Our Inclusive Melbourne Strategy will help realise our vision of a truly inclusive Melbourne over the next 10 years. It provides a framework for the City of Melbourne to advance inclusion and equality for all in our city, and outlines how we will embrace the diversity of cultures, ages, genders, sexualities, backgrounds, religions and abilities of all who live, work, visit and study in the city.
It was developed through an extensive consultation process, drawing on expertise within our organisation as well as consulting widely with organisations and the community.
The final strategy was endorsed by Council on 15 February 2022.
Key priorities
The strategy identifies three overarching priorities, with corresponding outcomes and evaluation measures. We will monitor our performance against our priorities annually.
- Organisation, services, programs, and places for all – a diverse and inclusive workforce underpins our delivery of services, programs and places that are accessible and meet the needs of our diverse communities.
- Sustainable and inclusive economy – the city’s recovery and regeneration from COVID-19 provides an opportunity to build back better for all. A diverse and resilient community is at the centre of a liveable city.
- Empowered, participatory communities – we want to encourage participation from all community members, ensuring that people feel heard and their needs are addressed.
Inclusive Melbourne Action Plan
The Inclusive Melbourne Action Plan 2024–26 is the second implementation plan for the 10-year Inclusive Melbourne Strategy. It is a new approach for the City of Melbourne, combining several previous plans into one. It focuses on progressing inclusion, participation and empowerment for four priority groups:
- People with disability
- Women
- LGBTIQA+ communities
- Multicultural communities
While focusing on these four priority groups, the plan also recognises the importance of intersectionality, that different parts of a person’s identity or circumstances – for example, their age, culture, disability, Aboriginality, sexuality and gender – combine and cross over to shape their life experiences, including their experience of inclusion or discrimination. Intersectionality is a way of seeing the whole person.
The actions do not represent everything that we do – we continue to deliver a wide range of services and programs for young people, children and families, and older people, and ongoing initiatives to make our services, programs and places welcoming and accessible for the priority groups and the other communities that make up our city.
