our purpose

Our purpose is to move Greater Melbourne into the safe and just space of the Melbourne Doughnut. This process is being defined by the ongoing Measuring What Matters project.

OUR STORY

Regen Melbourne was born in the dual crisis of the Black Summer fires and the COVID-19 pandemic. A small group of interested organisations and individuals quickly became a larger group and a nine-month community-led research process began. We explored our collective vision for a regenerative Melbourne and included participatory workshops, leadership interviews, roundtables, and countless hours of data analysis. The result was our foundational report, Towards a Regenerative Melbourne, which was released in April 2021.

Our initial work used Doughnut Economics as a framework and resulted in our co-created vision statement, our goal to move Melbourne into the safe and just space of the Melbourne Doughnut, and a roadmap for collective action. 

After two years of initial experimentation and discovery, Regen Melbourne has emerged as a new way of organising.  Our purpose is to bring deeply impactful research and projects to life. Together, we are activating our alliance to (reimagine and) remake Melbourne.

“Regen Melbourne are exemplars of how to take the ideas of Doughnut Economics off the page and into practice.”

Rob Shorter, Community Lead, Doughnut Economics Action Lab