Community Education
Building community literacy for better conversations about change.
For communities to actively shape their future, people first need to understand the forces driving urban change and what these mean for their neighbourhoods. Our Community Education Program uses short, visual, jargon-free videos to build literacy around sustainable urban change.
These resources were co-designed with councillors and piloted with over 260 community members in Cairns and Brisbane and help communities understand:
Why strategies like consolidation and housing diversity matter.
How growth can preserve what makes neighbourhoods unique.
The long-term opportunities and challenges of change.
The urban change system and the role of each key stakeholder in growing well.
By making complex urban development and growth management concepts simple, these videos empower residents to engage meaningfully in decisions shaping their communities. The development of community and elected member education programs continues to be explored through Civic Shifts.
Pilot program
Growing Well in Cairns
As part of developing the region’s Towards 2050 Growth Strategy, Cairns Regional Council committed to ensuring all stakeholders and the broader community could actively and meaningfully participate in conversations about urban change. To support this, Council embedded community education into every stage of the strategy’s development.
The ‘Growing Well in Cairns’ program features eight short videos with reflective questions designed to strengthen urban change literacy across the community. The program helps residents understand how growth can deliver social, economic, and environmental benefits while safeguarding what makes Cairns unique.
Each video also operates as a stand-alone resource, used by Council and Councillors on websites, social media, at pop-up events, and in community workshops to spark discussion and support learning about what it means to grow well in Cairns.
Scaled for impact with Queensland State Government.
With the success of the pilot program, Queensland State Government commissioned Civic Shifts to work with key peak bodies and 9 LGAs across Queensland to develop an LGA specific set of resources, utilising the foundation creative direction, video scripts and focus areas of the Cairn’s pilot program as the starting point.