Tips and tools for community organisations

Video: Up beat music plays. 

Video opens on dark green sign with indigenous artwork that reads ‘Welcome to Toolangi. Murrindindi Shire.’

Sign is by a road in a forest and there’s a car driving around a bend of the road.

Text: Tips for successful community projects: Involve your community

Video: Kerry Starr appears on screen, sitting in a lounge and addressing an off screen interviewer.

Text: Kerry Starr. Community House, Toolangi, Victoria.

Aerial shot of a building surrounded by roads and grass.

Text: Organise a community meeting.

Footage of the external façade of Toolangi Castella Community House.

Close up on the welcome sign which reads ‘Welcome to Toolangi Castella Community House’.

Audio: Kerry Starr: The fires happened in early February 2009 and within probably three to four weeks afterwards we'd organised a community meeting and said to people, what is it that you want to happen to this community now?

Video: Four women are sitting at a table talking and laughing.

Camera pans to more women at the table talking.

Text: Own the project.

Kerry is back on screen, addressing an off screen interviewer.

Audio: Kerry Starr: If you've got a project that you really want to happen, then you're going to have to own it and get people to help you with it because if you don't lead it, nobody else is going to do it for you.

Video: In a forest, where a road bends around a corner, there’s a yellow sign with red writing that reads ‘Fire prevention starts with…you’. There’s also an illustration of a finger pointing towards the reader.

Katrina Kalfin appears, sitting at a table in a kitchen and addressing an off screen interviewer.

Text: Katrina Kalfin. Personal Trainer, Toolangi, Victoria

A worn, hand painted sign is propped against a steel frame and sitting on green grass. It reads ‘Bushfire information meeting tonight 8pm.’

Audio: Katrina Kalfin: It was really important to sit down, look at our community, look at the needs of our community and real people doing that. People that live here.

Text: Identify needs

Video: On a country road surrounded by green paddocks, cars are driving past a blue and aqua round sign that reads ‘Welcome to Smithton Circular Head’. Underneath is a square sign that reads ‘RV friendly town’.

Jodie Saville addresses an off screen interviewer. She’s sitting in an older style room at a long table.

Text: Jodie Saville, Circular Head Council, Smithton, Tasmania.

Audio: Jodie Saville: Decide what's out there, based on what the community are talking about. What they think the problems are.

Video: Aerial footage of Smithton at dusk. Many houses are in grid blocks and a river flows through the town.

Text: Listen to the community.

Audio: Jodie Saville: For us, that was a conversation that was being had everywhere I went.

Video: Dudley Billing addresses an off screen interviewer. He’s sitting in an older style function room. There’s round tables with blue and orange chairs around them in the background.

Text: Dudley Billing. Rural Health, Smithton, Tasmania

External shot of Circular Head Council Building. It is white, with many tinted windows. A car drives past.

Text: Talk to people

Audio: Dudley Billing: I walked down the street, I went into a shop, had a cup of tea, went to a council meeting, spoke to a couple of people. 

Video: Footage of a road in Smithton at twilight. Cars are driving past. There’s a building on the right side of the road that’s painted blue with a mural featuring a peacock, fish and aeroplane on the side.

Dudley is addressing an off screen interviewer.

Audio: Dudley Billing: You don't even have to create meetings here; the meetings happen on a day to day basis.

Video: Upbeat music plays

White screen, black text: Strengthening local communities together.

FRRR logo appears. Text: FRRR Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal.

Australia Post logo appears.

Text: Australia Post.

Video: Up beat music plays.

In aerial footage of Toolangi, there’s vast green paddocks surrounded by trees and tree covered hills in the background.

Text: Tips for successful community projects: Finding and applying for grants

Video: Kerry Starr appears on screen, sitting in a lounge and addressing an off screen interviewer.

Text: Kerry Starr. Community House, Toolangi, Victoria.

In a hall with a wooden floor and walls, a group of five women are working out with coloured weights in each hand.

Text: Know what you want to achieve

The trainer of the session stands at the front of the hall demonstrating how to use the hand weights. There’s blue chairs and yoga mats stacked behind her.

Audio: Kerry Starr: So many of the grants it's how, what, when and it all seems to be repeating the same information, but actually it's drawing out of you what are you trying to achieve and how are you going to achieve this.

Video: Jodie Saville addresses an off screen interviewer. She’s sitting in an older style room at a long table.

Text: Jodie Saville, Circular Head Council, Smithton, Tasmania.

Landscape footage of the sun setting in Smithton. At the front of the screen there’s tall trees and behind these there’s flat green land with water ways and hills in the distant background.

Text: Have a go

Jodie Saville addresses an off screen interviewer.

Audio: Jodie Saville: The first thing I would say is actually have a go at it, because if you actually try and write it and have a go, even if you don't get that grant I think you learn a lot by just the grant writing process.

Video: Aerial footage of an old woollen mill. The camera lifts from the ground and there’s a green hill with some large trees in the background.

Kim Jordan is addressing an off screen interviewer. Behind her there’s colourful cushions staked, rugs hanging and other art projects.

Text: Kim Jordan. Art at the h.ART, Lobethal, South Australia

In the garden of a brick building, a sign reads ‘Exhibition on now’.

Audio: Kim Jordan: When we started we had access to an empty industrial building. That's all. We had nothing and we aspired to be able to present exhibitions that looked really professional.

Video: In a white gallery space, art pieces hang on free standing walls. On the right of the screen, a human-shaped sculpture is dressed in white cloth and wearing a shaggy jacket. The camera pans to the left and shows more walls showcasing art pieces.

From another spot in the art space, there’s walls with various artworks on them. In front of the camera, there’s a hanging embroidery hoop with a gumtree screen printed on the fabric. It’s slowly turning.

Text: Find grant opportunities

Kim Jordan is addressing an off screen interviewer.

Audio: Kim Jordan: We put in an application to FRRR for seed funding and it was fantastic when we secured that. That got the ball rolling for us. From that basis we were then able to approach other people in the community for support.

Video: At the front of a community garden, a road leads to the entrance, which is framed with bamboo poles. Tyre tracks cut through grass and there’s various colourful small buildings spread around the area.

Text: www.ourcommunity.com.au

Jeanette Martin addresses an off screen interviewer. She’s standing in the community garden.

Text: Jeanette Martin. Byron Shire Council, Mullumbimby, New South Wales

In a grassy space, there’s three wooden planks that form a welcome sign that reads ‘The gateway to Mullumbimby. The biggest little town in Australia’.

Audio: Jeanette Martin: There's a group called Our Community which provide amazing resources and advice for community groups, and they also have a very current list of available grants at any one time.

Video: Jodie Saville addresses an off screen interviewer. She’s sitting in an older style room at a long table.

Text: Jodie Saville, Circular Head Council, Smithton, Tasmania.

Footage of a road in Smithton at twilight. Cars are driving past. There’s a building on the right side of the road that’s painted blue with a mural featuring a peacock, fish and aeroplane on the side.

Audio: Jodie Saville: There's lots of places that will email them to you, so once you go on a register you get them sent to you all the time. 

Video: A store front window has antiques along the sill. Letters cut from colourful paper read ‘Lobethal. Valley of praise. 175 years’.

External footage of Onkaparinga Woollen Mill. A car drives past.

Text: Tell your story

Audio: Kim Jordan: It's really important to tell the story; to explain why it's important to your town.

Video: External shot of an old, brown-brick factory building that has a sign on it that reads ‘Onkaparinga Woollen Co Ltd’.

Video: Upbeat music plays

White screen, black text: Strengthening local communities together.

FRRR logo appears. Text: FRRR Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal

Australia Post logo appears. Text: Australia Post.

Video: Up beat music plays.

On a country road surround by grass and trees, there’s an artistic welcome sign that’s red, yellow and navy. It reads ‘Lobethal est. c 1842’. Cars are driving past.

Text: Tips for successful community projects: Ways to evaluate success

Video: Aerial footage of Lobethal.

Aerial footage of the old woollen mill.

Text: Collect data

Kim Jordan is addressing an off screen interviewer. Behind her there’s colourful cushions staked, rugs hanging and other art projects.

Text: Kim Jordan. Art at the h.ART, Lobethal, South Australia

Audio: Kim Jordan: Our evaluation was very much purpose-driven. We collected visitor statistics, and we made sure that we'd collected not only the number of visitors, but the postcode, so we could see where visitors were coming from.

Video: In an open art space, there’s a female standing at a table with lots of woollen beanies and other woollen items. A free standing clothing rack sits closest to camera and hanging on it are bright knitted cardigans. In the background people move around metal sculptures.

Text: Document the project

We see the group standing amongst the metal sculptures closer.

Image of more metal sculptures in the art space. Some are free standing and some are wall mounted.

Image of art pieces made from small tree branches, hanging from the roof.

Image of artist working on metal sculptures.

Close up of the artists hands working with a tool on the metal and creating sparks.

Audio: Kim Jordan: We took lots of photographs, and the photographs were really, really useful to illustrate our evaluation.

Video: In the open art space, there’s a group of three people talking. Around them are metal sculptures. On the white walls behind them hangs colourful art.

Kim Jordan addresses off camera interviewer.

Text: Demonstrate community benefit

Audio: Kim Jordan: The other thing that was really, really important was collecting anecdotes and stories. They were crucial to illustrate some of the intangible elements, like community benefit.

Video: In the art space, we see the female at the table with woollen beanies. Another female joins her.

Video: Phil Preston addresses an off screen interviewer. He’s standing in a park and there’s residential houses in the background.

Text: Phil Preston. STEER Project, Mullumbimby, New South Wales

A male festival-goer blows into a straw that’s inserted into a breath testing machine.

Camera zooms in to see ‘False reading’ scrolling across the LED screen of the machine.

Phil Preston addresses an off camera interviewer.

Text: Use available data

Audio: Phil Preston: The breath testing machines we use, they log the data through the evening. So, there we will have a massive file that comes out of the machine, and again that gets incorporated into the reports.

Video: A student in a red polo shirt is completing a survey with a pencil. The camera pans to another student completing the same form.

Text: Gather feedback from participants

Dudley Billing addresses an off screen interviewer. He’s sitting in an older style function room. There’s round tables with blue and orange chairs around them in the background.

Text: Dudley Billing. Rural Health, Smithton, Tasmania

External shot of Seven Up Youth Centre. The building is painted with a blue and purple pattern. There’s a school girl and a younger school boy standing at the door, waiting for a bus that’s pulling up.

Camera zooms in to a sign on the window that reads ‘Seven Up Youth Centre. Grades 7-12’.

Audio: Dudley Billing: We've got feedback forms, and we've used those the whole way. We just make a simple form that's easy to fill out that gives us a picture of how it's - how we're tracking, and how that works. The simpler the better.

Video: In a grassy space, there’s three wooden planks that form a welcome sign that reads ‘The gateway to Mullumbimby. The biggest little town in Australia’. Cars pass in the distance.

Phil Preston addresses an off camera interviewer.

Text: Compare results of relevant data

Audio: Phil Preston: Analysing data is all about time. I'll sit down with all this massive data, crunch it, put it into the report. These days we've got a reasonably templated report, so we can compare the results from one year to the last. We'll collect things such as demographic data, age, and gender.

Video: Upbeat music plays. White screen, black text: Strengthening local communities together.

Video: FRRR logo appears. Text: FRRR Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal.

Australia Post logo appears. Text: Australia Post.