The HOME community gathered in the heritage-listed surrounds of Mission to Seafarers, Docklands on Friday 6 December 2024 to officially launch HOME and several HOME promotional videos. It was also a day to celebrate and advance HOME’s work in the field of transdisciplinary research and to enable conversations and connections with future industry and community partners.

Following the Welcome to Country by Wurundjeri Elder Annette Xiberras, HOME was launched by Professor Nick Birbilis (Executive Dean, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment) with further remarks from HOME Co-Directors, Professor Richard Tucker and Associate Professor Fiona Andrews. 

The day was also notable for the launch in the MTS Chapel of Local Positioning Systems, a sound installation by artists Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, including live performances by David Shearman and Jenny Hickinbotham. As an exploration of various archives of the experiences of housed and unhoused individuals whose notions of home are often precarious, unsettled, or simply adrift, Local Positioning Systems meshes with a current HOME project on homelessness during, before, and after the pandemic. Meanwhile, in the MTS Dome, a participatory creative arts event, Drawing with Algorithms, led by Dr Simon Grennan with support from Dr Ilona Jetmar, encouraged participants to reimagine their own relationship to home and homelessness through innovative, pictorial, self-representations of data.

The day was a great success overall, built on the hard work of many HOME colleagues, and with terrific support from Deakin University’s Public Exchange Bureau creative arts research group and the ever-friendly and helpful staff at Mission to Seafarers.