Love My Place Grants Program

The project transforms an underutilized public space in the City of Port Phillip into a vibrant hub of community engagement.

By installing an outdoor ping pong table and having engaging artwork on it and around it, we create inclusive, accessible areas for all to play and have some fun. Through a series of events and activities, we foster social interaction, boost local businesses, and enhance overall livability. Sport and Art are always known as creative drivers to enhance public space. Combining these two to create a fun and vibrant public space for the local community to access.

If we have designated spots for activities like smoking, why can't we extend this idea to create designated spaces for interactive, community-driven activities that enhance the city experience?

We seek to implement our project "Designated Living Spaces," identifiable by circles marked on pavements and open areas.

Sea Symphony is an enchanting and immersive free installation by the award winning Rawcus Ensemble in collaboration with artists Kate Hunter and Rea Dennis. Sea Symphony playfully celebrates our neighbourhood by the beach.

Audiences are invited to step inside a wooden phone box situated outside Theatre Works St Kilda. Bright red and friendly on the outside, the phone box is lit from within. As you enter, the phone box is revealed to be a one-person installation space. When the door shuts, a soundscape of stories commences with words and phrases animated on screens.

Fashion artist Adele Varcoe in collaboration with local markers/sewers, musicians and dancers would like to deliver Party Bus, a creative, performative project targeting people of all ages (0-100) and genders in the City of Port Phillip. The project will include a garment making workshop that will culminate in an activation during Melbourne Fashion Festival in March 2024. The project will encourage connection, play and belonging.

The project is a 6-week free and open series of music events and art workshops, held on weekend afternoons, in the Linden front yard.

The project encourages our local community to take ownership of the site as public space, space they can inhabit regardless of time. Time where they can come together to play, connect, and celebrate.

The Living Portrait Theatre Project is a community arts experiment where collaborating artists Issy Hart and David Wells invite members of the community to enter a small performance space and be transformed into a living portrait.

Recipient: Joy Duston - Friends of St Kilda Botanical Gardens

This project has three components:

• Photographic exhibition of readers in the Gardens
• Public photographic display throughout the Gardens, submitted by visitors, showing their favourite place in the Gardens
• community workshop, led by musician/songwriter Amie Brûlée, to create a song special to and celebrating the Gardens.

“Focusing on the community’s connection to the St Kilda Botanical Gardens, this simple and low-cost project will invite users of the park to participate in a photographic exhibition as well as contribute to the creation of a song celebrating the Garden’s local significant. Its delivery during the summer months should encourage local engagement and will be a nice point of interest to those visiting the gardens for the first time.”

Recipient: Michael Vaughan & Sophie Brabenec

A festival and celebration of Melbourne’s next level street artists, who will be working with different mediums and styles including painted murals, stencils, paste ups and miniature model installations, designed to bring the streets and laneways of St Kilda to life.

The event will run the length of Fitzroy Street with offers and light entertainment along the way from various local businesses.

The artworks will be a long term installation, so those that cannot attend on the day can pick up a map and do the walk in their own free time.

“This is a well-planned event that looks to activate predetermined sites along Fitzroy Street through the creation of a series of vibrant street artworks. A map of the completed street art will be available after the event to encourage much needed cultural tourism to the shopping strip and ensure maximum benefit to local traders.”

Recipient: By Susanna Dimiropoulos – Lakeside Community Events Incorporated

Given the success of 2021, Lakeside Community Events Inc. will run a busking version throughout the streets of Albert Park to support the professions most affected by the ongoing aftereffects of the pandemic - performers, event personnel, restaurants, local shops.

Local businesses will open for late night shopping on the evening and local restaurants will sell takeaway food and drink options.

Several positions through the village and parks will have amazing musicians of different musical styles performing Christmas music.

“Lakeside Carols is a much-loved event in Albert Park. We are confident that this community run event will be very professionally organised and delivered. It has been successful at engaging with local traders.”

Recipient: Dean Zepherin – Total Wave

The Elwood Jazz Festival will light up the Elwood foreshore on February 4th for a unique summer night program of jazz and soul-spanning cutting-edge experimental acts to established masters of the genre.

The Festival will breathe new life into the beautiful Elwood Foreshore and attract audiences from around Victoria. Cocktails and delicious food from local gourmet food trucks will be served with the sea as your backdrop.

“The Elwood Jazz Festival organiser are well known for providing high quality events at CoPP and other municipalities. A Jazz festival will be a great addition to the events in the area and will sit well with the Elwood locals. The applicant has a large following which will help promote CoPP and the Love My Place Program.”

Recipient: Colin Sheppard

Completely original hand painted mural of Nick Cave’s 70’s / 80s band “The Birthday Party”, who played regularly at the Crystal Ballroom at the George hotel in St Kilda.

Taking up the entire corner of George Lane and Little Grey Street, the incredible explosion of colour will be viewed from traffic on Grey Street.

“Colin Sheppard's vision for Little Grey Street will bring colour and vibrancy to a laneway rich in history. The panel will look forward to the day that the entire laneway is covered in murals, contributing to the fantastic culture of street art in St Kilda.”

Recipient: Shalome Pinto

Typically, dance spaces are intimate, closed-off and mostly indoors. This project transforms a parking lot into an outdoor dance space. It offers a safe yet enjoyable space for creativity, self-expression, and subsequent public activation through dance.

The space will be activated by guided workshops and provide a backdrop for the creative expression of new generations of social media afficionados.

“Dance Dance is an innovative and contemporary installation that will bring fun, music and colour to Acland Plaza”.

Recipient: Vela Stambolziev – Carlisle Street Traders Association

A street party to make the best of the warm weather with art and live music. Hospitality venues will be encouraged to take part by having themed food or drinks. Events like trivia night and comedy night will be part of the program.

Busking, roving performances, street theatre, street dance lessons, kids’ art area, fairy dance concert and temporary pavement art will bring the street to life.

“Carlisle street is not often thought of as a music hub. Summer Loving is about to change that. A program chock full of diverse music and entertainment delivered by the new Carlisle Street Traders association.”

Recipient: Timothy Newton – Middle Park Primary School

Parents from our local schools have formed bands and entered the annual 'Parents Battle of the Bands' at the Prince Band Room in St.Kilda held most recently in August this year.

This event is an opportunity for those bands to perform to the whole community including the children who were not able to attend the official event.

“A great community event at Middle Park Primary School, bringing together parents from local schools in CoPP to perform a family-friendly concert version of the ‘Parents Battle of the Bands’ that was held at the Prince Band Room in August 2022.”

Recipient: Collin Bogaars – FunArts

The project is designed to bring Spontaneous acts of Fun to neighbourhoods in the City of Port Phillip in the form of "Roving" Performances that entertain & engage when & where people least expect it.

These acts are:

• Costumed musical acts & multi skilled performances.
• Colourful, highly audience interactive, engaging performances suitable for all age groups.
• Totally mobile.

“Spontaneous Acts of fun will bring fun and entertainment to the streets of Port Phillip. We’re excited about the activation potential and its alignment with our live music action plan.”

Recipient: Theatre Works Limited

Theatre Works has partnered with Acland Street Traders Association and The Lost Lands Festival to bring The Big Lost band to Melbourne.

Over an eight-week period, the band will be formed via community outreach in the City of Port Phillip, with local musicians of all ages - rehearsed and then taken to the Plaza to perform in the concert of a lifetime.

“The event will bring people to the Acland Street precinct and support local traders, as well as provide opportunities for local kids to get involved in participating in a seasoned performance format.”

Feather boas, wild handmade costumes, outrageous wigs and a stage presence like no other, the colourful, hand painted image will consist of Renee Scott on stage in full drag, surrounded by images of her love for animals.

The Blackout Experience Summer Edition is a powerful and vibrant display of live music that will contribute to reactivating Catani Gardens. It will also encourage Victorian people who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) and their allies to come together to celebrate in meaningful ways what it means to be a proud Victorian.

A series of local community roller skating and blading event to be held four times over a six-month period between November 2021 and May 2022. These events will be created in collaboration with not-for-profit skating group Recreational Rollers, as well as Malt Shop Rollers.

A mural depicting the natural environment including native plants and birds in a simple but creative way will feature on the facade of Lilian Cannam Kindergarten. The mural will also acknowledge our First Nation, 100 years of committed service delivery to Port Phillip families, and the importance of preserving this heritage into the future.

Gasworks Arts Park will host fortnightly Friday night events across Summer, Music in the Glade. These events will feature live entertainment complemented by local food truck operators.

Lakeside Carols takes to the streets for a busking carols night. Wander the streets, picking up tasty treats from local cafes and restaurants and start your Christmas shopping while listening to amazing performers throughout the streets performing seasonal Christmas classics.

Six unique performances written by Theatre Works resident and guest writers take audiences on a roving journey through Acland Street Village to share fantasy-filled futures. Performed in unexpected nooks, crannies and iconic public spaces, 'Alternative Futures' provides a radical and hopeful outlook for one of St Kilda’s most treasured community hubs.

Held in March along the grassy banks of Elwood Canal between Foam Street and Wave Street, a community picnic event will feature live music, fun and games, including a rubber duck race to raise money to support indigenous habitat restoration along Elwood Canal.