The Ideas Place launches to help south-west people bring their business ideas to fruition

Have you heard about the man who grew up here and is a leading geneticist who founded the Human Genome Sequencing Center?

What about a Warrnambool High School student who won the Nobel Prize?

Warrnambool has always been an ideas place and a new city initiative is launching to help new great ideas come to fruition.

Gareth Colliton is on a mission to help people realise their ideas and help businesses launch across the south-west.

He is heading up the The Ideas Place, a partnership with Runway, the Warrnambool City Council, Moyne and Corangamite shires, Deakin University, SW TAFE and the Food and Fibre Council.

It is funded by the state government. 

The Ideas Place will launch at the Fletcher Jones Factory on Thursday at 5.30pm, with guest speaker Quiksilver Global Creative Director Simon Buttonshaw.

Mr Buttonshaw has a Warrnambool connection too – he sought advice and assistance from Fletcher Jones in the early days of Quiksilver.

The event will also shine a light on the region's newest entrepreneurial fashionistas, Alexis Steere from Albeco, Erin Grigg from Always and Belinda Pitt from Cat Street. Raised in Hamilton, Mr Colliton was drawn to the city.  

“When I moved to here I was very interested in the city for its innovation, creativity and its story,” he said. “There were some amazing entrepreneurs in the past. For me it was a really inspirational place.”

Tommy Rome was one such person. In 1896 he purchased an Edison recorder and had it shipped to Warrnambool.

It was one of the first in Australia.

He paid 12 pounds for it and hired a stall at the Great Exhibition Centre in Timor Street.

“It was the first time anyone was able to listen to music in public without having a band or piano,” he said.

“He used it to record a couple of amazing sound recordings – one was the reenactment of a train crash at Allansford and another was John Villiers singing a song about chickens. That’s now the oldest sound recording in Australia, and it happened in Warrnambool.” 

Mr Colliton said Fletcher Jones was an innovator and an international fashion leader in his day.

He said Fletcher Jones took inspiration from the 1939 World Fair in New York and those ideas were brought back to the city.

The Trylon and Perisphere was a huge modern structure at the fair, and the perisphere housed a future city called Democracity.

It kept with the fair’s theme ‘The World of Tomorrow’ and depicted a utopian city-of-the-future.

The residential area was called Pleasantville – Fletcher Jones’ garden is called Pleasant Hill.

“A model of the Trylon and Perishpere appeared on top of the Fletcher Jones shop on the corner of Koroit and Liebig streets,” Mr Colliton said.

“Today it is hidden underneath a tree in the gardens. He was a futurist and wanted the best for the city.” 

Dr Richard Gibbs grew up on farm in Warrnambool and heads the Human Genome Sequencing Centre at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

It is the major player in the international Human Genome project, which does not patent its findings, and makes its data freely available.

Another innovator was Sir John Eccles who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963 as well as Australian of the Year for work on synapses and the nervous system. 

The Ideas Place will include fortnightly workshops and classes with experts helping people to navigate starting a business or realising their idea.

“If you’ve already got your good idea, congratulations, that’s probably the hardest part done,” Mr Colliton said.

“We are here to help you go from being someone with a good idea to being the founder of your very own start-up business. That may all seem a bit daunting, and that’s where the Ideas Place comes in.

If you have a great idea, this is a low-stress, supportive way to dip your toe and see if it’s something you want to pursue.

Start-ups aren’t just for inner-city types.

Some of the best start-ups in Australia have their beginnings on farms, beaches and family kitchen tables.”

As part of the initiative, there will be a ‘Shark Tank’ type pitching project. 

The winner will get $10,000 donated by the Fletcher Jones Foundation, office space in Warrnambool and help and advice to kickstart their business idea.