Our rich design legacy

REPRESENTATIVES from across Australia and New Zealand visited Geelong last week in a yearly forum strengthening ties with our UNESCO Creative City partners.

I had the privilege of welcoming these friends from around the country and across the ditch to our clever and creative city for the annual Australia-New Zealand Creative Cities Network Meeting.

During this two-day forum, the representatives shared challenges and success stories and explored ideas to make our cities more resilient, sustainable and liveable for everyone that calls them home.

Geelong’s participation in this annual event stems from our designation as Australia’s first – and only – City of Design in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

We have a rich design legacy, from the invention of commercial refrigeration and the Ford ute to our manufacturing history.

You can also see this legacy in an incredible variety of architectural styles as you walk through our CBD and towns on the Bellarine Peninsula.

Buildings like Geelong Customs House and Portarlington Grand Hotel showcase our history, while bold and visionary redevelopments and new buildings including Geelong Arts Centre, Geelong Library & Heritage Centre and Boronggook Drysdale Library demonstrate our commitment to carrying our design legacy forward.

For a century Geelong was home to manufacturers such as Ford, Alcoa and International Harvester.

While this chapter in our history has closed, we’re now embarking on an exciting new journey in advanced manufacture.

Today across our city we’re making important advances in carbon fibre, battery production, recycling healthcare equipment and construction materials, and so much more.

But our designation as a City of Design celebrates much more than our growing advanced manufacture sector.

Across our region we have creatives working across multiple design disciplines, from fashionistas, framers and filmmakers, to architects, artists, sculptors and jewellers.

This artistic community is growing, with creative and cultural jobs in Greater Geelong increasing by 54 per cent to more than 6,700 over the past four years.

We showcase this creative community each year in Geelong Design Week – a dynamic array of workshops, exhibitions and events highlighting cutting-edge innovation in our region.

Last year’s Geelong Design Week attracted 40,925 attendances across 86 events – shattering the previous year’s record of 17,288 – and injected $1.4 million into our economy.

Many of these attendees visited the Bellarine Peninsula for tours of unique homes, sessions picking the brains of local architects and a quirky workshop to transform discarded plastic into treasure.

And several other festivals and initiatives showcase the role that design plays in food, music and other parts of everyday life across the Bellarine.

Last year’s Tastes of Geelong featured the culinary craft of wineries, eateries and restaurants around the peninsula.

Local musicians also had the chance to show off their talents and compositions in Resound Festival 2024, which featured a series of free performances in venues across Ocean Grove during winter.

The joint state-council funded Grass Roots Indie Development Series – or GRID for short – is supporting local musicians, such as Leopold-based folk artist Madeliene Cope, with an all-star team of mentors, producers and filmmakers to hone their craft.

These initiatives and more are already fostering and encouraging creativity and innovation throughout Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula.

Through collaboration with our Creative City partners, we can discover new ways to support our creative communities and reach our full potential as a City of Design.

Cr Trent Sullivan

Leopold Ward,

City of Greater Geelong