Our Town aims to build the capabilities of regional towns in South Australia to develop community-based responses to mental health and wellbeing with an eye to scaling what works, and influencing regional policy.
The initiative gives towns and regions the power and opportunity to define what’s best for their community, so that they can reclaim their mental wellbeing.
Read the report
This report is an honest reflection of the Support Teams’ (Fay Fuller Foundation, TACSI, Clear Horizon) experience of Our Town in 2020: what the Town Teams achieved, what worked and what didn’t, and most importantly, what we learned and what we would do differently next time.
Why this report?
We wrote this reflection from the perspective of the support team, gathering and expanding on our biggest learnings when it comes to starting community-led work well and then asking the community to provide their own reflections and honest feedback.
While this publication focuses on Support Team learnings, future pieces will centre the voice and experience of the community as they take the reins on leading change in their own towns.
This reflection is intended to inform our own future practice, and to help anyone planning or leading place-based change, especially in the early years of an initiative.
How you can get involved
To support what is shared in this piece, we’ve created a number of tools and resources so that you can build on from the principles, practices and learnings, which we now believe are critical to starting community-led change well.
Our Town toolkits
Reflective questions
Reflective questions and prompts to help anyone planning a community-led initiative.
Guiding strategies
A set of principles and practices to improve the outcomes of community- led initiatives in the early years.
Reusable patterns
Inspiration for practical strategies based on what we did in Our Town in 2020.
