The City has been developing the Cultural Heart concept, a key initiative outlined in the Culture Plan – Creative Melville 2018-2022, which was shaped by valuable community input from the 2017 MERGE Festival, a unique event attended by over 16,000 people.
The Cultural Heart Project will bring life to a new Library and Cultural Centre (LCC), expanding connections to the City’s existing libraries, galleries, museums, and performance venues. As the centerpiece of the Precinct, the LCC will play a vital role in shaping the future of Melville as a thriving, modern city. It will transform the current commercial precinct in Booragoon into a vibrant cultural hub with broad community appeal.
The new LCC will house a museum, gallery, and community spaces, completing the cultural ecosystem needed to enhance access and encourage diverse participation. This will contribute to a healthy, sustainable community and a dynamic city. The LCC will be a space where learning, art, and cultural engagement can flourish—offering opportunities for creativity, meaningful experiences, and lifelong involvement.
The LCC will:
- Act as a cultural anchor, with a distinct identity at the heart of the city.
- Provide a welcoming space within a vibrant, mixed-use precinct that includes retail, commercial, and residential areas.
- Feature active street frontages and extended hours, contributing to the precinct’s vibrancy.
In 2017, more than 16,000 people attended our MERGE festival, a family-friendly event that marked the beginning of extensive engagement for the new Melville City Centre. During this time, the community contributed over 2,100 ideas on what they would like to see in the future City Centre. A proposed library and cultural centre emerged as a key catalyst in our cultural plan, Creative Melville 2018-2022.
Fast forward to November-December 2024, and we reached out again to gather feedback from our community. We asked them what the most important feature would be in their ideal Library and Cultural Centre, how they feel about the development of this space, and how often they envision themselves visiting once it's established. In total, we received 202 responses. This valuable feedback will assist with refining and further developing the vision for the new Library and Cultural Centre, as well as exploring possible grant funding opportunities and the broader benefits it brings to our City Centre.
To keep the momentum and excitement going, we now invite you to share your amazing ideas for this new cultural heart of our community!