Incinerator x MADA Talk Series: Regenerating and Reconnecting Spaces
Friday, 10 October, 4 to 7pm
Incinerator x MADA Talk Series presents three free public events with local and international artists, designers city planners and other experts, to investigate the role of suburban revitalisation, creative placemaking and community development.
It is part of Incinerator Gallery's 2025 flagship exhibition, The Playground Project Melbourne (28 June to 12 October 2025), where Monash Art Design Architecture (MADA) is the Education Partner.
To celebrate the Maribyrnong Park Bowls Club's legacy and contribution to the life of Moonee Valley City Council, in 2025 Incinerator Gallery commissioned leading Melbourne-based artist, David Wadelton, to realise a new photo series for the MVCC permanent art collection.
Venue: Maribyrnong Park Bowls Club
195 Holmes Road, Moonee Ponds 3039, Victoria Australia (located across from Incinerator Gallery)
FREE event - bookings required
Duration: 3 hours
Doors open 3.30pm for 4pm start
Light refreshments will be served
David Wadelton, Maribyrnong Bowls Club, 2025. New commission for MVCC permanent art collection. Image courtesy of artist.
Incinerator x MADA Talk 3: Regenerating and Reconnecting Recreational and Cultural Facilities
This event explores regenerative approaches to revitalising ageing and often unviable recreational facilities. Held on site at the former Maribyrnong Bowls Club, the session includes presentations of case studies that showcase renewed community infrastructure. These are followed by short presentations around strategic approaches to the regeneration of community facilities that support community cultural and social needs, local ecologies and respond to the realities of contemporary urban life. The event concludes with a keynote lecture by These Are The Projects We Do Together, operator of Brunswick's recently opened Balam Balam creative hub, about transforming challenging or underutilised sites into socially vibrant, inclusive places through architecture, curation, education and ongoing operations.
Produced by Incinerator Gallery and MADA, in association with Festival of Urbanism 2025.
David Wadelton, Maribyrnong Bowls Club, 2025. New commission for MVCC permanent art collection. Image courtesy of artist.
Timothy Moore is a director of Sibling Architecture, lecturer of architecture at Monash University, and the co-curator of Melbourne Design Week presented by the National Gallery of Victoria.
Timothy also works as a researcher at Monash University's XYX Lab, which explores gender-sensitive design practices and theory where he has contributed to exhibitions, publications, events and advocacy that investigates the intersections of sexuality, gender and architecture.
Timothy will introduce the arc of the day, including a perspective on the challenges to regenerating community facilities.
David Wadelton, Maribyrnong Bowls Club, 2025. New commission for MVCC permanent art collection. Image courtesy of artist.
PANEL 1: PRESENTATIONS, 4 to 5pm
Built Projects of Renewed Community Buildings
Searle x Waldron is a design practice specialising in inventive public and community projects, from small pavilions to larger civic and recreational facilities. Winners of the 2025 AIA Victorian Architecture Medal, the studio explores the transformative potential of design across all scales.
Director Suzannah Waldron will present the refurbishment of the historic Maidstone Tennis Pavilion, originally built in 1917 as a single-gabled Sunshine Bowling Club pavilion, where heritage and contemporary design are carefully interwoven. She will also share insights from the Kingsville Tennis Club and other recent sporty projects.
David Wadelton, Maribyrnong Bowls Club, 2025. New commission for MVCC permanent art collection. Image courtesy of artist.
The Darebin Intercultural Centre is a community facility established within the City of Darebin’s Civic Centre. The space aspires to foster meaningful and constructive inter-racial, inter-cultural, and inter-faith relations between the people who live, work and play in the City of Darebin. Through its adaptive reuse of the existing building, originally considered culturally unsafe, curved pockets of space break down the barrier of ‘the box’, and foster a sense of an unwalled community.
Chair: Dr Timothy Moore is Associate Dean (Engagement) at MADA , Monash Architecture Senior Lecturer, a founder of Sibling Architecture, and Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Nicholas Braun is co-director of Sibling Architecture, an innovative practice that includes designing for the adaptive reuse of existing buildings, delivering outcomes that are grounded, responsive and socially engaged. He will present the Darebin Intercultural Centre, a community building that aims to foster meaningful and constructive inter-racial, inter-cultural and inter-faith relations.
David Wadelton, Maribyrnong Bowls Club, 2025. New commission for MVCC permanent art collection. Image courtesy of artist.
PANEL 2: PRESENTATIONS, 5 to 6pm
Strategic Approaches: Connecting Facilities, People and Ecologies
Liz Taylor from the Monash Urban Lab researches how underutilised or vacant spaces can be better allocated. Her work examines how changes in use, including shifts enabled by planning rules, can unlock new potential. She approaches this through a spatial allocation lens, considering how land and buildings can serve evolving community needs.
David Wadelton, Maribyrnong Bowls Club, 2025. New commission for MVCC permanent art collection. Image courtesy of artist.
Discussion about how MVCC’s activation program, Art in Surprising Places is helping to reinvigorate community engagement and interest in the arts and turning pilot projects into more impactful events. Part of MVCC's Igniting Creativity Cultural Strategy.
David Wadelton, Maribyrnong Bowls Club, 2025. New commission for MVCC permanent art collection. Image courtesy of artist.
XYX Lab investigates underrepresented communities in urban space and planning through the lens of gender and sexuality. Nicole Kalms will present the previous Women's Safety Audit on the Merri Creek and the importance of including 800 local women to share their perceptions, experiences and advice for the area.
David Wadelton, Maribyrnong Bowls Club, 2025. New commission for MVCC permanent art collection. Image courtesy of artist.
Michaela is a landscape architect whose practice-based research explores the urbanisation of water and river systems, and the effects of local infrastructures on neighbourhoods and communities, and the delivery and long-term sustainability of community-based projects. She offers expertise in working at a systems scale, connecting natural and built environments.
David Wadelton, Maribyrnong Bowls Club, 2025. New commission for MVCC permanent art collection. Image courtesy of artist.
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: 6 to 7pm
These Are The Projects We Do Together, led by Joseph Norster and Millie Cattlin, are Melbourne-based designers renowned for transforming "problematic" or underutilised sites into socially vibrant, inclusive places through architecture, curation, education, and ongoing operations. Their latest project Balam Balam Place is a new purpose-built creative and community precinct located in the heart of Brunswick on Wurundjeri Country. The original site was purchased in 2010 when it was home to an old school with large buildings, a heritage house and public open space. In 2016 Merri-bek City Council appointed These Are the Projects We Do Together, to manage the site as ‘Siteworks’, and with the First Nations contemporary art gallery, Blak Dot. This activation provided the vision for the future of the site.
Chair: Professor Mel Dodd is the Dean of Monash Art, Design and Architecture, an award-winning architect, urban practitioner and academic leader. Her practice is underpinned by productive collaborations with industry, government and communities, contributing to inclusive and sustainable urban environments.
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