A place for kids and grown-ups alike
Redefining children’s playtime
Imaginationation is a children’s play centre in Melbourne, created by designers who have spent years thinking about how children actually learn. Through movement, curiosity, repetition, and play.
Built by expert Australian designers of play spaces, it welcomes children in and lets their curiosity take the lead.
Here, play and design sit closely together. Children are given space to explore, climb, imagine, return, and begin again. Grown-ups are given space too. To sit, to breathe, to stay present, often with a coffee in hand and nowhere else they need to be.
Designed for grown-ups to enjoy
There’s care here for the grown-ups too, woven right into the experience.
The lighting is soft where it needs to be, the sound is considered, the materials are warm and tactile, and the food and coffee are made to be genuinely good.
It’s simple really, when grown-ups feel good, kids feel it too. Everything just flows a little easier.
The café offers fresh, honest food and proper coffee (the kind that helps you stay a little longer than you planned).
For children, a world to discover
For children, Imaginationation is a place of ongoing discovery.
It is made up of active spaces, sensory moments, and open-ended environments where there is no single way to play, and no fixed outcome.
Children climb, build, run, paint, pretend, negotiate, and return to things again and again. They invent stories, change them, and share them without needing to announce what they are learning.
It looks like play - because it is. But underneath it is also confidence, connection, problem-solving, and imagination taking shape in real time.
What is play-based learning?
At Imaginationation, play-based learning is not separate from play. It is what play naturally does.
It is the idea that children learn best when they are engaged, curious, and free to explore the world in their own way.
Each space is designed to gently support social, emotional, and physical development. While children are climbing, building, running, creating, and imagining, they are also learning to share space with others, to try things again, to communicate, to take turns, and to express themselves.
Play-based learning happens here right in the middle of all the fun.
Open times & ages
Open 9.00am — 5.30pm
365 days a year
For children aged 6 months — 7+ years
