Minister tours Welcome Centre’s historic new home

THE old Ballarat East Library building at Barkly Square will soon be reactivated and full of life as it becomes the Ballarat Regional Multicultural Council’s Ballarat Welcome Centre.

The space was the base for BRMC’s December Twilight Market and Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Richard Wynne toured the building and opened the market.

BRMC executive officer, Ann Foley said the evening wasn’t an official launch of the Welcome Centre, but a “first taste.

“Now the Ballarat Welcome Centre has a home. It’s such an amazing building, in a complex-like neighbourhood with great potential impacts, local and global connections,” she said.

“This place will become a place of welcome social events, cultural events, training, enterprise and we’re really looking forward to seeing it grow.”

Mr Wynne was “delighted” to support the ongoing upgrade of the centre.

“This is a real opportunity for me to understand, more clearly, just how important facilities like this are to our community going forward,” he said.

“It’s fantastic that these sorts of investments bring life back into these historic buildings. Looking upstairs, there’s opportunities to open up some of these wonderful rooms.

“What was the senior secondary school is now an incredibly interesting facility there with a multitude of different groups, so this is a very unique synergy between the Welcome Centre and all the rest of the ancillary services on this site,” Mr Wynne said.