Spreading a sense of agency across 300,000 streets cannot happen one project at a time. The energy is already out there, in residents who have quietly improved a verge, organised a street dinner or planted a tree that nobody asked them to plant.
Our job is to surface that energy, connect it and build the conditions for it to roll. Our response is a snowball portfolio: we invest in deep, high-quality demonstration projects that prove what is possible when communities are genuinely empowered to shape their streets.
The energy to transform Melbourne's streets already exists. Our snowball portfolio is designed to find that energy, amplify it and build the conditions for it to spread. We invest in deep, high-quality projects that demonstrate what streets can become, and we build in spreadability from the start, focusing on the tools, stories, connections and resources that allow what works on one street to roll to the next. The snowball grows not by replicating models, but by creating the enabling conditions that release the agency that is already there. Our portfolio works to grow the influence of this work, leading to structural change that further accelerates the growth of the snowball!
Change is powered by storytelling. Connecting Stories is about capturing, amplifying and circulating the narratives that make street-level transformation visible and contagious. Seeing the street that came back to life, the community that won, the idea that travelled from one suburb to another matters. We work with media, storytellers and communities to ensure that what works doesn't stay hidden, and that the people doing this work are seen, celebrated and heard.
Physical transformation is the most visible part of the snowball. Connecting Places is about the streets themselves. Here we see the interventions, installations, greening projects and redesigns that make streets genuinely more liveable, healthy and ecologically rich. We invest in demonstration projects that are bold enough to be compelling and practical enough to be replicated, showing councils, developers and communities what is possible. Each transformed street becomes a compelling argument, evidence that things can be different, and an invitation for the next street to try.
Transforming streets at scale requires all forms of capital. Right now, the financial capital needed to support community-led street transformation is fragmented, inaccessible or absent. Connecting Capital is about changing that: building the pathways between communities with vision and the capital needed to realise it, whether that's philanthropic funding, government investment, impact finance or new financial mechanisms that don’t yet exist. We work to make the economics of street transformation viable and repeatable, so that great projects aren't one-offs, and the communities most in need of change aren't the ones least able to access support.
Streets come alive when the people who live on them know each other. Connecting Communities is about building the relationships, networks and shared sense of ownership that turn a street from a transit corridor into a place where people genuinely belong. We support the organisers, the connectors and the community anchors who make neighbourhood life possible. This portfolio is aimed at helping them find each other, share what they know and build the collective capacity to shape the places they live
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