Three years ago, in the wake of the Black Summer fires and in the midst of our COVID-19 lockdowns, Regen Melbourne emerged as an engine for collaboration in service of our city.  

Since then, we have grown to become an alliance of more than 180 organisations and countless individuals who have come together to explore new ways of driving systemic transformation.  Over the last 12 months our portfolio of wildly ambitious projects has matured and a number of new initiatives have sprung to life. It feels as if 2023 has marked the year that Regen Melbourne has gone from an ambitious experiment to a maturing engine for collaboration. Outwardly, this is perhaps best exemplified by the launch of our Greater Melbourne City Portrait on the 13th of November, in front of more than 300 people at the State library. Inwardly, this maturing is demonstrated by the evolution of our methodology for systems transformation, known as the SOIL framework.

Our work is of course defined by our context. In 2023 we all experienced reminders of the systemic challenges that we face, including the reality of the climate emergency and our significant social challenges, underpinned by a declining trust that our existing democratic infrastructure can protect us and navigate these challenges successfully. Rather than being disheartened, our team and our alliance partners have continued to dive deeper into the causes of the challenges we face, and build the relationships, collaborations and formal partnerships required to find transformational solutions.

This 2023 Year in Review provides an overview of activities across Regen Melbourne in 2023. However, it is important to note that our work is driven by the creation of new social infrastructure: interconnected webs of relationships designed to shift the underlying conditions that hold our challenges in place. As such, our work is so much more than a list of projects and activities. As we celebrate the activities and achievements of 2023, we reflect on the countless relationships created and nurtured through our work. These will be the foundations of future activities that drive the transformation of our city.

Portfolio updates 

• Swimmable Birrarung 

• Participatory Melbourne 

• Measuring What Matters

• Regen Streets 

• Ending Food Waste 

Enabling initiatives 

• Regen Melbourne Lab (RM Lab)

• Melbourne Invests for Systemic Transformation (MIST)

• Regen Places

Regenerating the Birrarung Yarra River – to the extent that it is swimmable from source to sea – is an epically ambitious initiative. It requires a coherent and systemic response from many actors across the economic spectrum, including government, business, civil society, and citizens. 

Highlights from 2023 include some epic wins from our anchor partners. Taken together they show the multiplicity of actors and angles already at play in building the movement towards a swimmable Birrarung.   

• Wurundjeri’s continued care, advocacy and custodianship of the Birrarung

• Conclusion of Loretta’s Bellato’s PhD on Swimmable Birrarung as case study (Swinburne University), exploring swimmable rivers as contributions to the regenerative development of urban places and communities 

• Regeneration Projects Swimmable Cities Handbook showcasing how Melbourne can learn from the growing movement of cities making their waterways swimmable

• Yarra River Keeper Association’s Birrarung Riverfest 2023 which brought together writers, swimmers, academics, agencies and Birrarung lovers in a series of events up and down the river

• Appointment of a new committee for Yarra Pools reinvigorating the community-led advocacy, passion and and design for swimming experiences in the Birrarung 

In 2023, our Lead Convenor Charity Mosienyane, also brought together seven work streams with unique alliances of partners in each, to consider and explore both barriers and opportunities for action:

Through this engagement with a growing group of collaborators from social enterprises, entrepreneurs, government agencies and citizens, four major insights were revealed, which provide the backdrop for action into 2024 and beyond:

1. The Birrarung is the lifeblood of Melbourne. Put simply,  Melbourne exists because of the river,  and the river is under significant strain.

2. We all have a stake in the health of the river, including businesses, communities, government and households.

3. A thriving River requires a connected and coherent system of actors which is currently not the case.

4. The enabling environment around the river,  including policy,  capital flows and culture,  requires significant change to achieve a thriving ecosystem.

All our collective work over the last two years has led to the emergence of a portfolio of tangible projects that can act as acupressure points to tilt this complex ecosystem towards regeneration. Over the coming months we will be developing this portfolio with our partners, before presenting them publicly as a coherent approach for funders, policy makers, other organisations and the general public to get behind. 

We live in urgent and challenging times. Times where social capital and participation are fragmented and on the decline. How we collectively make decisions will define our ability to effectively shape and adapt to this rapidly changing world. Unfortunately, many micro and macro trends create a precarious context for collective decision making. These include a rising mistrust in institutions of all kinds, ambiguity about our collective goals, a lack of agency and a common lack of connection to people and place. Most attempts to “engage” individuals in collective decision making (in our businesses, communities and our politics) are therefore perceived to lack meaning and integrity. 

Participatory Melbourne was conceived and brought to life by the Menzies Foundation, the Coalition of Everyone, the Australian Leadership Index (Swinburne University) and Regen Melbourne. Bonded by a shared belief in the importance and power of participatory and collective leadership as a way to navigate a pathway to a safe and just future, Participatory Melbourne was created as both a research and action project.

Phase 1 of the project was a research and insights process. Over six months, in conversation with 40+ organisations and multiple individuals, we have explored the nature of active participation, barriers and enablers, and what a robust and resilient participatory city means for Greater Melbourne. Through this emerged three core insights:

• A more robust and resilient participatory city requires people to be re-empowered to make their own active decisions across all aspects of their lives — including in their communities, their work and how they are governed;

• Active participation is a necessary component for us to feel part of society, to reconnect to those around us, to walk side by side with those we disagree with, and to improve our economic and democratic systems;

• New forms of collective leadership are emerging but require significant and active support to thrive.

A summary of phase 1, the creative pathways we’re exploring into 2024 and the full report can be found here!

Our work in 2024 and beyond involves the identification and pursuit of a series of intervention points, a portfolio of tangible projects, both existing and yet to be created, that can tilt Greater Melbourne towards thriving civic health.

Originally conceived in April 2021, our Melbourne Doughnut has progressed this year from a conceptual model to a practical tool for measurement. The City Portrait is now a new compass for progress for our city – a platform that gives all citizens a practical and holistic way of measuring how well Melbourne is supporting people and planet to thrive.

Our work throughout 2023 has brought together a colossal range of partners – academics, experts, industry heads, policymakers, scientists and community members – to examine each dimension of our Social Foundation (how well we’re looking after our communities) and Ecological Ceiling (how well we’re looking after our environment). Ascribing quantitative data to these dimensions tells us how we’re tracking towards a safe and just future.

The City Portrait digital platform launched on Monday 13th November, at an event at the State Library attended by more than 300 people. The 2023 City Portrait reveals that our liveability as a city is not evenly distributed and that the liveability we do have is putting way too much pressure on our environment. You can read about our insights and recommendations from the 2023 City Portrait here.

Our work in 2024 will extend the City Portrait’s functionality, including spatial distribution of outcomes across Greater Melbourne, understanding of changing city performance over time, a clearer depiction of the bottom-up opportunities to enhance local ecologies and expanded stories about pathways for change. We will also be embarking on a Roadshow, presenting the platform to a range of partners across business, civil society and government. Through this process we will continue to improve the portrait and find new opportunities for impact.

We thank all of our collaboration partners who have contributed to the City Portrait this year - you can read about them and the epic collaborative effort that went into the development of the City Portrait here.

Our Regen Streets explorations continued in 2023. This has included following the work of Village Zero in Sandringham and Cromwell Street in Collingwood closely, and being part of emerging conversations in Braybrook in Melbourne's west.  Each place is connected by the community led initiative to have an impact in their neighbourhoods by surfacing and connecting the unique skills, expertise and passion of the individuals and organisations who live and work there. 

Alongside these communities, there are of course hundreds of other examples across Greater Melbourne. The aim of our work with Regen Streets is to ensure that these community-led efforts become a coherent wave of action, influencing the centralising forces in our system and accelerating the transition to becoming a resilient and regenerative city. 

In 2023, as part of the continued sense-making phase we’ve been unpicking the dynamics and ingredients that led to the emergence of the pilot places, this included working with RMIT School of Design students to develop and test toolkits for local places to get started and running thought-leadership sessions with international experts including Helena Norberg-Hodge.  

2024 will seek to generate and support a wave of connected regenerative neighbourhoods.  We will work alongside communities who are holistically organising towards regeneration, including converting energy systems, creating circular food systems, providing green spaces for people to gather and connect, and to deepen connection to their places and their cultures.

The purpose of the Ending Food Waste initiative is to superpower the transition to a circular and regenerative food system in Greater Melbourne by rapidly accelerating the plethora of existing action in this area. 

Working closely with existing food actors this year we’ve participated in many conversations about the future of our food system as we continue to understand the landscape and opportunity. These include on-going sessions with Moving Feast, participation in Fighting Food Waste CRC activities and exploring emerging research into what regenerative business models could be to support the food transition. These diverse conversations across social enterprises, academia and business make up the sensemaking phase of our wildly ambitious goals.  

2024 will set out the role that Regen Melbourne could play in driving the ambitious goal of initially halving and then ending our food waste. 

Enabling Initiatives

As our work has evolved in 2023, we have catalysed and convened a number of enabling collaborations. These collaborations seek to shift the enabling conditions that in turn can then support our portfolio of wildly ambitious projects.

Regen Melbourne Lab (RM Lab)

We believe in the power of knowledge and wisdom to help reorient our city towards a regenerative future. The RM Lab is a cross-institutional research hub, hosted by Regen Melbourne, that facilitates knowledge sharing and new knowledge generation to support systems change in our city. 

Melbourne is home to global experts addressing many of our key challenges. The RM Lab brings together experts from six Melbourne-based universities, as well as from industry, government and community, in service to our city. In doing so, the RM Lab works collaboratively to harness and connect diverse forms of knowledge across Greater Melbourne. 

Together, we can accelerate the translation of this knowledge into action, and action into growth and understanding.

Our research includes three core streams:

• Measuring What Matters: Fostering holistic measurement of progress for our city to inform integrated decision-making

• Systems Change Thematic Research: Generating and amplifying new knowledge to enable systems change across Greater Melbourne

• Project-led Action Research: Integrating existing and new knowledge into Regen Melbourne projects to extend impact

The RM Lab is guided by a Research Council, including members from six Melbourne-based universities. In 2023, under the leadership of our Chair, Professor Lauren Rickards, the Research Council has supported the development of the City Portrait, contributed to the formation of a knowledge-based workstream within the Swimmable Birrarung project and informed our approach to resourcing research work. 

In May, the Research Council met at the White House in St Kilda for a deep dive on the group’s collective research focus areas, approaches and intersections with Regen Melbourne’s priorities. This not only affirmed the value of the Research Council’s advisory role, but also the shared learning and opportunities for collaboration that can emerge within the group itself.

In 2024, following the release of the City Portrait, the RM Lab will expand its project-led work to extend integration with each of our wildly ambitious projects as they grow and evolve.

Melbourne Invests for Systemic Transformation (MIST)

In early 2023 we embarked on an exploration of the role of financial capital in the regeneration of our city. Utilising the Swimmable Birrarung as a case-study, our team (led by our Systems Capital lead Genevieve Mortimer) conducted foundational research on the nature and quantity of capital flows around the river. 

Through this process we identified the structural and cultural barriers to capital moving in service to our broader regeneration, with a full report to be published in early 2024. In summary, our financial sector increasingly understands the need for investment towards resilient, thriving ecosystems as an area of focus, both for the management of liabilities and to harness opportunities. However, there remains a glaring mismatch between acknowledging the urgent need to deploy finance in service of transformation and the amount of money flowing, and a misalignment in the structure of capital allocation. The result is a growing risk to the Australian and global economy which, if unaddressed, will have major economic and environmental consequences, entrench inequality and stagnate prosperity.

As we know, systemic problems need systemic solutions. The gap between ambition and action requires a deeper recognition and articulation of the problem as well as tactical responses which drive system-level change. Our current financial paradigm is blind to the quality and magnitude of  systemic risks we face, and is equally blind to the transformational opportunity that lies in structuring system-level value. We need new approaches. 

As a result of our foundation research this year, a collaboration has emerged that we are calling Melbourne Invests for Systemic Transformation, or MIST for short! This is a collaboration dedicated to exploring a paradigm shift that works at the intersection of systems thinking and finance. Convened by Regen Melbourne, MIST will include local capital holders and fund managers, alongside national thought leaders including Climate-KIC and Centre for Systems Innovation, and international systems partners like Dark Matter Labs and Transformation Capital.

We look forward to activating MIST in 2024. Together, our ambitious aim is to design a new finance ecosystem, exploring ideas of systemic investment and building tangible prototypes that test these ideas in the real world.

Regen Places

Catalysed by the emergence of Regen Melbourne, Regen Places is a growing network of place-based alliances focused on building the social infrastructure and capacity for the regeneration of places. Convened by the Coalition of Everyone,  this group includes more than a dozen places across Australia, with regular learning circles around the tactics and strategy of place-based organising towards regeneration.

This work has matured throughout 2023, under the stewardship of Lead Convenor Willow Berzin. An ecosystem map is developing rapidly, showcasing the many, many places around Australia and New Zealand organising towards regeneration. You can view the interactive map here. You can also read the origin story of Regen Places here. Definitely worth a read!

Regen Melbourne continues to play an active role in Regen Places and will be working closely with the network in 2024. This work will focus on developing place-based organising strategies that create well-resourced engines for collaboration. There is so much emerging energy at the intersection of regenerative thinking, systems thinking, alternative economics and place-based organising. We are thrilled to be part of this collective work across Australia and New Zealand!

finally, a BIG thank you

As a non-profit organisation, all of our work is made possible by the generous support of our philanthropic funders.  These friends and partners understand the need for a more systemic approach in creating a robust resilient and regenerative city, and have provided catalytic capital to drive our work. We thank our funding partners and look forward to continuing our work together in 2024 and beyond.

AND a warm invitation

The past three years have seen Regen Melbourne in a mode of deep work, research and collaboration – mostly underground. In the second half of 2023 some of our projects began to ‘surface’ – such as Swimmable Birrarung and the City Portrait Launch – and this theme will continue through 2024 and in the years to come. 

Of course, our work underground will continue. We will forever be in a state of deep collaboration with our alliance partners, citizens of Melbourne, academia, our most influential institutions, and the holders of capital. Our work is to organise and orient these great partners towards the same goals, so that we can begin re-shaping our system to be of maximum benefit to both people and planet.

Our work is wildly ambitious. But our goals are totally achievable. A regenerated Melbourne is ours for the making, so please consider this your invitation to join us. This work is serious and complex, but it’s also deeply joyful, creative and playful. How could a vision driven by a doughnut not be?

See you in 2024.