In a few weeks, I’ll start a new university course. I’ll be studying community development, a subject and practice that’s been threading through my life for decades. I’ve maintained an interest in community and community building since at least high school, maybe earlier. An early memory of community action took place in Year 10. I was frustrated by rising tuck shop prices, so I established newsletter and campaigned for a schoolwide protest to end the monopoly on cold drinks and chips enforced by the school. I even created alter ego to protect my identity. But my scheme backfired spectacularly, and I was hauled from class and questioned by one of the head teachers. I caved rather quickly and confessed my culpability, but with amazement, I escaped any punishment as the school determined that, technically, I hadn’t broken any rules. Needless to say, the school maintains its monopoly on pies and chips to this day.
When I reached university, I was again involved in community building efforts. I was mostly disinterested in student politics, but I devoted myself to the university’s student theatre company, Underground Productions. After participating in some shows, I joined the organizing committee as the production manager. This involved responsibilities for technical elements like sound, lighting, and schedules, but most of it was really about working with volunteers, building team dynamics, and coordinating the activities required for an organization to work. Here I learnt I could have more influence in the break room (aka ‘crusty corner’ or the smoking area) than I could in the boardroom.
During this time, I also became interested in free and open-source software (FOSS) and the Linux community. That brought me to a book called The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation (available freely under a Creative Commons license) by Jono Bacon. Although the book focused on online communities, the principles really resonated with me, and I wanted to apply them to communities that I participated in.
However, after university I stepped into an event coordination role rather than community development. At Logan City Council, I found a role with the events team where I coordinated community grants, worked directly with community groups, and managed community events. On reflection, it sounds a lot like community development work to me. This role crystallized my appreciation for the important function played by local government when it listens to and supports the community it exists to serve.
Fast-forward a few decades through a career in communications and marketing, and I’ve returned to community development again. In fact the values held by practitioners of community development have become central to my own world view. This came about through two key experiences. First was my indoctrination into the permaculture community during a permaculture design course on the south coast of New South Wales. I was introduced to a community defined not by geography, but by a commitment to a set of values and principals.
Second, I took a physical and intellectual departure from the ‘Canberra bubble’ which at this point I had lived in for a decade. I left my job and spent a couple of years travelling, volunteering, and living in many communities around eastern Australia. Some of these were cities and towns, while others were rural or small intentional communities with just a couple of dozen members. These experiences gave me the belief that we need more bottom-up, local solutions to the problems our communities face. There is so much diversity within Australia that the ‘top-down cookie-cutter approach’ used by federal and state governments often leads to friction and unintended consequences. I would like to see a strengthening of local politics and governance that reflects the needs of the community. I also see a need for everyone to be more political. Citizens should be participants in the political process rather than just consumers of it.
As I travelled, I was also introduced to different ways people access locally grown food, which sparked ideas on community resilience and food sovereignty. I believe it is vital for a community to have ownership of its food supply chains. I visited communities where local stores brought in food from thousands of kilometres away, despite being in regions that could easily grow their own. When floods or fires cut supply lines these communities struggle to access fresh food. While politicians talk about food security at a national level, I believe it’s really a local problem we need to solve.
Ultimately through these recent experiences I realized I want to contribute to my community in the strongest way possible and make the region I live in the best place it can be. I don’t want to sit on the sidelines; I want to play an active role in fostering discourse, encouraging participation, and reclaiming power for my community. And this is what brought me to a postgraduate certificate in community development at Murdoch University. Through this course I hope to learn the theory and practice of community development and position myself as a credible community organizer.
Murdoch is in Perth, and I am currently in Sweden, so this will be a very long-distance education experience. I’m not totally sure what I’m getting myself into, but I’m incredibly excited by the course materials I’ve seen so far.