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About Us

Conversations with Communities. What's in a name? Quite a lot actually.


Conversations with Communities (CwC) is an online community, network and knowledge hub. Its foundation is the importance of shared experience, collaboration and reflection in the community resilience space. Shared ideas, facilitating community resilience and the important role of communities in actions shaping their own futures are all conversations to be had with ourselves and with communities.


"CWC is a Community, a Network and a Knowledge Hub, all rolled into one."


Conversations with Communities is for those who want to develop deeper understanding of ways to support resilient, sustainable communities and their landscapes. Its main focus is on providing spaces and opportunities for gaining these understandings and sharing our own professional and personal experiences.


To be part of CwC, you need to join either:

  1.  The CwC Network, a no-cost space that has a focus on discussing some of the key processes and ideas impacting on resilient communities and their landscapes.
  2. The Community Resilience Lab, a subscription-based space where we explore issues in greater depth through weekly meetings, fortnightly workshops focusing on change and the opportunity for one-on-one meetings.  


As a member of either you:


  • Explore the important role communities have in facilitating their resilient, sustainable futures. Resilience doesn't 'just happen' but is a product of community and social action. Learn more about the characteristics of resilient communities, how change happens, who change agents can be and how this translates into sustainable futures.
  • Explore how we can harness this role in our own personal and professional lives. Share experiences and stories of supporting community change and community resilience/sustainability. Take the opportunity to take a breath - to reflect on our professional and personal experiences in the community resilience space and the community-led landscape sustainability space.
  • Meet new people. Your fellow members are as motivated as you are to dive deeper into what we're exploring in CwC.
  • Get results. As you dive into the content and meet the community here in Conversations with Communities, you'll build layers and layers of insights, experiences and knowledge. While it's not necessarily easy, the transformations we undertake matter to you, to me, to communities and our sustainable futures. 


Who We Are

Conversations with Communities is for anyone who works with or cares deeply about the resilience and sustainable futures of communities and their landscapes.


You might be:

  • A practitioner working in community resilience
  • A facilitator working with communities
  • A community worker in any number of fields
  • A student interested in learning more about resilience
  • A community member wanting to strengthen your community
  • A traveller interested in the interaction of travel and community resilience
  • Anybody who recognise that meaningful change begins with listening and respecting/understanding local context, local rights and local experiences. 


Whether you're new to all this or have years of experience, CwC offers a place to deepen your practice, expand your awareness and learn from others who share a commitment to community-led futures.

What We Do

1. We Share  Conversations, Experiences and Understanding 

At CwC we create space for members to share their stories, experiences, priorities and concerns. These conversations reveal the everyday life that shapes resilience and provides the foundation for community-led action.

2. We Strengthen Community-Led Decision Making

CwC supports communities to articulate what matters to them and to shape pathways that reflect local knowledge, values and aspirations. Rather than imposing solutions, we better understand the conditions where communities make decisions with confidence and clarity.

3. We Build a Network of Practitioners

Through our ongoing conversations, reflective practice, and collaborative learning opportunities, we form  connections that strengthen both our individual understanding and the collective capability of the network.

4. We Build Knowledge and Skills for Real-World Community Resilience and Sustainability

We support our members to develop the skills and complex understanding needed for community-led sustainable futures.

5. We Create a Collaborative Learning Community

The CwC Network and CwC Lab create spaces where members can learn together, share experiences, test ideas and build their ideas in a supportive, reflective environment.

6. We Support Pathways to  Sustainable Futures

Ultimately, CwC helps communities and practitioners navigate complex social, cultural, environmental and political landscapes. We support communities in strengthening their resilience, building agency, and shaping futures grounded in their own histories, identities and aspirations. This ultimately contributes to sustainable futures.

How We Do it

Each month the CwC Network and the Community Resilience Lab has a theme. These themes form an arc that allows us to engage with the complexities of community and landscape resilience.


Themes include:


  • Understanding the context of community and landscape resilience
  • Navigating complexity; and
  • Developing/sustaining participatory and ethical practices.


What underpins these is bringing together 'thinking and doing' - thinking about what things mean for us and what we do.


A combination of relevant content, my experiences and your own insights will help us explore what's important in community resilience and why. We'll use these themes as a guide for our explorations.


As a member of the Conversations With Communities Network, you gain free access to:


  • Collaborative spaces that bring people together to learn, reflect and develop new ideas for building community and landscape resilience. 
  • Weekly discussion questions. Each Monday I post a question that acts as a discussion starter - then it's over to you to share your ideas and experiences.
  • A weekly drop-in session where we check in with each other.
  • In both the Network and the Lab, you can create your own networks of members.


Your subscription to the Community Resilience Lab is where we go deeper:


  • The Conversation Table and The Change Workshop are both designed to link ideas, theories and assumptions with practice.
  • The Bookclub offers reflective opportunities to look at other cases and representations
  • Your one-on-one opportunities with me give you an opportunity to benefit from my experience in ways that are specifically useful to you.


We also have more structured opportunities:


  • Regular workshops, where we spend more time on key topics.
  • Guided learning options such as Learning Modules that you undertake at your own pace. These will be available soon.


Through the Lab, the workshops and the wider CwC Network, we build a shared, evolving practice - one that equips people to strengthen community resilience in ways that are grounded, inclusive and enduring.

Join Us in Sharing Ideas, Experiences and Insights Into Community Resilience

Ways to Join Us

The CWC Network

FREE

    • Access to CwC's weekly discussion questions and forums
    • Connection with the Network's members
    • Weekly Drop in Session to say Hi
    • Professional Consultation with me (paid)

Workshops, coaching and Learning

Participate in our workshops


Explore more structured learning opportunities


Have a professional consultation with me


Meet Brian


For more than three decades, my work has centred on understanding how communities navigate change, protect what matters and build futures shaped by their own priorities. I have taught, facilitated change and worked alongside communities across Australia, India, Southeast Asia and Europe, always guided by one core belief: resilience grows through genuine conversation. So much of what I know has been shaped by the countless young people, women and men, elders and students who have shared their insights, their challenges, their stories and their hopes. They have been my teachers as much as those in the universities I've studied in or taught at. 



"The knowledge I carry is deeply collective, grounded in the experiences and collaborations of those who shared ideas and experiences with me."



It's from this long journey of learning with communities that Conversations with Communities was born. I see it as both a learning space and a collaborative community - a place for us to come together to explore the complexities and the strengths of community-led resilience and its contributions to sustainable landscapes. 


My aim now is not only to teach and share my experience, but to create a legacy -  a community of practitioners who support community resilience with a deep understanding of what we do and why we do it. Conversations with Communities is both the continuation of all the voices and experiences that shaped me and an invitation to join in the shared work of building more resilient, more just and more connected communities.  Join me in this, it'll be great to work with you.


You can read some more about me at my website here