Our Favourite Moments From 2025
As we roll towards the end of the year, the Regen Melbourne team take a moment to pause and reflect. Here, they share what 2025 meant for them and their work.
Kaj Löfgren – CEO
There were so many highlights this year: the emergence of two new Earthshots (300,000 Streets and Nourished Neighbourhoods); the City of Melbourne publicly supporting the ambition of a Swimmable Birrarung; the re-birth of the Climate Change Exchange; and a plethora of other collaborative projects across the portfolio. Despite the many obvious challenges in our city and around the world, in 2025 we’ve seen real glimmers of systemic change emerging from the regenerative weaving that is at the heart of our work. I’m so grateful and very proud of our team and our community of partners who lean into the ambitious, messy and long-term nature of this work.
Perhaps the moment that stays with me is our recent Learning Summit, where we brought together 85 friends and partners to share reflections and insights from across the last few years of work together. The day began with macro reflections and then we dove into deep workshops on a myriad of themes. Many learnings were collected here, but above all it was an example of how we can come together to learn across the usual boundaries, make sense of our ever-changing context, and then continue on working together in service to this city we love.
The Learning Summit also served as an informal 5th birthday party for Regen Melbourne, a big moment in our movement’s journey. In that time, our work has evolved and matured. In fact, the reality of ambitious, collaborative work is that it’s always emergent and ever-changing. But at the heart of our work is a stable constant that remains truer than ever: we are here to serve the social and environmental regeneration of our city.
Nicole and Kaj in action at Regen Melbourne’s Learning Summit.
Dheepa Jeyapalan – Lead Convenor, Food Systems
This year's standout moment was launching Nourished Neighbourhoods – our new food systems Earthshot – and witnessing how deeply it resonated. Much of 2025 involved building on last year's sense-making work, where we listened to what partners and Melbourne needed from a food Earthshot. The answer was clear: hope, and a frame that celebrates the beauty and resilience of our food system. In a landscape dominated by negative narratives – particularly around cost of living – we needed to acknowledge community realities while charting an exciting path forward that captured imagination, just as our other Earthshots have done.
When I shared the name Nourished Neighbourhoods with one partner, she said it felt like a big warm hug. That reaction captured something essential. When I asked the community organisations I work with what a nourished neighbourhood meant to them, each had a different answer. That's exactly as it should be – nourishment looks, feels and tastes different for all of us.
This past year, I've had the privilege of spending time with organisations and people who are actively nourishing their own neighborhoods: from a principal running a wonderful school meals program to the warm and welcoming pop-up markets run by Community Grocer, and the distribution of nourishing food to local communities by Whittlesea Community Connections. They all embody what Nourished Neighbourhoods means in practice. Next year, I'm excited to surface more of these stories, shining a light on their work, amplifying their voices, and supporting the incredible impact they're creating.
Joel Backwell – Policy & Urban Governance Lead
So many of us take the strength of our democracy for granted, including our elected politicians. But, like any idea, it is only as strong as we make it, and it only exists as long as we believe in it. Like a healthy tree, unless we nurture it and water it with our ideas and our active participation, our democracy will start to whither.
In the face of what feels like big, intractable challenges (climate change, housing crises, rising inequality), what has amazed me this year is seeing how small catalysts can effect big changes. People want to be inspired. Regen Melbourne’s three Earthshots are rallying points around which a multiplicity of people can gather. By directing our energy towards ambitious projects that we all believe in – regardless of our specific individual actions – we can build something special together. We don’t need to direct traffic (and by doing so we might even kill the innovation and inspiration); we just need to create the conditions for possibility to thrive.
On a personal note, I grew up by the ocean and for so long have lived near the banks of the Birrarung. But it’s only this year, in working with Regen Melbourne, that I’ve actually taken the time to be quiet and listen to the water, to sit with (and in) the Birrarung and let it tell me what it needs. Introducing my two boys to the river and inviting them to sit with it and let it speak to them has given us some really special moments together.
Joel planting trees along the Birrarung on the team’s day by the river with Dr. Maya Ward.
Joshua Devine – Collaboration & Investment Lead
I am grateful for the space I’ve had in this job to zoom out. After the last few years in different roles tied to specific capital interventions, joining Regen Melbourne in 2025 has given me the opportunity to look, hear and think about the broader landscape – the way innovations, relationships and ideas ripple across our beautiful city, and the bigger story we’re starting to tell about capital itself.
Somewhere over the past 10 months, it became clear that we already have what we need to make the shift. The demand is there, the desire is growing and the level of innovation is inspiring.
As an extrovert, I’ve relished in the spark that’s come through the people doing the work – whether it was an event with SIX Invest reimagining the role of the shareholder; sitting alongside Katherine Trebek exploring the next economy; or co-creating Participatory Grantmaking with community groups across Melbourne. Each moment filled me with hope and left me genuinely excited for the road ahead.
Charity Mosienyane – Lead Convenor, Swimmable Birrarung
The year finished on a real high, with the City of Melbourne signing the Swimmable Cities Charter, and officially backing a Swimmable Birrarung by 2050. This was a significant milestone for the Swimmable Birrarung movement following multi-decade work by various advocates and community groups. I had the privilege of addressing the Council and supporting City of Melbourne’s recommendations to form a coalition of broad actors to progress the ambitious goal, activate the waterfront, clean stormwater, and become a signatory to the growing swimmable cities community. Institutional buy-in of this ambitious goal has the potential to transform our city like Paris or Copenhagen.
Speaking of, in June I travelled to Europe where I attended the inaugural Swimmable Cities Summit and swam in the Manse River, River Seine and Copenhagen Harbour. I experienced first-hand how these cities have turned their once-polluted rivers and harbours into swimmable havens with multiple social, environmental and economic benefits. These experiences only reaffirmed that this really is possible here in Melbourne, and for all our waterways across Australia (yes, let’s dream BIG).
For the second year running, Regen Melbourne was a Riverfest strategic partner. In collaboration, we curated events that spanned across everything from revaluing and reframing stormwater as a valuable resource to understanding emerging financial markets that are being used to incentivise cleaning up waterways. These events brought so many unusual actors together (artists, businesses, policy makers, practitioners and city shapers and members of the public) on the exciting journey we have ahead of us. Bring on 2050!
Charity taking a leap of faith at the inaugural Swimmable Cities Summit in Rotterdam.
Alison Whitten – Director of Systems Lab
The shape of our work really landed this year, which has felt exciting to us as a team and has genuinely resonated across the globe. We started the year welcoming Joel and Josh to the Systems Lab, growing this part of our team substantially. This gave us good reason to pause and refine the framing of the Lab and the work within it. At last, after about six months of emergence, the purpose, focus and value of the Systems Lab could be presented clearly.
Fast forward to the middle of the year, and the final part of our structure – our portfolio of projects – came together to showcase the most tangible parts of our work. The portfolio approach weaves together the Systems Lab’s enablers and the Earthshots, and illustrates the power of learning through action. The projects bring the relational work to life and provide new ways for collaborators to contribute to our long-term goals for the city.
The five-year arc of Regen Melbourne, and especially this current structure of our work, is having an impact in meaningful ways already.
The publication of Doughnut 3.0 in Nature brings a new level of focus on the persistent and critical social and ecological challenges we face. Seeing our City Portrait cited here among community-led responses to these challenges felt rewarding and served as a reminder of our local and global responsibilities.
I had the opportunity to present Regen Melbourne’s work as an example of systems change in practice close to home and far away – from Gippsland and Barcelona to Sheffield and Turin. In all these cases, sharing our story provided inspiration of what’s possible when places are ready to collaborate differently towards long-term goals.
Within our team, I’ve noticed new formations, new ways of working and new ideas coming together. The integration that we’ve been aspiring to is landing in exciting ways, setting us up for another big year in 2026.
Yasmina Dkhissi – Research Activation Lead
My highlight for this year lives in the sparkles of the little moments that make everything possible and matter. The brilliance in the invisible moments that could go unnoticed if blindly rushing through. The moments that emerged while slowing down against the urge to rush. The moments of quiet realisation that change the shape of a day, week, year. The beauty and nourishment in the unproductive. The moments that didn’t feel or look like work. Collectively, painting an ever-changing representation of the living river. The moments found in listening and in company, human or otherwise. The moments of connection, when ideas and people came alive. The privilege to witness the sparkles of life in people’s eyes. The laughter and the teary eyes. The moments that recognised and celebrated people’s humanity and nature. The mosaic moments.
Half of team Regen Melbourne enjoying each other’s company by the Birrarung.
Nina Sharpe – Lead Convenor, 300,000 Streets
This year, I've witnessed incredible stories of community each and every week. Working across 300,000 Streets invites me into diverse settings where I see how people come together, how they lead, how they advocate with passion and – most importantly – how they connect. The stories are different, yet somehow the same. Sometimes they express frustrations but more often they showcase the magic of life.
🏘️ Neighbours celebrating their estate's 100th birthday alongside 100-year-old resident, Clare.
🥳 Street parties started by one person that sparked connections between people who'd lived side-by-side but had never met.
🛝 Kids from social housing sharing their 'best days ever' stories and dreaming up more for the school holidays.
🌍 Street transformation stories from other countries, especially Barcelona, thanks to a visit from Salvador Rueda.
🎴 Stories shared over tarot/doughnut-card reading that tell of hopeful, possible futures.
🌳 A profoundly special story of regeneration told in Boon Wurrung language by N'arweet Carolyn Briggs and Alison Soutar.
There are so many more stories I’ve heard, and I feel very lucky that they have been shared with me. There’s a power in these stories that helps to design the future we need – all we have to do is listen.
Nicole Barling-Luke – Director of Earthshots
This year has held a lot. You can see from everyone highlights how very much. For me, the moments where the abstracted cerebral work of ‘systems change at a city scale’ has been most satisfying is, of course, when it’s been grounded, touchable and human.
In 2025, we had the pleasure of spending a day with the wonderful Maya Ward in the upper reaches of the Birrarung. We were facilitated through some storytelling exercises, ate a delicious meal of local wild venison, and planted some seedlings on the banks of the river that we work with everyday. Maya shared stories of her relationship with this patch of river, and we spoke of how the vegetation around the river cannot regenerate itself without human intervention because of the ecological damage that has been done. And so, our role is to not walk away from the challenges we’re facing in the hope they will heal themselves but instead lean in, get our hands dirty and work with the environment we’re in.
Once you’ve had a chance to rest and digest over the holidays, come join the Regen Melbourne team for a 2026 kick-off boat cruise on the Birrarung.
