Footscray Community Arts

Since 2013, Victoria University has been a partner of the Footscray Community Arts and the two organisations share a passion for education, community and creativity in Melbourne’s west. Our history goes back to 1974, when Footscray Community Arts was founded on a VU campus, then called the Footscray Institute of Technology.

The growth of the partnership now provides a range of opportunities for VU students to undertake a research project, intern or complete a work placement in:

• event management
• technical production and marketing
• the Footscray Community ArtLife program.

Since 2013, Footscray Community Arts and VU have engaged in a variety of ways to deliver of arts and community-based programs and enhance student life at VU, including:

• student placements
• performance opportunities for VU student musicians
• Footscray Community Arts participation in VU orientation festivities
• Karen Jackson, Executive Director of the VU Moondani Balluk Indigenous Academic Unit, holding a position on the Footscray Community Arts Indigenous Advisory Group
• collaborations between local artists and VU students on Footscray Community Arts exhibitions, including VU Hive Lab working on the BOLDER exhibition and co-presenting the BRIGHT exhibition.

There is also an ongoing collaboration with the Na Djinang Circus for the production, In Place. For this, Iramoo Grassland Centre Nursery at VU provided 100 local community participants with native plant species, and were invited to care for the plants during 2024. The plants will be brought back to Footscray Community Arts in October as part of the In Place event at the 2024 Fringe Festival. They will be used as part of the set, and after this will become part of the Footscray Community Arts’ native garden.