The community-led Cremorne street event is a local celebration of this neighbourhood and a chance to connect through good, common projects. Cremorne is a small neighbourhood (1km x 1km) on the fringe of Melbourne’s CBD, neighbouring Richmond. It is a home to locals with a long history of strong social capital. The social history book Struggletown captures this history. Currently over 600 people are part of a Facebook group where locals look out for each other and post items such as local community watch type messages, offering up excess items or anything considered of common interest. Now, its become a creative, tech and social innovation hub. Businesses such as uber, bitcoin, vinomofo, tesla as well as super-sized businesses of realestate.com and carsales.com (two of Victoria’s three ‘unicorn’ companies- valued at over $1bil) now calling the suburb home.
A local project called CoCreateCremorne.co started about six months ago. Its logo was chalked, sprayed and stenciled around the streets. This invited the locals to tell us what they loved about Cremorne and what they would like to this place to become. Here’s a taster of what they said:
People love the vibe of the place, small and connected, being on the streets, industrial past, art and the mix of residents and businesses. People want the streets as places, adding greenery, quality art, residents and businesses mixing and common spaces to work/meet/play outside, with free WiFi. People imagined having a ground-up plan, linking sustainability and tech, for Cremorne to become a showcase precinct.
Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Lab Melbourne facilitated an activity called Offers and Needs Market for people to share skills, offer time and creative ideas for anything common and useful in Cremorne. It was a visual and participatory activity to enable anyone to contribute. Alongside, there was a DJ on the street, a pop up park with some furniture and plants, a MakersMap for people to add their business, food and drinks provided by the locals, and an array of other activities hosted by locals as the event continues to be co-created.
