Over the past four years the former Collingwood Technical College has been undergoing a dramatic transformation into a permanent, affordable and dynamic home for artists and the creative community in Melbourne’s inner north. With the site already welcoming the first influx of tenants and set to open to the public in stages throughout 2020, Contemporary Arts Precincts Ltd is excited to reveal its new identity as Collingwood Yards.
“The ‘Collingwood Arts Precinct’ is a literal description that has been applied not only to Collingwood Yards, but to the adjoining Circus Oz site and, at times, some of the creative community around it,” says Marcus Westbury, CEO of Contemporary Arts Precincts Ltd, the organisation that has managed and developed the Collingwood Yards site since the Victorian Government, through Creative Victoria, designated the site as a creative hub and community asset, transferring ownership to Contemporary Arts Precincts in March 2018.
Once colloquially known as the “Tech Yards”, Collingwood Yards picks up a former name for the site and reimagines it, speaking to the future of a new, open and welcoming place in the Collingwood community.
“Collingwood Yards evokes the history of the site, its defining central features and our ambitions for a place of making and creating,” Mr Westbury said. “Our plans for the site have always been about connecting it to the community and reorienting it around the central courtyard. In a dense part of the city it will become a place for the whole community to enjoy, as well as being a unique outdoor meeting space, performance venue and place for creative events.”
Opening in stages through the first half of 2020, Collingwood Yards will feature tenants including PBS106.7FM, Music Victoria, Briggs’ Bad Apples Music, Bus Projects, Auspicious Arts Projects, Centre for Projection Art, Experimenta Media Arts, Liquid Architecture, The Social Studio, The Push, West Space and Uro Publications. A full list of founding tenants is available here.
The new identity was driven by local design studio The Company You Keep who collaborated with type designer Vincent Chan to develop a typeface whose quotidian qualities embody a spirit of industriousness and inclusivity, and that drew from vernacular building fascia found in Collingwood and its neighbouring suburbs. They were briefed to deliver a brand identity that generously supported the broad range of creative tenants with strong identities, but could also stand independently. The supporting marque or “the dot” evokes the sense of a map marker - or a starting point for engagement with the site and its tenants.
