Publisher: RMIT University, ISSN: 18387314-131, Contributors: Harriet Edquist, Sarah Teasley, Helen Stuckey, Format: Softcover, 210 x 300 mm, 135pp

This Journal accompanies the exhibition Radical Utopia: An Archaeology of a Creative City showing at RMIT Gallery from 21 February to 27 May, 2023. The exhibition curators and journal editors Harriet Edquist and Helen Stuckey were inspired by the collections of the RMIT Design Archives which is rich in material from the 1980s, a decade closely identified with the cultural phenomenon of postmodernism.

We thank the contributors to this special issue:

Dr. Karen Burns, architectural historian and theorist at The University of Melbourne;
Harriet Edquist, Professor Emerita, RMIT University, and Co-Curator of the exhibition, Radical Utopia: An Archaeology of a Creative City;
Marius Foley, Lecturer in the School of Design, RMIT University;
Dr Sally Gray, writer, curator and cultural historian;
Dr Timothy Moore, founder of Sibling Architecture, and curator of contemporary design and architecture at the National Gallery of Victoria;
Helen Stuckey, Senior Lecturer, Games, RMIT University, and Co-Curator of the exhibition, Radical Utopia: An Archaeology of a Creative City;
Olga Tsara, librarian with the pictorial collections of State Library Victoria;
Melanie Swalwell, Professor of Digital Media Heritage, Swinburne University.

Together the authors’ essays document the revitalisation of Melbourne and its close suburbs in the 1980s at a micro level. Their focus is not on the large economic, urban, institutional, and commercial agendas that forced change on the city, rather, they detail the small studios and the creative interventions into the city fabric that gradually helped infuse life back into its streets and create a shared culture that has served Melbourne well over the ensuing decades.

Designed by Stephen Banham, this bumper issue of the Journal has been sponsored by the Gordon Darling Foundation.