Kangaroo Island Our Town accepted this invitation on behalf of the Network to share our principle-led approach and learnings from working in place on community-determined, preventative responses to mental health challenges. In particular, Priscilla shared about the ways they are supporting the conditions for young people to lead on issues that matter to them, through young people-led projects and working towards a young person governance group. 

In addition to this, Kerry Jones, TACSI, and Jess Dart, Clear Horizon, shared their expertise on the role of innovation and evaluation in supporting us to maintain open mindsets and practices when working in the complexity and opportunity of long term, deep, cultural and systems-focused change led by communities. To gain an insight into some of the key concepts explored on the first day, read Jess Dart’s reflections.

As we gathered with people from diverse sectors—each bringing their own knowledge, experience, and commitment to community—it quickly became clear that “working in place” carries different meanings for different people. The practice of place-based work is deeply contextual. It varies in scale, in who leads it, in how it’s supported, and in how it is recognised.

What inspired us most was the advocacy and learnings from other community members and groups advocating that place-based approaches need to be led by those whose lives are impacted most, in ways that are determined by them. Furthermore, there was a strong focus on the importance of recognising the deep diversity that exists within places, and that people are not only defined by where they live. These themes resonated with our shared principles of Our Town and how they show up in our ways of working in community and as a Network.

At Our Town, we believe that a true investment in place is, at its core, an investment in the people who live there. It’s a commitment to work in partnership as communities imagine and create the futures they want—and to provide the support needed in the journey.

Over the course of the conference, several key reflections stood out to us as important for anyone involved in place-based work or community-led change:

The importance of accountability being always to the diversity of community and the community groups that exist in place. Recognising and celebrating the strengths and expertise that exist within the community as the starting place, and holding our focus to how we can work to shift and adapt the systems to better support their aspirations.

We observed that we often fall into unhelpful traditional mindsets that consider the relationship between system actors and those living in place to be hierarchical and linear, often conceptualised as community at the bottom and politicians and government at the top - even in the commonly used phrase ‘change from the bottom up’ to describe community-led change.

Taking a person-centred approach leads to ripples of change. It is important to resource and invest in community infrastructure and flexible ways of working that promote and support this approach.

Recognising community as leaders and the decision makers doesn’t mean handing over all the work, risk, burden and responsibility, it means working in partnership. Furthermore it means funding and supporting those already making the change, and not expecting everything to be able to be achieved in a volunteer capacity.

Relevant and accessible data is powerful in communities hands. Those holding or sharing data need to be responsible for ensuring it is used to support community-led work, not to be extractive, controlling, impose solutions, or distract from what is truly important

We also left the conference holding important provocations:

Whose capacity actually needs to be built?
How are we ensuring the difference between place-based and community-led is understood?
How can we prevent burn out of community members and volunteers? and
How do we genuinely recognise and embed Aboriginal knowledge and culture in this work?

The difference between work that is focussed on a place, happens in place, or is driven or directed by those of that place, is a conversation we are excited to continue to contribute to as we continue to learn about ways to support and be community-led. We are excited by the connections we made across the sector and our opportunity to learn and share together, to support the conditions for more community-led approaches to be resourced, sustainable and recognised.