Workshops
Taking place on Monday 27 October, these immersive sessions offer an invaluable opportunity to deepen your knowledge, enhance your skills, and engage with leading engagement experts.
Non-Conference - Register for Workshops
From Planning to Practice: Preparing Your Organisation for Deliberation
Hosted by: Max Hardy, Amy Hubbard and special guests
2:00pm - 3:45pm
Deliberative engagement is becoming increasingly undertaken to achieve more thoughtful processes and more impactful engagement. However, despite encouraging and inspiring examples of deliberative engagement there are pitfalls, risks and varied practice.
This workshop is all about accelerating our learning; to gain a deeper understanding of the principles behind deliberative engagement, and draw on our collective insights as to how these principles can be effectively applied in practiceFlearn = f&!k up and learn™ Learn the best lessons from the worst moments, with your engagement peers
Facilitated by: Carol Tu and Jacinta Cubis
2:00pm - 3:45pm
Flearn is for engagement practitioners who have ever:
felt the brunt of a tirade by a resident at a community meeting
watched your community ‘drop-in’ become a town hall meeting
discovered a glaring conflict of interest halfway through a community panel’s deliberations
Flearn:
is a fun way for engagement practitioners to learn from their f&!k ups with their peers, without blame or shame.
draws on the experience and expertise in the room – no panel, keynotes or experts on the stage. It’s safe, energising and practical.
Flearn helps engagement practitioners:
Realise they’re not alone. Everyone’s got a story, and they’re all messy.
Learn from others’ f&!k ups first, before they make the same mistake.
See failure differently—not as a career-ending disaster, but as a font of wisdom.
Flearners will leave with:
✓ A treasure trove of Flearns to fuel smarterdecisions✓Confidence to learn and grow by embracing mistakes, not fearing them
✓ A mindset shift from I can’t get this wrong’ to‘I’ll get things wrong, and that’s how I learn’.
✓ Courage to take smart risks✓Real connections built on honesty, not perfection
✓ Hard-won insights to avoid future f&!k ups‘
‘Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.’ Eleanor Roosevelt
In an era increasingly dominated by AI and technological innovation, this session offers a timely human-centred irony: a room full of Community Engagement Subject Matter Experts (CE SMEs) drawing on their collective lived experience to solve a real-world engagement experiment.
With subtle nods to participatory engagement and co-design, Lynne will offer a peek inside her life - sharing stories from her professional role as a Community Engagement Manager with Homes NSW (the NSW Government landlord agency responsible for tenant management and ending homelessness) alongside her personal experiments in honing engagement skills with her own neighbours.
Participants will explore the value and impact of recognising lived experience for better engagement and reflect on shared lessons learned. This workshop requires active participation, expect think-tank style problem solving to spark ideas for more meaningful engagement.
Key Takeaways:
✓ Recognise ‘lived experience’ as an inherent tool to be leveraged for more meaningful community engagement
✓ Discuss the benefits of ‘human-centred authenticity’ vs. ‘tech-driven efficiency’
✓ Be inspired to harness existing skills, resources and tools available to facilitate creative approaches to meaningful Community Engagement.
Join a yarning circle and explore a First Nations-led engagement approach.
Participants will engage with the Murray–Darling Basin enduring water rights project — a landmark initiative securing long-term, community-led water entitlements for over 50 First Nations. You’ll hear directly from First Nations voices, explore culturally appropriate engagement tools and techniques, and learn about the challenges faced in this groundbreaking project.
The workshop provides a safe, respectful space to ask questions and understand how community-led decision-making can drive cultural, social, environmental, and economic outcomes across a range of projects.