Half a century at the old army barracks

Addi Road, in many ways, is hard to define. But we know our improvisational community spirit has served us well over the years. We’re in a loop of engagement that never stops energising us. We keep responding to need in new ways, across a wide spectrum of programs and activities.

We’re the biggest community centre in Australia by size. We’re filled with heritage-listed buildings dating back to when the place was an army barracks during World Wars One and Two. Many of the original buildings – drill halls, an armoury, stables – are still standing; worn but enduring, and well-used for very different purposes today.

The beginning of it all

It was in 1976 that this historic site was adopted by the community. A product of local activism by Greek, Turkish, Italian, Portuguese and South American migrant groups living around the Marrickville area, Addi Road would come to be recognised as the birthplace of multiculturalism.

The then Whitlam-era Minister for Immigration, Al Grassby, acclaimed the newly opened community centre as “one small world in Australia”.

Anthony Albanese, our Prime Minister and local Federal member for Grayndler, more recently described Addi Road as “the heartbeat of the Inner West”.

For half a century, we’ve maintained our commitment to a diverse community across the City of Sydney and Inner West LGAs and far beyond.

The changing face of Addi Road

The demographics have kept shifting, of course. The Inner West now has the highest number of boarding houses of any LGA in the country and among the highest ratio of artists and musicians per capita. Poor and privileged, struggling and creative, living side by side. On the ground, at the heart of it all, we keep plenty busy.

In practice, this means a street-level organisation involved with everything from food relief to social justice campaigns, public talks and community gatherings, with a rich schedule of arts and culture events that includes our annual Addi Road Writers Festival (now in its sixth year), the Public School Arts Festival (now in its 11th year at our community access StirrUp Gallery) and Addi Sounds Youth Fest (born in 2025).

“Poor and privileged, struggling and creative, living side by side. On the ground, at the heart of it all, we keep plenty busy.”

You might feel some of this energy as you walk through the main gates and see the Honour Roll for Peace on either side of the entrance with its plaques commemorating those who have worked for peace, resisted war or fought against the causes of war for a more just and peaceful world.

Inside, you’ll see our community-access StirrUp Gallery on the first corner. Directly opposite sits the Fair Trade Emporium, our collaborative shop for ethically sourced products from across the globe. From there, the centre keeps opening up and expanding on what it offers to and from the community.

Covid drives up food demand

Food relief has become one of our major activities over the last decade – a crucial service heightened by Covid and its lockdowns. Addi Road currently feeds 6,000 people a week thanks to our two food pantries in Marrickville and Camperdown, and outreach programs like our school breakfasts where the Sydney Swans often kick in for BBQ mornings with us.

On the last Friday of every month in Camperdown, we offer a free freshly prepared meal by a chef and our hard-working volunteers. Known as ‘The Cook Up’, it incorporates a shopping-and-cooking lesson inside our partner and neighbour’s Mission Australia’s Common Ground community housing project. People dine on a nutritious lunch and learn a bit about how to cook it for themselves independently.

This ‘food justice’ work – food as a human right – is rooted in our environmental efforts, rescuing tonnes of food every week.

We also run a regular event called Wednesday Night Lights outside our Marrickville food pantry. We feed anywhere between 100 and 200 people each week for free from 6pm to 8pm, providing sit-down hot meals at long tables in a sociable atmosphere, while a wagon-train of partnership services offer free medical care, laundry, legal advice, haircuts, housing assistance, and advice around issues as varied as gambling and domestic violence. It’s a very friendly evening held under open skies. Often the greatest achievement is simply giving people a place to sit, eat, talk and connect. The night answers many needs, from hunger and access to services to ameliorating loneliness and isolation.

At Christmas time, we amp things up with our week-long #HampersofHope. We started #HampersofHope during Covid as part of our emergency food relief work, an extension of years of experience running Addi Road Food Pantry. The event has kept growing with Channel 7 Sunrise visiting us each year for their morning live-to-air weather crosses with Sam Mac. Last December we put together 2,000 gift hampers and 500 pet hampers for battling individuals and families at what can be a difficult and isolating time. What #HampersofHope also shows is how we try to make people feel included, even happy. Not left out. Not forgotten. It’s politics in action. An active communication that enhances wellbeing and an expressive right to some joy in life.

This is where our food justice activism and cultural programs are of a piece with Addi Road’s wider and deeper vision for what it does in the community. Helping and healing; supporting and inspiring, as well as being inspired by those around us.

Pullquote: “It’s politics in action. An active communication that enhances wellbeing and an expressive right to some joy in life.”

Giving a voice to young people

Addi Sounds is a wonderful case study. It springs out of a partnership with ANU, creating a studio where musicians, podcasters and spoken word artists of all ages can experience industry training and access to professional recording technology. Addi Road Youth Fest gives this program one of its arrowheads: an event entirely curated and run by young artists to showcase original music across pop, rock, jazz, hip hop and electronic genres. Tomorrow’s voices are given their platform at Addi Road today.

Freedom of movement

Addi Moves, our partnership with UNSW, began in 2024. It works from a similar philosophy, providing free community access to an on-site gym with student physiotherapists assisting. Like Addi Sounds, it opens up resources and training for people who could not otherwise afford it. Addi Moves explores the relationship between exercise and trauma-informed health practices, improving mental as well as physical health. UNSW is researching the outcomes for wider application nationally and globally. Individuals and communities benefiting alike, their needs treated in a process that strives towards an integrated vision, a healthy community.

One house; many rooms

Apart from all that Addi Road does directly, we provide an onsite home for many other smaller, highly active community and civil society groups; a plethora of artist studios and a childcare centre, plus the local radio station ‘Skid Row’ and two theatres, the independent Flight Path and the iconic Hellenic Art Theatre.

Our nine-acre site also has over 170 trees – with plenty of ibis thrown in for free as well as a few beautiful tawny frogmouths hiding away like totems if you can spot them in the branches. Nature is supported in a campus-like environment evolving out of everything from the community gardens to a democracy of space evoked in simple things like people walking their dogs or parents standing by as their children climb the trees. To maintain a green space means sustaining a ‘green mind’ as well. It’s a site that allows people of all ages the time to daydream and wander and have a breather from the city and its pressures.

One of the running jokes we have is that Addi Road is a bit like the song ‘Hotel California’: you can check out any time you like but can never leave. Another employee has described it as “a funny old place”.

People do leave, of course, but they get drawn back in. We’re here day-to-day and for the long haul, a backstop when it’s needed, a happy place too… a wild rabbit-warren charged with ideas and actions. With over 800 community volunteers helping keep this beast of love and idealism on track and solidly in action.

“One of the running jokes we have is that Addi Road is a bit like the song Hotel California: you can check out any time you like but can never leave. Another employee has described it as ‘a funny old place’.”

Gadigal people tell us that long before any of this history, the area was a wetlands; rich with food and a wonderful meeting place for local Aboriginal people. At one of our writers’ festivals, an elder took people on a tour, telling a little of that story and pointing out wild-growing plants used in bush medicine.

You do sense an energy here; a specialness that suggests Addi Road is still being used in the ways it was always meant to be. Step into the present and witness how Addi Road has been a homebase for everything from the Voice referendum (as documented in a huge mural on the side of Gumbramorra Hall) to answering First Nations community needs from Glebe to Waterloo. Always was, always will be.

Addi Road… the heartbeat, the funny old place… one world in Australia. We’d love to you to come along and take a look at if you’re not already engaged with our community centre in some way.

Please let all your friends about our birthday and how we’re turning 50 this year. Please consider volunteering too – or donating to help us in our half-a-century moment of maturity! And please share online – or in conversation – anything you see of what we do. You can share your thoughts here:

Every act of support helps us, even just a word-up to others. We promise to pay it forward in return.

Thanks, in the meanwhile, for taking the time to read this rather long happy birthday card to ourselves. 50 years on! It’s a big deal. May we have many more years ahead of us working for and with the community we love.