By Amara Bains & Dr John Davis
Almost a year ago, we came together in duwur – a closed circle – a research collaboration (kolab) between ARACY and Riteways Wanjau. Our duwur is a place of ko-learning, listening and exchange for us/2 only. In the first few months we had lively yarns and plenty of laughs and then one day we looked at what we were weaving and saw an evolution of place-based community development. Through this article, we invite you to set circle with us – our baulan – an open circle – to share our idea and to seek other perspectives.
Mandy loves where she lives.
She has lived here for most of her life and is happy that her kids will grow up here and enjoy the small corner park at the end of the road and hanging out with friends at the shops on the way home from school making plans for the weekend and the future.
Despite the traffic noise and perhaps the need for a few more trees, this place is home to Mandy, it has helped her become the person she is today. There’s a connection here that she can’t always explain in words, it’s everything – and it’s a connection that prompts her to act to protect her place when called upon.
She shares her love of this place with her kids. They love it too.
What would our communities look like if we focussed on the advantages of a place – if we turned the spotlight on our relationships with our place and to the islands of hope, joy and connection that exist? What if we amplified the conditions that support these sanctuaries, these cycles of advantage?
Welcome to Place 2.0. Place 2.0 is an evolution of current place-based approaches to community development which actively engages Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) to understand and work with our relations to place. Place 2.0 is place-sourced community development.
Mark loves where he lives.
He’s an outdoor kind of person and he feels lucky to live where he does. Every morning, he walks with his dog, along the beach, smiling at fellow walkers and even stopping for a brief chat. He watches the dolphins or sometimes the whales and when he does, he feels something inside.
Mark and his fellow walkers regularly get together to do a clean-up of the beach, it’s not a big affair and lots of other people who happen to be on the beach pitch in for a bit. For Mark, caring for the beach is not a chore – it’s the least he can do for the beach that gives him so much every day.
He would like everyone, now and in the future, to know the joy of the beach.
Place-sourced community development distinguishes itself from current place-based approaches by its long-term focus on preserving or amplifying the uniqueness and essence of place and people and less of a focus on service delivery. It offers a different approach for ‘scaling’ that does not oversimplify the complexity of place to generic models that require top-down management or ‘backbone’ organisations to sit ‘over’ or ‘around’ community mobilisation.
By adopting a place-sourced approach we apply IKS thinking to the way we engage with community. That means we place an emphasis on understanding the relations and patterns within a community before any activities commence. For First Nations Australians, what is described as place-sourced can be considered as connection to Country and in Murri Country this is known as mimburi, the source of great flows.
Lee, Nicki, Talia and Elijah all go to the same school, but they live on different streets. School is where they can meet up – there and one other place. Hanging out at home is not always easy, so this other place is where they come to hang out, de-stress and have a laugh.
There’s a few of these ‘other places’ where different groups of kids gather and even though there’s not much there, Lee, Nicki, Talia and Elijah know they can be who they want here and when they leave, they know this other place will keep hold of their hopes and laughter for when they return.
They feel safe here. They feel mighty.
A place-sourced approach to community development does not use community disadvantage or performance in deficit-based indicators to determine a course of action. Instead, IKS processes are used to understand community perspectives on the cycles of advantage and how the relationships to place/Country and the essence and uniqueness of place/Country contribute to thriving lives.
This may sound esoteric or metaphysical, but from the stories above we can see that people have relations with place and other species all the time. But in our modern, positivist world we often overlook or dismiss those relations and their importance to our wellbeing and the community’s wellbeing.
Connection to Country or nature or however you want to describe it, exists around the world in Indigenous and other traditions. One example is ‘forest bathing’ (shirin-yoku) in Japan where individuals can be prescribed a visit to a forest to address stress, depression, reduce blood pressure and induce a state of calm. Closer to home, here in Australia, general practitioners are being invited to consider nature prescribing to support patients with some chronic diseases. Think about your family pet as an example of inter-species relations.
In adopting a place-sourced approach we place an emphasis on the positive, strong relations and agency within community and between community and its environment (place). We start by not only asking the what (‘what works?’ or ‘what is good?’ or ‘what would you want or do more of?’, but also the when (e.g. ‘in summer what do you see/feel/hear/do?’ ‘what changes in winter? ‘when did/does that happen?’). We also seek to understand the constants in communities – the mountains – metaphorical or literal. We seek to know who lives in community – extending our notions of relations beyond only humans.
Using a place-sourced approach allows communities – and the place – to step into their agency. Place 2.0 encourages recognition of and account for the effect of our relations with non-human/more-than-human community members. By doing this communities begin to engage in regenerative processes to support social cohesion and consciously strengthen relations to place/Country.
Place 2.0 recognises the complex adaptive nature of communities and Country (place) and the flows and action working within the boundaries/ constraints of a particular community’s relations. By focussing on relations rather than activities, outcomes or impact, the limitations of time are removed enabling community and Country to co-evolve at their own speed.
Of course, this will necessitate changes to the structural affordances that keep the current system in place, such as development of alternative governance and funding models and even the way we ‘collect evidence’. Existing funding practices remain limited by a focus on outcomes which are invariably conceived of in a linear and mechanistic manner – even when we don’t mean it to be that way. Similarly, the way we ‘scale’ in Place 2.0 is predicated on the relationships of place/person/species to another place/person/species and is an organic process rather than a top-down, deficit-led endeavour.
While we are in baulan we would like to acknowledge the work of countless others and their influence in our thinking – especially the Indigenous peoples of the world who have resisted the destruction of their knowledges and still share it with others in the hope it will be used to protect Earth. The current Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers and academics who work hard on building bridges and decolonising our thinking. We acknowledge the regeneration movement, the system changers, the allies and the iconoclasts who challenge the status quo and ask hard questions. You have all influenced Place 2.0.
As is custom in baulan we are listening for your reflections and contributions – what are the islands in your place?
This article is made together – John Davis a Cobble Cobble man from Bunya Burras Country on the western side of the Bunya Mountains in Queensland and Amara Bains a non-Indigenous Australian of Punjabi and Latvian ancestry living and working on Kabi Kabi Country – to demonstrate allyship, decolonisation and authentic collaboration. It is a move away from the othering of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and demonstrates the applicability to the mainstream without appropriation.
Dr John Davis is the director of Riteways Wanjau Pty Ltd
Amara Bains is Lead for Insights, Learning & Futures at ARACY
