
As the unofficial capital of Melbourne’s western suburbs, Footscray has been traditionally blue-collar, but in recent years it has become an increasingly multicultural community as migrants, particularly Vietnamese, have chosen to settle in the area. Indeed, Footscray celebrates the Vietnamese New Year, the Tet Festival, at the Showgrounds at Flemington.
The Melbourne Museum of Printing is based in Footscray. The museum has one of the world's largest collections of printing machinery and artefacts and seeks to retain not only the machinery itself but the knowledge, skills and techniques of traditional printing.