Creative Connections: How FB IDEAs is supporting Montague’s Transformation
In the heart of Fishermans Bend, the Montague precinct is transforming from an industrial zone into a living experiment in creative city-making. FB IDEAs has initiated a number of creative site activations where art, design and sustainability intersect to shape a connected, creative community in motion.
Building the cultural infrastructure of a new neighbourhood
The Making Montague vision developed by the Victorian Government imagines a future rich with parks, streets and community hubs. FB IDEAs complements this by supporting the growth of cultural infrastructure spaces where people connect, collaborate and imagine new ways of living and working in Montague.
Circular creativity: innovation from the ground up
At the Circular Design Collective on Munro Street, innovators-in-residence are proving how creativity powers the circular economy and connects communities. Since opening, they’ve hosted After’s ’ Melbourne Design Week exhibition; collaborated with No Bull Cause and CBCo Brewery to turn leftover beer cans and plastic tops into new products; invited locals to melt and mould plastics with Precious Plastic Melbourne; created recycled artworks with artbus; and unveiled Leftovers; an exhibition by Dodgy Paper and Lousy Ink that finds beauty in waste and value in imperfection.
Together, these projects offer a glimpse of what an environmentally sustainable Fishermans Bend can look like and how creativity can drive a more liveable, prosperous Montague.
Culture, connection and collaboration
A few blocks away, Romulus Folio Gallery at The Gladstone continues the conversation with exhibitions and workshops exploring resilience, reuse and material memory. It also recently hosted the Fishermans Bend Creatives Networking Event, a relaxed gathering led by FB IDEAs that brings together artists, designers and entrepreneurs to share ideas and spark new collaborations.
As part of this broader creative dialogue, FB IDEAs has also supported Weaving Three Stories, a series of weaving and yarning workshops led by First Nations artists, held at both Romulus Folio Gallery and the Circular Design Collective. These events honour the lands of the Bunurong and Wurundjeri peoples and embed care, creativity and cultural continuity into the heart of FB IDEAs’ activations in Montague.
A living framework for the future
From circular design to cultural collaboration, FB IDEAs is giving form to the ambitions of the Making Montague Plan. Every activation, whether a workshop, exhibition or community gathering brings the Framework’s principles of inclusion, sustainability and innovation to life.
Through these everyday acts of making and meeting, FB IDEAs and its partners remind us that the most powerful infrastructure isn’t made of concrete, but of connection and that the creative city of the future is already being built, step by step, in Montague.
