Skip to main content
Room to Create tenancies

Providing long-term space for Yarra's arts organisations.

Providing long-term space for our arts organisations has always been a core program. We do not have many spaces available, but they are precious and important.

Our longer-term arts tenants

KIN Fashion

12-16 Peel Street, Collingwood

KIN Fashion is an incubator space that showcases the work of nine up-and-coming First Nations designers and provides product development and production support. KIN Fashion focuses on fostering innovation, collaboration and ethical manufacturing in the Australian fashion industry. It aims to develop circular business models that care for Country and community.

In March 2022 KIN Fashion successfully tendered a lease of 12-16 Peel Street through a competitive EOI process. Yarra City Arts facilitated the process in partnership with the State Government Creative Neighbourhoods Program, which supports councils to reinvigorate vacant heritage sites and revitalise neighbourhoods into creative precincts.

Blak Pearl Studio

Rear 126 Moore Street, Fitzroy

Blak Pearl Studio is a creative drop-in space for Aboriginal Peoples in Yarra. Future Tense is the program coordinator, with support from Yarra's Room to Create Program and Annual Arts Grants - Community Arts Stream. Blak Pearl Studio provides a culturally safe multifaced creative space designed to accommodate the artistic and communal needs of Aboriginal Peoples.

The first year of the pilot program enables the community to come together creatively. It provides artistic and cultural tools such as paint, drawing materials, wood working, skins, IT equipment and space.

Conners Conners

Fitzroy Town Hall, 201 Napier Street, Fitzroy

Conners Conners is a non-profit exhibition space in Fitzroy, run and curated by artists, art workers and curators. It is dedicated to providing a platform where artists in all stages of their careers have the freedom to explore, experiment and take risks within their practices.

The gallery promotes a supportive and dynamic program with ambitious aims. It gives artists the chance to elevate their practices and build networks in art and non-art communities.

Conners Conners is located at the Fitzroy Town Hall behind the central terrace on Napier Street.

Image: Lane Cormick, With Style (detail), 2019

Dancehouse

150 Princes Street, Carlton North

Dancehouse is Australia's premier centre for independent dance. It develops challenging, invigorating and socially engaged moving art.

Dancehouse's role is to

  • advance independent dance artists
  • build dance audiences
  • develop the art form itself.

Dancehouse programs generate a kaleidoscope of opportunities and sit at a confluence of circulations: makers, ideas, spaces, contexts, publics, disciplines and territories.

Image: Atlanta Eke's The Tennis Piece, 2018-19. Photo by Tim Birnie.

Yarra Sculpture Gallery

117 Vere Street, Collingwood

Yarra Sculpture Gallery has been exhibiting contemporary sculpture at its current site in Abbotsford for 21 years.

Established in 1997 to provide a large sculpture space, it has remained an artist-run initiative managed by the Contemporary Sculptors Association (CSA). It aims to provide an exhibition venue for CSA members and encourage and support new works in spatial arts practice.

Image: Works by Artist-in-Residence Cezary Strulgis in development and on display during the Yarra Sculpture Gallery Summer 2020 Residency program.

The Women's Art Register

415 Church Street, Richmond

The Women's Art Register is Australia's living archive of women's art practice (non-binary and trans inclusive) and a National, Artist-Run and Not-for-Profit community and resource.

Established by women artists in 1975, it started with 100 women artists contributing slides of their work. The initial collection was housed at the Ewing Gallery, University of Melbourne until 1978 when it moved to Richmond Library, where it remains today.

Image: Against the Odds, Women in Art Forum, Richmond Theatrette, 2017. Photo by Veronica Caven Aldous

SEVENTH Gallery

213-215 Church Street, Richmond

SEVENTH is a non-profit Artist-Run-Initiative (ARI) gallery run by a volunteer board of artists and arts professionals, with a long history of supporting emerging and underrepresented artists, curators and writers. Their core goal is to champion accessibility and affordability for artists.

After 20 years in Fitzroy, the gallery relocated in 2021 from their Gertrude Street premises to 215 Church Street, Richmond. At its new location, SEVENTH contribute significantly to the local cultural terrain with:

  • a diverse and experimental exhibitions program
  • ongoing public programs
  • community partnerships
  • studio residencies
  • advocacy for emerging new and artists.

The new space is the former Richmond Maternal Child and Health Services. The rear of the building is leased to youth arts organisation and RTC tenant Visionary Images. SEVENTH's new space includes three galleries and two studio spaces. The studios will host a series of artist residencies and initiate important partnerships with community groups.

Visionary Images

213-215 Church Street, Richmond

Visionary Images (VI) is a not-for-profit arts organisation dedicated to the engagement and development, through creativity, of young people and communities.

Established in 1999, VI offers opportunities for the creative and personal development of young people from all walks of life, many of whom have experienced hardship.

Visionary Images is a creative social collaboration that works with communities to develop, produce and exhibit public art. Artists and youth collaborate to create progressive, thought-provoking artworks that reflect young people's ideas, experiences and concerns.

Visionary Images exhibits art in highly visible public spaces, taking it into the streets and everyday life. It aims to exhibit to the broadest possible audience to draw community attention to pressing issues and contribute to realising effective positive social solutions.

Previous Room to Create program recipients