A year in review: Introducing Regen Melbourne’s first-ever Annual Report
As the year draws to a close and Regen Melbourne celebrates it’s fourth birthday, CEO Kaj Löfgren launches our first ever Annual Report and reflects on a year of progress, big wins, sidesteps, re-shuffles and growth for our team, partners and projects.
Regen Melbourne is now four years old. On some days our founding workshops at the end of 2020 feel just like yesterday. On others it feels like more than a generation ago.
We are of course still living in complex and disruptive times. At times, this year has felt like an accelerating treadmill of increasing urgency, where chaos has filled our screens, anger and frustration has been palpable, and active hope has been hard to come by. And yet, if we look carefully enough, we find pockets of regeneration all across our city. As Arundhati Roy reminds us: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
This year we have been proud to be part of so many examples of new ways of organising towards a safe and just future for our place. Despite the ever-changing context, our team and our partners continue to return to the question we began with in 2020: how can we better serve our city?
Our three Earthshots have matured significantly in 2024. The Swimmable Birrarung community has grown considerably, with the enrolment of non-profits, businesses, academics and government partners. We supported and catalysed a range of initiatives, with the undoubted highlight being the privilege of supporting the Yarra Riverkeeper Association’s RiverFest in September.
At times our work can feel hard to grasp. It can be easier to think about the daily symptoms of our current system than to attempt to shift the messy route causes. And yet, this remains our focus.
Our Regen Streets work has gone through a deep, 9-month sensemaking process in 2024, exploring and supporting a vast array of neighbourhood regeneration work across our city. This work has created clarity in the systemic barriers and opportunities to unleash an effective wave of regenerative streets. And our Food Systems work has rapidly synthesised systemic barriers and co-developed transition pathways for this vital sector. Design forums and community workshops have unlocked new energy and set a powerful orientation for the years ahead.
This year we have also established our Systems Lab, an action-research platform that explores the enabling conditions for city transformation. Together with our incredible Research Council, we are actively interrogating key enablers including policy, research, capital and narrative. This work provides a rigorous baseline to our Earthshots and catalysed powerful prototypes like the City Portrait, the Climate Change Exchange and the Wellbeing Protocol.
From an operations perspective, after a generous period of incubation by the Small Giants Academy, this year we became a registered charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission. This step is important as it places our mission at the heart of our formal constitution: we exist solely to serve the regeneration of our city. This year we also consolidated all our learnings so far into a publicly available living strategy: take a look!
At the end of a big year, we are proud to publish our first Annual Report. In these pages you will find a bit about our emerging organisation, and you will find examples of our work across our three Earthshot projects and our many action-research initiatives within our Systems Lab. Take a look below.
At times our work can feel hard to grasp. It can be easier to think about the daily symptoms of our current system than to attempt to shift the messy route causes. And yet, this remains our focus. Regen Melbourne is an invitation to raise our collective ambitions and deepen our systemic impact, together.
Thank you for your continued involvement in and support of our work. We are always stronger together.
See you in 2025.
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