Celebrating Centres 2025
In 2025, across South Australian Community Centres, people have gathered together to share times of joy, fun, learning, growing, grief, celebration, support and friendship in so many different ways.
The stories from individuals and groups in centres are countless, but below is a snippet of some of the highlights from across the year!
City of Adelaide Community Centres - North Adelaide
Our fantastic “For the Love of North Adelaide” postcards art project in collaboration with artist Louise Flaherty earlier this year.
Centre visitors and local school kids wrote postcards to North Adelaide sharing what they loved about the place through paintings, drawings, poems and written messages.
This culminated in a very popular exhibition in our hall and stickers marking the way in up the street.
See more:
North Adelaide Community Centre – Artist in Residence 2025 — LOUISE FLAHERTY
Woodcroft Morphett Vale Neighbourhood Centre
At Woodcroft Morphett Vale Neighbourhood Centre, we lost our Chairperson Brian Adams to cancer. He was an exceptional man who cared deeply about community and the community centre. His legacy lives on.
Every time I see a rainbow I think of him and I think about the colour and light centres bring to the people who volunteer, work, participate, linger and enjoy spending time in them.
Tailem Bend Community Centre
The Tailem Bend Community Centre hosted an Open Day at the Station Master’s House to showcase our vision for a welcoming community hub supporting Community Transport South Australia (CTSA), flexible office and meeting spaces, and an accessible community garden Funded by the Department of Human Services (DHS).
Visitors enjoyed guided walk-throughs, viewed concept displays, and connected with TBCC staff and volunteers to discuss heritage, accessibility, and future community use.
A highlight of the day was the introduction of Pinar, TBCC’s talking tree, which shares stories about the town’s history, the Murray River, Lakes and Coorong region, and Ngarrindjeri culture—reflecting the spirit of connection, care, and storytelling at the heart of the project.
Excitement is also building with the near completion of a new pavilion, funded in partnership with the Community Centres SA (CCSA), Australian Hotels Association SA (AHASA), and Clubs SA through the Independent Gaming Corporation, along with the Aurizon Community Giving Fund. The pavilion will provide additional sheltered space for community gatherings, volunteer activities, and outdoor programs on site.
We were delighted by the strong attendance from residents, partners, and community leaders.
Feedback highlighted support for preserving the building’s heritage, enhancing inclusive access, creating safe community meeting spaces, and expanding raised garden beds to support food security.
Port Pirie Community Centre
The Port Pirie Community Centre’s “Cuppa Coffee” program every Wednesdays have been cooking up a storm! Our legendary Cheeseburger Queen Lorraine has flipped and served a whopping 1,615 Pirie Cheeseburgers and Squash Dogs.
From the general community, group participants, to our local SAPOL members – everyone’s lining up for the tasty magic! We’re Serving smiles too, one burger at a time!” 😁
P.S. For those who aren’t locals to Port Pirie: a Pirie cheeseburger is ham, cheese and tomato (salt & pepper) on a hot dog roll, slathered with butter and toasted loving in a sandwich press. If you haven’t had one, you don’t know what you’re missing!
Clarence Park Community Centre
The Summit Community Centre - Norton Summit
The Summit Community Centre [Norton Summit] hosted SALA @ The Summit.
While we run a monthly community art exhibition for new or emerging artists, this one is carefully curated by Kerrie Drogemuller, our site Community Centres Coordinator.
39 artists entered 98 artworks into the exhibition, including paintings, textiles, photography, ceramics, and various other mediums. The theme was ‘Adelaide Hills Connections’. Our centre ran several workshops and series to complement the exhibition.
On opening night, over 120 people attended our small centre, with acting Deputy Mayor Adrian Cheeter officially opening the event.
Torrens Valley Community Centre - Gumeracha
The mosaic workshop series came about from a CND survey looking for an opportunity to do more detailed mosaic classes.
Our community shed has two days a week where it’s not being used, so this was also an opportunity to activate the space more, bring people together throughout the week and connect.
All the participants have learned or developed a new skill.
My highlight was the lovely feedback from this group, where strangers became friends, and the laughter and stories overheard filled our staff and contractors’ cups.
“I look forward to Wednesday, the creative side comes out in me, and I really feel great when I go home.”
“I have made something I am so proud of; the laughs I have had here over the last few weeks have been great for the soul.”
The Junction Community Centre
This photo represents diversity, inclusion but mostly happiness – everything that is the Junction.
It also represents strength and resilience. Naqib risked his life to work as an interpreter for the ADF in Afghanistan before being brought here by the Australian government.
The Brocas Youth Centre – City of Charles Sturt
The Brocas Youth Centre – City of Charles Sturt in St Clair recently delivered a Music Event Management course for young people. The program wrapped up with a highly successful youth live-music event in November, showcasing the talent and hard work of participants. Featured here is a photo of one of the youth bands, LEDFLY, performing on the night.
Elizabeth South Community Centre
This year has been full of many small moments of celebration. Something we can never look past in this space is the simple joy of laughing and sharing stories with friends. There is real pain and real challenges around us, some days are really tough! But what something that stands out to me is how, as a community, we continue to find ways to have fun, play, and laugh together. I love how friendships deepen not only in the hard times, but also when we find joy together. Our community is hilarious!
Cheltenham Community Centre
Goodwood Community Centre
Global Cooking Workshops: Polish Cuisine
A heartwarming moment this year was witnessing the stories and cultural exchanges that unfolded during one of our Global Cooking Workshops. It was truly special to see traditions being shared and to hear everyone reminisce about their cultural experiences and childhood memories. During the Polish cuisine workshop, our facilitator Monika talked about using cabbage as a staple ingredient in her recipe “ Bigos – Hunters Stew”. That sparked a wonderful conversation about traditional dishes from different cultures, including making stuffed cabbage rolls. Being Greek, I shared that we also make stuffed cabbage rolls, though without tomato sauce, which opened the door to further conversations about homemade sauces. Before long, we were all bonding over our personal memories and childhood traditions, which was so lovely to see. These workshops have not only revived memories but also encouraged cultural sharing and fostered genuine connections – celebrating our diversity.
City of Marion Community Centres
We connect, listen, learn, build trust, support each other, host events, live for inclusion, support volunteers and have debates about types of biscuits.
Community Hub - St Mary Magdalene’s School
“A highlight for me this year was taking some of our families on a tour of Parliament House.
My families loved learning about the rich history and exploring the building and all it’s interesting spaces. I really enjoyed how much they enjoyed this experience”
Kerryn – Community Hub at St Mary Magdalene’s School, Elizabeth Grove.
MarionLIFE Community Services
This year, we were able to install a new garden bed at the entrance to our Community Garden. We planted flowers in it, hoping to create a visually enticing and welcoming feature to greet those entering our centre.
However, this year also brought heartbreak: local community legend and much-loved Walking Group member Vicky Kolen passed away in May 2025. We all miss her dearly. The Walking Group decided to pool funds (all from community members) to purchase a plaque for Vicky to remember her by, at MarionLIFE.
Her colourful and vibrant personality, along with her steadfast desire to welcome any comers to the group and centre, made placing the plaque in the newly planted flower bed a natural way to remember and represent her contribution to our centre and community.
Even though there is sadness and heartbreak in losing dear Vicky, I love how we’re able to remember her. I like to imagine Vicky teasing me as I tend the flowers in the bed, in her endearing and hilarious manner. – Callan West (Community Development Coordinator)
Morella Community Centre
The 2024–25 program year has been one of growth, resilience, and recognition for Morella’s ACE team. Exceeding participation targets, winning the SA Training Award-Excellence in Diversity and deepening partnerships highlight the program’s significant impact on learners and the community.
With strong foundations in place, ACE at Morella is well-positioned to continue delivering accessible, inclusive, and high-quality learning opportunities into futures, including being recognised as a Finalist for Adult Community Education Provider of the Year 2025.
How amazing is our raised garden bed looking!
The colourful Hessian wrap was created during Community Centres Week in May by community members and the sewing group. These two garden beds are part of the CCSA Garden to Plate project, and we’re excited to see them continue to grow and support future workshops and community activities.
Bower Cottage Community Centre
During Nature Festival 2025, the Bower Cottage Community Centre Garden Group hosted a hands-on workshop, sharing their knowledge about composting, worm farming and propagating plants from seeds and cuttings.
Their enthusiasm was contagious — participants rolled up their sleeves, got stuck into the fun, and walked away with their very own worm farm, a compost starter kit, and a box of thriving seedlings to kick-start their home gardens (all lovingly prepared by the garden group).
Seaton Community Centre
Seaton Community Centre was fortunate enough to be participants in the Garden to Plate Project this year. We didn’t actually have a Garden Group when we were awarded the project, but we did our best to garner some interest from local community members (all walking distance to the centre) and thanks to Sarah Angelopoulos we got all of our supplies ready in time for our first workshop.
We were given two veggie beds complete with soil delivered, two fruit trees and a whole lot of seedlings and seeds. I also had the pleasure of meeting Joe from Joe’s Connected Garden in Elizabeth as part of the project for some valuable advice on wicking beds.
We now have seven participants in our Garden Group and are purchasing more wicking beds. So a big thanks to Community Centres SA for giving us a great helping start!
