It Takes a Town – Murwillumbah, NSW

On September 30, after many months of not gathering, ChangeFest Creative producer Pippa Bailey visited Murwillumbah for the First ChangeFest on the Road event supporting Carmen Stewart and her team from It Takes a Town for the 2484 Reset workshop. Held in a beautiful setting provided by Mavis’s Kitchen (Barn), 80 people gathered to share stories of the past and dream into a collaborative future. Aunty Deidre Currie gave a beautiful welcome song and talked about the importance of getting on with it for the sake of young people. 

We collectively agreed upon the following 7 key priorities to create a thriving, resilient and adaptive future:

1.     Secure our natural resources (in particular food, water and energy)

2.     Re-invigorate the local economy

3.     Strengthen community culture

4.     Invest in affordable housing

5.     Nurture social connections

6.     Re-localise to enable participatory democracy and action planning

7.     Disaster preparedness and response

Information about these priorities are captured in a report. Carmen is committed to working with the people who identified themselves as leaders of Core Circles (lead role) to ascertain what ongoing support they might need to move forward. The identified leads will in-turn continue to organise meetings with the people listed in the Inner Circles for each priority. It’s expected that these meetings will continue into 2021.

In these times of Zoom meetings, it was an important reminder of the power of being together for conversations with people in our communities that we may not know