Top 10 Capstone Q&A

PLACE Community Roadshow and Listening Tour  

PLACE recently completed its national Listening Tour, engaging with diverse communities across Australia to understand the opportunities and conditions needed for place-based change to thrive. In July we hosted a nationally broadcast Capstone event to share back what we heard and to share PLACE’s next steps. During the event, we captured a range of thoughtful questions from the audience. Below are our responses:

  • Place-based change refers to coordinated efforts to improve outcomes by aligning investment, decision-making, and service delivery to the specific needs, strengths, and aspirations of communities defined by geography.

    It starts from a simple premise: that while disadvantage is shaped by structural forces, it is experienced locally and therefore requires responses that are rooted in place.

    We have heard a definition of this work, rooted in community experiences and perspectives across the tour, that place-based work is informed by three principles: 

    SUBSIDIARITY: Decisions should be made at the most local level possible - where people have the greatest knowledge of context and the strongest stake in the outcomes. In place-based work, this means shifting authority closer to community, giving local leaders, organisations, and residents the power to shape the services and systems that affect them.  

    ACCOUNTABILITY: Communities must be able to hold systems and services to account. This requires more than consultation.  It means building governance structures that embed community voice and oversight in decision-making, ensure transparency in how resources are used, and create shared responsibility for outcomes. 

    PARTNERSHIP: Complex challenges can’t be solved by one actor alone. Place-based change brings together governments, service providers, funders, and communities to work collaboratively, across siloes, sectors, and timeframes. To be effective, these partnerships must be grounded in trust, reciprocity, and shared purpose. 

  • What is PLACE?

    Partnerships for Local Action and Community Empowerment (PLACE) is a national organisation that supports community-led approaches to social and economic challenges. PLACE is not a service provider. We are a support system - a hub for shared learning, partnership, and policy innovation. Our work is underpinned by a belief that communities know best what matters to them, and that long-term change starts with shared decision-making and strong local leadership. 

    Why PLACE?

    We exist because top-down, one-size-fits-all approaches have consistently failed to meet the needs of diverse communities. Despite decades of effort, persistent disadvantage remains entrenched in many parts of Australia. Meanwhile, communities across the country are leading place-based initiatives that demonstrate different approaches built on genuine partnership and local ownership. What's missing is the infrastructure to connect this work, elevate it in policy discussions, and remove the structural barriers that constrain it. 

    PLACE offers an innovative way forward. We believe: 

    • Communities know best what matters to them. 

    • Local leadership leads to better outcomes.

    • Decisions should be made with communities, not for them. 

    Our vision

    Communities share decision-making with government and other stakeholders to accelerate progress on the issues that matter most to them. PLACE supports and enables place-based change by creating and sustaining the conditions for place-based initiatives to thrive.

    PLACE’s approach is built around four functional pillars that guide how we support community-led change, creating the conditions for place-based initiatives to thrive:

    • ENABLE: Lead the development and implementation of a national workforce strategy for place-based change, supporting the needs of communities. 

    • LEARN & SHARE: Bring together, translate, disseminate, and generate evidence, knowledge, and other resources to amplify and accelerate place-based practice and policy making. 

    • COLLABORATIVE SOLUTIONS: Enable and convene expertise and experience to identify possible solutions to shared challenges and incubate concepts through partnerships and wrap-around support. 

    • STRENGTHEN DATA: Provide a range of practical supports to place-based approaches to improve data, monitoring, and evaluation. 

  • We are moving from listening to action. Having heard from diverse communities across Australia about their challenges and opportunities, we are now focused on three key areas: removing the structural barriers that prevent communities from creating lasting change, building stronger partnerships between communities and governments so they can make decisions together, and developing the evidence base that proves community-led approaches work. 

    We are actively connecting initiatives across the country, creating tools and resources that help local efforts succeed, and working to change policies and systems that currently hold communities back. Through our four core functions - Enable, Learn & Share, Collaborative Solutions, and Strengthen Data - we are building the infrastructure that allows place-based change to thrive. Essentially, we are creating conditions where communities can lead the solutions to the issues that matter most to them. 

    Our Strategic Priorities

    PLACE has three key strategic priorities identified in its 2030 Strategy: Collaboration for Lasting Change.

    Priority one:  Address structural barriers to place-based change

    • Identify structural policy and system level barriers to the impact of place-based approaches. 

    • Work with community and governments to embed structural reforms that support greater subsidiarity and accountability. 

    • Advocate for community need within the place-based ecosystem. 

    Priority two:  Build momentum and capacity for place-based change

    • Establish trusted and purposeful relationships across community, government, and other stakeholders to amplify place-based initiatives. 

    • Drive sustained collaboration, connection and learning across the place-based sector. 

    • Produce tools and resources that actively shape the practice of place-based initiatives. 

    Priority three: Develop a strong, shared understanding of the impact of place-based initiatives

    Document the practices and outcomes of effective place-based approaches. 

    • Amplify and share effective high- impact place-based practices across diverse communities. 

    • Strengthen the use of community-informed data, evaluation, and learning to continuously improve practice. 

    Our Strategic Enablers 

    PLACE is built for long-term impact, grounded in community leadership, and focused on changing the systems that hold communities back. We achieve this through: 

    • Working with community: We empower communities through trusted relationships that enable shared decision-making and embed local knowledge in our work. Our Community Council ensures community voice shapes the national place-based agenda. 

    • Our learning approach As a learning organisation, we use our monitoring, evaluation and learning approach to guide every action and engagement, with systems that connect the place-based sector to refine strategies and innovate methods. 

    • Our governance structure Our governance reflects our commitment to transparency, shared power, and community accountability, ensuring community leadership while maintaining independence to create the policy environment for place-based work. 

    • Our collaborative funding model We work in strong partnerships with government and philanthropic funders to activate diverse stakeholder strengths. Our funders are custodians and enablers of PLACE's community-led structure. 

  • Ongoing and inclusive engagement is central to PLACE’s approach and embedded in our structures, including the Community Council and our commitment to co-design and community oversight. We are focused on deepening and extending our relationships with both visited and unvisited communities across Australia by continuing to ask what resources, supports, and conditions they need to design, implement, and evaluate place-based ways of working that are meaningful to them. 

    This engagement will take many forms. Through consultation and co-design processes, PLACE will work alongside communities to identify what’s working, what’s needed, and how those insights can be translated into practical, publicly available tools and resources to support other communities on similar journeys. 

    For example, our Enable team will play a key role by talking directly with people doing the work in communities, to understand the practical skills they use, the development opportunities they need, and the types of support that help them sustain their work. We’ll be actively seeking participation from Place-Based Initiatives across the country, inviting them to contribute to and benefit from the development of a national workforce strategy that is grounded in lived experience and local practice. 

    Our approach ensures that PLACE remains responsive, community-led, and inclusive, creating pathways for continued engagement that reflect the diversity, needs, and leadership of place-based communities, whether already engaged or newly connected. 

  • Many communities feel marginalized by short-term, reactive, and disconnected funding models, which erodes trust. However, there’s growing recognition within governments and funders that these issues need reform. PLACE aims to turn isolated efforts into lasting, system-wide change - making funding and decision-making more consistent, accessible, and empowering for communities. 

    PLACE’s Collaborative Solutions team is focused on transforming the authorising environment by tackling the structural challenges that communities repeatedly raise: limited influence over how solutions are designed, short-term funding cycles, underinvestment in local backbone organisations, and fragmented procurement processes. Through close partnerships with governments and funders, PLACE is identifying opportunities to reshape funding approaches to be longer-term, more flexible, and more supportive of community leadership. 

    By championing changes to policy, funding design, and procurement, PLACE advocates for investment models that recognise the value of local knowledge and infrastructure. The goal is to build a “new normal” where sustainable and accessible funding enables communities to lead change on their own terms, not as recipients of aid, but as equal partners in addressing entrenched disadvantage. 

  • PLACE works with governments to support inclusive models of shared decision-making that elevate community voice and authority. Through advocacy and engagement with government, we seek policy and procurement changes that will simplify access and provide sustained investment in community-led approaches. 

    PLACE recognises that communities are often excluded from shaping solutions and navigating complex systems. Structural barriers including inaccessible procurement processes, fragmented funding streams, and the absence of meaningful roles in decision-making limit local influence and erode trust. 

    To address this, PLACE’s Collaborative Solutions team is building pathways for communities to influence how decisions are made. This includes supporting models of co-governance, strengthening local capacity to engage with government, and ensuring that reforms in policy are grounded in the realities of local practice. By aligning system-level change with local delivery, PLACE will ensure that communities are not just consulted but empowered as leaders and decision-makers in their own futures. 

  • PLACE is committed to embedding First Nations leadership, knowledge, and perspectives at every level of our work. Our governance structures are designed to reflect this commitment by ensuring transparency, shared power, and community accountability that goes beyond consultation or participation. PLACE’s governance includes representation from diverse First Nations peoples, ensuring that decision-making is with First Nations voices and grounded in culturally appropriate ways of working. 

    From its inception, PLACE has been shaped by First Nations approaches and practices, with a clear expectation from our members that we maintain a dedicated focus on First Nations communities. Throughout our Listening Tour, we were invited into dialogue with Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations, First Nations service providers, and community leaders across the country. Their reflections and insights are deeply embedded in our Listening Report and will continue to inform PLACE’s strategy, priorities, and actions. 

    In the delivery of our four key operational areas - Strengthen, Data, Learning & Sharing, Enable, and Collaborative Solutions - PLACE will ensure that First Nations place-based work is a core focus. The PLACE Board is currently undertaking the process of engaging a First Nations consultant to guide decision-making and ensure community-led approaches. As PLACE transitions from establishment to implementation, we will continue to share our approach, learnings, and outcomes openly, ensuring that our work supports self-determination, amplifies Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander voices, and strengthens First Nations leadership, knowledge and perspectives in place-based work. 

  • PLACE is building a national platform for community-led change, and there will be many ways to connect. Whether you’re leading a local initiative, working in government, part of a backbone team, or passionate about place-based transformation, PLACE will offer multiple opportunities to get involved. 

    As PLACE grows, we will invite communities and partners to contribute across our four core functions - Enable, Learn & Share, Collaborative Solutions, and Strengthen Data - through co-designed tools, shared learning initiatives, and national reform efforts. You’ll be able to participate in workforce development strategies, contribute to the Knowledge Hub, and help shape systems-level change through practical collaboration. 

    There will also be opportunities to engage in PLACE’s governance and strategic direction, ensuring our work continues to reflect the knowledge, leadership, and priorities of the communities we serve. 

    To stay informed and get involved, visit our website, subscribe to updates, or reach out directly. Together, we will create the conditions for place-based change to thrive across Australia. 

  • Place-based change doesn’t happen without people, and when we asked communities what makes this work successful, they didn’t talk about programs or policies. They talked about people. The local leaders, support workers, backbone staff, and volunteers who show up, build trust, and drive momentum, often with limited resources and little recognition. 

    PLACE saw this clearly during the Listening Tour, where many communities described how place-based work had organically created employment pathways, from local participation to paid roles and governance leadership. But we also heard how fragile those pathways can be. Burnout, role insecurity, short-term funding, and a lack of relevant training options were consistent challenges, particularly in regional and remote communities where a small number of people are carrying a disproportionate load. 

    The Enable team is focused on backing these people. We’re starting from the ground up - listening to those doing the work to understand the practical skills they use, the opportunities they’ve missed, and the support they need to stay and grow. We’ll map existing training pathways, identify what’s accessible and effective, and co-design a national workforce strategy that reflects the realities of place-based work. 

    This strategy will be action-oriented, focused on what communities can actually use: community-led micro-credentials, mentoring, on-the-job learning, secondments, and peer networks. It will reflect a “grow your own” philosophy because the most effective place-based workers are already embedded in community. They just need the right conditions, support, and recognition to thrive. 

    Importantly, this work will be integrated across PLACE’s other functions. Workforce development will align with our learning and data agendas, inform our policy and funding advocacy, and be embedded in our broader systems-change efforts. We’re building a fit-for-purpose workforce system, one that’s sustainable, community-informed, and capable of meeting the complexity of place-based work now and into the future. 

  • PLACE is committed to strengthening the sector’s ability to generate, access, and apply evidence by creating systems that support shared learning and continuous improvement. We will collaborate with diverse communities across Australia to identify what works in different contexts, and critically why it works, then translate those insights into accessible formats such as reports, policy briefs, co-designed tools, and interactive resources. 

    The Learn and Share team will lead the development of a national Knowledge Hub, designed to showcase the rich practice-based knowledge emerging from place-based initiatives across the country. This Hub will be a central platform for communities, practitioners, and policymakers to learn from one another, access tested tools, and see how others are navigating complex local challenges. These resources will be co-designed to ensure they are useful, grounded in local realities, and adaptable to different contexts. 

    At the same time, the Strengthen Data team will work directly with place-based initiatives to grow their capability and confidence around data, measurement, evaluation, and learning. By supporting communities to develop their own context-specific approaches, PLACE helps ensure that local decision-making is informed by meaningful evidence, and that success is measured in ways that reflect what matters to the community. 

    This commitment is grounded in what we heard consistently throughout the Listening Tour: that local communities hold deep knowledge, but too often lack the support, platforms, or partnerships to share and build on it. PLACE will help bridge that gap by making community wisdom visible, valued, and transferable across the sector. 

    Together, these efforts will create a more connected, informed, and capable place-based ecosystem where knowledge doesn’t sit in silos, but circulates to drive real-world change.