Presenters
Program Manager
WYN Hub
Mehak works as a facilitator in industries such as the multicultural youth sector, small business, local government and lifelong learning. With an interest in the role of education in acculturation and mental health, she hopes to support young people and newly arrived migrants to develop life and civic participation skills through her social enterprise, U-learn.
Co-design (HCD) Specialist
Future Connect
Téa is a community-minded researcher with a focus on systems change and creating real impact. Her work connects ideas, people, and policy, drawing on complexity-informed insights and co-designed approaches. She is particularly interested in bringing different forms of knowledge together, elevating lived experience, and using co-inquiry to involve diverse perspectives in problem-solving.
Community Development
Hot House Community Projects
Helen has been working in a range of roles across the community development, youth work and education sectors for over 30 years. Her current focus is transforming communities through grassroots community participation, leadership and research. This focus has enabled her to partner with local government, community organisations and universities to develop and deliver over fifty bespoke community leadership programs.
Head of Impact Education
Local Impact
Aruna works with organisations in Melbourne’s West to co-design and deliver innovative learning programs in community-identified areas such as financial literacy and social enterprise. A strong advocate for local, strengths-based approaches, Aruna brings 15+ years of experience across entrepreneurship, leadership, education, humanitarian work, and community development in Melbourne, Australia, and internationally.
Resources
-
Beyond sticky notes (of course!) – lots of tools (themselves co-developed) that you can print, learn from, and a series of resources to support things like how to improve meetings, how to check in and talk about roles etc. (powerpoints, links, PDFs)- https://www.beyondstickynotes.com/toolsforcoproduction
-
Community-Led co-design – this is a toolkit with lots of great foundational information about co-design and especially community-led co-design, great methods in planning, reflection, facilitation tools etc. – https://community-led.design
-
Complex Systems Frameworks – I use a lot of these in my work, they have lots of great illustrations of complexity concepts, these are sometimes really great to make sense of ‘messy’ situations, e.g. there’s one on building trust, frameworks about alignment and coherence, collective impact etc. I find them helpful to ‘bring others along on the journey’ if there’s complexity involved in the co-design space: https://www.complexsystemsframeworks.ca/framework/collective-impact/ (this is a good one for collectives) and all the frameworks here: https://www.complexsystemsframeworks.ca/collections/ – free to download, share and use imagery that helps facilitators guide people’s learning
-
Mind Australia’s co-design framework – this is a really great and comprehensive co-design practice overview, very useful for those new to co-design and has a brilliant ‘further reading’ section – https://www.mindaustralia.org.au/sites/default/files/2023-06/Participation_and_codesign_practice_framework.pdf
-
NSW Govt. Developed a co-design toolkit (very ‘organisational’ heavy perspective and ‘solving’ challenges based!), but it’s incredibly interactive and has some tools, videos and really engaging activities/ideas: https://aci.health.nsw.gov.au/projects/co-design
-
RMIT’s place lab created a little toolkit out of their co-design work which has some great downloadable files and resources in the pdf: https://placelab.rmit.edu.au/app/uploads/2023/12/CoDesign-Workshop-Guidelines.pdf
- First Person Consulting they produce some cool free resources / tools that facilitators can use to support sense-making in complexity etc., like the pig game: https://www.fpconsulting.com.au/pig-model.html – they have printable cards/roles and it’s about different perspectives to a single situation etc., there’s also the ‘learning from failure’ kit: https://www.fpconsulting.com.au/learning-from-failure.html#kit
- What is Community Development?
By Jessica Smart, Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS)
https://aifs.gov.au/resources/resource-sheets/what-community-development
This resource sheet was written by Jessica Smart, Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies. This paper was originally published in 2017. Minor edits and updates were undertaken by Jessica Smart in 2019 and 2023.
This article is helpful to understand the difference between community work/community services and community development. - Co-Design with Service Users
By Ingrid Burket, for Outer East Children and Youth Area Partnership (OECYAP)
https://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/Codesign-with-service-userscompressed.pdf
This guide is put together by the brilliant Ingrid Burkitt in collaboration with Outer East Children and Youth Area Partnership (OECYAP). It is helpful for practitioners to be aware of the nuances of codesign as it’s a practice that is proving to be overused and under developed in its application. It helpful also to keep in mind the difference with community led, grass roots practice. The fundamental principles part on page 8 provides an excellent touchstone. It also contains some useful tools and processes you might like to explore or modify for your context. - ABCD & Beyond: A practical Guide for Local Government
Dee Brooks, Lee Griffiths and Fiona Miller, Jeder Institute
https://www.jeder.com.au/abcd-and-beyond/
Lots of helpful tools similar to the book https://www.jeder.com.au/tools/
Dee Brooks says “co-everything”! This is a really useful guide that explores co-design from an ABCD perspective. Its developed for local government but can easily be applied to other organisational contexts. - Four Modes of Change – Cormac Russell, Nurture Development
https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/blog/abcd-approach/bridging-the-gap-expert-to-alongsider/
Article of the interview with Cormac Russell and Rob Hopkins for Abundant Community
https://www.abundantcommunity.com/cormac-russell-on-change-that-starts-with-communities/
Codesign sits in the “WITH” category, but sometimes its worth thinking about community-led practice and the “BY” category. Sometimes practitioners need to lead by stepping back. - The 7 Functions of Flourishing Communities
Cormac Russell, Nurture Development
https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/blog/the-7-functions-of-flourishing-communities-a-path-towards-finding-and-mobilizing-a-communitys-vision/
or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cormacrussell_the-7-functions-of-flourishing-communities-activity-7243884542741069825-BldE
‘The 7 Functions of Flourishing Communities’ is a framework developed by Nurture Development that highlights seven essential, grassroots activities citizens collectively undertake to produce local well-being. By shifting these actions from top-down institutions to hyper-local, citizen-led initiatives, communities build deep resilience, belonging, and connection.
Sometimes we don’t need a “service” we need a village!
Presentation
