Swimmable Birrarung

Imagine diving from the banks of our Birrarung | Yarra River into clean waters, in the heart of Melbourne. Looking up and down stream you can see a swimmable corridor between Dights Falls and Nairm / Port Phillip Bay.

The Swimmable Birrarung iniative is a transformative and city-shaping project. Its vision is to regenerate the Birrarung | Yarra River to the extent that it is healthy, thriving and swimmable again from source to sea. To achieve this, a coherent and systemic response from the actors and stakeholders across the economic spectrum (government, business, civil society and citizens) is needed.

Of course, making the Birrarung swimmable again is so much more than just swimming. We need to reorient our city to recognise our main waterway as a living entity, as a place inextricably linked to our health and biodiversity.

We are working as a coalition of action, supporting the holistic regeneration of the life-force that is the Birrarung.

Late in 2021, RM began a pilot program, convening a core group of alliance members around the regeneration of the Birrarung. This core group of partners convened public forums and private roundtables, integrated research, delivered a project incubator, visited and engaged with international swimmable cities, and co-created the collective vision for a diverse series of swimming places; a swimmable corridor between Dights Falls and Nairm / Port Phillip Bay.

With an alignment behind an ambitious orientation–to make the lower reaches of the Birrarung Yarra River swimmable again–our work turned to bringing a broad alliance of organisations into formation behind this goal. Six collectively designed fields of action were established and activated at the end of 2022:

• Storytelling and Reconnection

• Water Health

• Policy, Legal and Governance

• Business and Enterprise

• Campaigns: Building a Movement

• Swimming Activations

These fields of action capture both existing and potential work and chart the areas that require deep exploration of the current landscape, the identification of key systemic barriers, and the design of opportunities for transformation. Each field of action includes a unique formation of organisations with subject-matter expertise and a desire to serve the regeneration of the Birrarung.

After two years of convening organisations in the Swimmable Birrarung initiative–which builds on decades, and millennia, of work in service to a thriving waterway – we are now identifying leverage points and co-designing an emerging portfolio of tangible projects to pursue together.

Lead Convenor: Charity Mosienyane (charity@regen.melbourne)

How to get involved: Email Charity to find out more about the initiative.

Funding Partner/s: The Joe White Bequest

Catalytic philanthropy was received to fund our Lead Convenor role and support the development of this project ecosystem. We are actively exploring more innovative systemic funding models, in partnership with Transcap Initiative.

Keep an eye on our upcoming events to get involved. If you are an organisation working toward a thriving future for Melbourne, join the alliance to help co-create pathways of action across our city.

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