Mapping community initiatives in a place-base program: A Ready Macleay update

We are three months into the Ready Macleay program, the first implementation of the place-based Ready Communities initiative. The approach is designed to support an established or emerging backbone structure, align with existing and new community-led initiatives, and support impact across community development and economic development before the Social Impact in the Regions conference in September.

The support and engagement have been encouraging as we build in and with community, along with feedback from the wider national and global ecosystem of place-based practitioners. We are keen to continue to share our progress for collective learning and feedback.

Ready Communities co-founder Kerry Grace has been sharing about the journey, reflecting on the role of regional main streets, local procurement, local government and missions, principles of community conversations, and bridging economic and community development silos. Last week I reflected on the growth of place-based initiatives including a map of approaches in Australia.

This post continues the conversation and highlights the engagement with emerging community-defined initiatives and how these are considered in light of existing initiatives and emerging opportunities.

Initial engagement: Establishing the focus areas

The Initial Engagement stage in January highlighted five focus areas: Housing, Agriculture Communities, Youth Futures, CBD Activation, and Creative Industries. The initial engagement involved 30 engagements over 45 hours with 28 leaders, a review of current strategy and policy, and a review of current programs and initiatives. The five focus areas were broad enough to be inclusive of other topics while focusing attention. The themes would be validated and refined over the following weeks.

The focus areas provided a foundation to further develop and build on existing clusters and networks around each topic. While place-based work has a geographic focus, it is the topics of interest and passion areas that bring people around the table. We also acknowledge the cross-over of initiatives between focus areas and topics that intersect across all focus areas.

Community conversations: Emerging initiatives

The Engagement stage started with a series of group community and one-on-one conversations. Over the past month, we have had 198 engagements over 465 engagement hours with 111 leaders. We are also mapping a growing list of 25 policies, strategies, and funds applicable in the region. The engagements have identified a growing list of 70 initiatives across the five focus areas.

Over the next month, we will continue the engagement with an iterative approach to add, refine, curate, and start progress on initiatives. Key to this is the connection with Jo-Anne Kelly and her team in the local backbone Learning the Macleay as they engage across the region to hear challenges and opportunities from the region.

A few principles and considerations become apparent as we review the initiatives.

• Initiatives are integrated and interrelated, connected to each other and with application across focus areas. A need for transport relates to youth futures and housing. A strong creative industry supports CBD activation, and both have shared value with agriculture communities.
• Initiatives have systemic contributing factors. The decline in rural main streets and housing availability and affordability are globally recognised challenges. A review of agriculture supply chains involves many stakeholders and market drivers. We look for achievable outcomes while acknowledging the complexity of underlying factors.
• Initiatives are usually pre-existing and aligned with existing strategies or plans of the local council, state government, economic body, community group, or industry network. Initiatives raised in community may already be underway, but there can also be a lack of visibility or awareness.
• Initiatives are not the only focus. Engagement is an equal measure of relationship and action. While good ideas came through structured workshops, there is just as much value in sitting in Main Street and having a yarn as people walk by. Ideas come at the cross-section of diverse perspectives and often need space in both place and time to develop.

With all this in mind, there is value in taking a structured approach to reviewing ideas, opportunities, and initiatives that emerge in the lead up to the Social Impact in the Regions conference. To help with this, initiatives are reviewed using a framework to consider how they might relate to each other and other plans, policies, strategies, and initiatives in the region.

The analysis highlights the interconnected nature of the initiatives in the network graph below. The graph shows the clusters of initiatives around the outside of the diagram connected through themes and attributes in the middle. We are working on a public interface that will allow community interaction with the graph. The picture highlights the potential for additional sets of initiatives from other plans, programs, and strategies to interact and align with the outcomes of the community action.

Reviewing and aligning community initiatives

The initial review of the initiatives is highlighted below. This is far from a definitive statement or exact science, as much as it is a first pass to provide an invitation for engagement and adjustment as we continue the community conversations.

One of the category sets is a series of assessments about each initiative using what information is available. These include:

• Accountability: This is an assessment of the extent to which the individual, group, or organisation that defines the initiative are accountable or ultimately responsible for the outcomes. In general items with greater internal accountability are more likely to be realised, mixed accountability requires greater collaboration, and there may be limited control over initiatives with fully external accountability.
• Complexity: This is the degree of complexity involved in realising the outcomes, described by the level of uncertainty, the significance of the potential impact, the number of stakeholders involved, and the dependency on other stakeholders.
• Effort required: This is the perceived or actual effort or resource investment involved with the initiative, relative to other items in a similar domain.
• Impact: This is the perceived or actual expected impact of the initiative, relative to other items in a similar domain.
• Specificity: This relates to how specific and detailed or general the initiative is.
• Action: This defines the type or nature of the activity being performed, and describes how the recipient of the initiative will be interacted with.

Another consideration is the direct beneficiary of the initiative. This can help identify where there might be gaps as well as alignment with other initiatives in the region.

The initiatives are also considered against the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While there is an element of subjectivity to many of the ratings, the SDGs provide a globally recognised framework against which initiatives can be compared for other local, state, and national examples.

Another question that can be considered is the initiative status, or the extent that it might be considered new or a continuation to maintain, modify, or expand on what is already in place.

The recipient level considers whether the beneficiary of the outcome is an individual, a firm, a role, a segment of the community, or the overall geographic region.

Education considers the type of education provided if relevant, while education stage considers at what level the education is provided.

We also consider where the initiative might result in outcomes aligned with the Ready Communities program. These outcomes include greater clarity and understanding, increased connections and connectivity, building capability and capacity, enhanced collaboration for purpose, and greater advocacy and promotion.

The assessment is flexible in that new categories are created for different domains, such as infrastructure, inclusion, climate, agriculture, and health. Given the platform is used to analyse initiatives, strategies, and policies in other geographic regions and sectors, initiatives and strategies that emerge in Ready Macleay can more easily be aligned with other areas to identify connections.

What's next

Build capacity by doing together

The focus for initiatives in the Ready Communities approach is not as much the realisation of the initiative itself as it is the shared experience by the community in realising the initiative. As we work with leaders in the focus areas, we expect to see a shared understanding of opportunities for collective impact.

Continued integration, alignment, and adjustment

We continue to apply the same coding techniques to various policy, strategy, and program initiatives applicable to the region. This will help connect the community-defined initiatives with other plans and funding opportunities. By building in public, we also receive feedback that continuously updates existing initiatives and identifies new opportunities.

A digital map

The mapping is performed on a digital platform that provides visibility and transparency. The platform will be made public over the next couple of months. As it is populated, the platform will be provided to the community as part of the continued engagement and support process. This will also help maintain connectivity with other relevant initiatives, strategies, and policies from other programs including other Ready Communities locations.

May community conversations

The engagement will continue through March and April leading up to the next structured community conversations in May. The plan is to work in community to progress ideas to a stage that can be further developed, validated, and trialed in May. This will inform further development before the third community conversations in July and prior to the conference in September.

Integration with Social Impact in the Regions conference

Over the coming months, we will continue to refine the initiatives, identifying what is already in place and what might be achieved in the lead-up to the Social Impact in the Regions conference.

Everyone who has a vested interest in regional impact will benefit from September's Social Impact in the Regions conference. The program focuses on diverse aspects of economic and community development with an emphasis on practical application. The conference will host broad conversations relevant to practitioners in all regions. It is also unique in that it is informed by the Ready Macleay process over the preceding ten months and designed with a local impact in mind.

Initiatives from the five focus areas will provide nationally relevant and locally applicable case studies for delegates to learn from, contribute to, and experience first-hand. There will also be opportunities to contribute to the success of the local community over the 12 months following the conference.

Join us on the journey and in September

If you are involved or interested in social impact in regional communities, it would be amazing to share the journey with you in September. A limited number of bursaries are available at this link here or conference tickets are available here. You can also apply to speak at this link here.

We are grateful to those supporting the work, including the Evolve Network and the Rural Economies Centre of Excellence at the University of Southern Queensland. Please get in touch if you would like to join a growing cohort of organisations supporting the work and sharing in the impact.

Your feedback, insights, and experience are welcome as we co-create the approach with the Kempsey and wider Macleay community and the national and global community of practitioners in the field.