“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Over half of the world’s population lives in cities. Australia is not immune to the effects of growing urban populations. This growth is both a huge challenge and tremendous opportunity for communities right across Australia and beyond. Will our communities be places of hope?
Archbishop Tutu’s words resonate for the future of our communities. As physical and social infrastructure develops, well researched, proactive responses and holistic, system-focused solutions are needed to help individuals and communities flourish.
Movement towards the type of community we want to live in has never been more urgent.
To help address these needs experts in the built environment, community development, leadership, and culture have come together to share knowledge, skills, ideas, and resources, to establish a new, specialised entity: The Centre for Building Better Community.
The centre is a group of thinkers, practitioners, and leaders who are working together to shape responses to community issues that enable everyone to thrive and flourish. As a group of ‘pracademics’ (reflective practitioners and thinkers), we are committed to the goal of flourishing communities.
Bringing together research and training; thought leadership and networking; media and consultancy the centre has the goal of working in partnership with others to create positive communities where people's wellbeing is at the centre. CBBC includes people with knowledge and skills in urban planning, architecture, community development and social planning, arts, culture, and leadership development. Bringing these skills and perspective together gives the centre a unique blend of expertise to address blocks to flourishing in both physical and social infrastructure.
We value working across disciplines and with people from different life perspectives and experiences. We encourage people to be open to ideas and to listen, bringing together seemingly divergent thinking to create effective solutions to community issues.
We value an approach that draws out the strengths of individuals and communities and challenges ourselves and others to grow as part of the process of changing their communities and cities, as they work towards the shared goal of creating environments where all can flourish.
We value the importance of being reflective practitioners who excel in their field and take the time to reflect on practice and learning within and across disciplines.
We value transparent character and honest conversations. In everything we do we aim to embody and model the flourishing that we seek for communities.
CBBC provides a range of learning opportunities, through seminars, mentoring and learning communities, workshops, and gatherings.
The centre acts as a hub, seeking to bring together practitioners, academics, leaders and other interested people for conversations and action that will help in the development of flourishing communities.
Through CBBC's in-house expertise the centre is able to offer in-depth and diverse knowledge to reach meaningful outcomes that will benefit all your stakeholders.
