About the Centre

Australia's first Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas will open in late 2009. The Centre will be located within a large wing of the State Library of Victoria, in the heart of Melbourne's bustling central business district and situated in a burgeoning cultural precinct close to Melbourne and RMIT Universities.

The establishment of the Centre is the centrepiece of an ambitious Victorian Government initiative which saw Melbourne designated as a UNESCO City of Literature in 2008 and join the UNESCO Creative Cities network alongside Berlin, Montreal, Seville, Edinburgh and other global creative cities.

The Centre will become a hub and home for writers and key literary organisations, including the Melbourne Writers Festival, Victorian Writers' Centre, Express Media, Emerging Writers' Festival and Australian Poetry Centre. It will provide literary organisations, publishers, universities, companies and the media with access to a large, new performance space, shared meeting rooms and workshop spaces.

The Centre will be responsible for programming a range of events across the year: the annual Premier's Literary Awards, the annual Deakin Innovation Lectures, keynote public events including international speakers, as well as book and magazine launches, speeches, debates, seminars, poetry recitals, book readings, symposia, awards and performances.

The Centre aims to build a large membership base of Victorians and Australians who have an interest in writing, ideas, books, culture and literature. A new Centre management organisation will coordinate the facilities and public programs. Major events will be filmed and archived on the Centre's content-rich website.

Operational funding for the Centre will be provided by the Victorian Government, through Arts Victoria, and from a range of programming and philanthropic partnerships.

The Centre's first Director is Chrissy Sharp, who comes to the role after a distinguished career as an arts and cultural administrator in Australia and the UK. For the past five years she has been general manager of Sadler's Wells Theatre in London, and before that was general manager of the Sydney Festival, head of policy at SBS and director of the Australian Writers' Guild.

The Centre is governed by an independent Board. Its members are Eric Beecher (chairman, principal of Private Media), Peter Biggs (managing director, Clemenger BBDO Advertising Melbourne), Gabrielle Coyne (CEO, Penguin Australia), Andrew Hagger (executive general manager, Private & Institutional Wealth, National Australia Bank). Joanna Murray-Smith (playwright and author) and Mark Rubbo (managing director, Readings bookshops).