Collingwood Yards is a contemporary arts precinct built into the former Collingwood Technical School, a cluster of heritage buildings around a central courtyard now given over to studios, galleries, project spaces, a radio station, and small creative businesses. It is the most ambitious recent attempt to give Melbourne's independent arts scene secure, affordable space in an inner suburb that has otherwise priced artists out.
For a visitor it works as a low-key place to see what is being made right now: drop in to the galleries and project rooms, have a coffee in the courtyard, and check whether anything — an exhibition opening, a talk, a market — is on. It captures Collingwood's reinvention from industrial grit to creative hub in a single block.