Mapping connections in place-based interventions: A Ready Communities example

Visualising community connections highlights the complexity and strength of a local community network. Understanding community connectedness also shows the systemic nature of challenges and opportunities in regional areas.

In the spirit of sharing and collaborating with others working in place-based development, we share early insights from mapping connections from an excerpt of the Ready Macleay program evaluation in Kempsey, NSW.

Evaluating connection in place-based programs

There is a growing emphasis on programs referred to as "place-based", highlighted in a recent map of place-based programs in Australia. These programs are funded by diverse sources, including government, philanthropy, and industry, focus on different areas of impact such as early childhood development, innovation ecosystems, climate impacts, and disadvantage, and have different delivery models based on duration, facilitation approach, and governance.

Differences in place-based programs highlight the importance of appropriate program evaluation to understand what works in which situations. Yet evaluation is a challenge for several reasons, including isolating what contributes to the impact in complex environments, the time between intervention and impact, the capacity and capability of delivery teams to focus on evaluation, and resistance of some funded programs to feedback of unanticipated results.

Connection is one measure that contributes to the outcomes of place-based programs. Although the number and nature of connections may not be considered an impact, it can be considered a prominent factor of community resilience. The more connected a community, the more likely there will be a backup and diversity of services, faster and higher-quality response to emergencies and opportunities, and an increase in the number of individuals progressing ideas for commercial and social impact.

Mapping Connections in Ready Communities

Ready Communities is a two-year place-based program that supports communities through a 10-month engagement and capability-building program, a three-day Social Impact in the Regions conference, and a 12-month alumni support program. The program design is informed by the collective impact framework, which includes support for an emerging or established collaborative backbone structure. The program is delivered in integrated stages, including region selection, initial engagement, mapping, engagement, activation and initiative development, capability and capacity building, the conference, and the legacy.

The Ready Communities data model captures the connections made through workshops, meetings, introductions, initiatives, and mapping of policy, support organisations, and individuals. The data can be visualised as a network of "nodes" and "edges". Nodes in the network include events and activities such as workshops and meetings, support hubs, individual organisations, policies such as strategies, funding programs, and roadmaps, and individual people. The edges are the connections between the nodes such as a policy that funds a support hub, a person who is employed in an organisation, or a person who participates in an event.

The diagram below shows connections made or identified in the first seven months of the Ready Macleay program. The mapping identified 97 Hubs across 27 roles, 60 organisations, 178 individuals, and 40 policies. The diagram shows the interconnectedness of the network and isolated nodes on the periphery that may not be as connected to the core.

(The size of the node is based on the number of connections. Kempsey Shire Council is larger due to the connection to policy.)

Isolating a subset of the data, we look at the connectivity from the first activation workshops through the Ready Communities engagement stage. The initial engagement stage of the Ready Macleay program identified five focus areas: Agriculture communities, CBD activation, Creative industries, Housing and infrastructure, and Youth futures. There was also a series of cafe conversations where a booth at a local cafe was set up for walk-in conversations.

The diagram below shows participation levels for each focus area and participation shared across focus areas. The data includes 91 participants over 13 facilitated workshops and conversations.

Each engagement attracted participants who attended only the one focus area and participants who attended multiple focus areas. The CBD activation had the highest total engagement and the highest percentage of participants interested in the one focus area. Nearly half of the CBD Activation participants attended the one focus area. A quarter to a third of participants in Youth Futures, Housing and Infrastructure, and Agriculture Communities were also dedicated to the one focus area.

The café conversations, as an additional channel, attracted participants who did not engage with the other focus area engagements, with 65% of participants engaging solely through the café sessions. This highlights the value of having community conversations to engage those who might otherwise not identify with a specific topic.

Out of all participants in the dedicated workshops, 45% could be considered as 'boundary spanners', participating in more than one engagement area. These include team members of the local backbone organisation Learning the Macleay. The workshops connected the backbone to the participants as well as connected participants to initiatives and programs across the wider community through the backbone.

Impact and Social Impact in the Regions

We are seeing the impact of the Ready Communities program through the connections made. We are often surprised at new connections made with people who have been living in the same region for years. Out of these connections, over 100 initiatives have been identified, several of which are being progressed through clusters developed around each focus area. We will share more about these initiatives and their impacts in the next few weeks.

Impact is often reported by observing initiatives and retrospectively tracking the connections that contribute to the outcome. This can present a challenge in only seeing the most recent connections or those connections that are most prominent. With Ready Communities, it is exciting to see how early seemingly random or minor connections have contributed to measurable impact. We are also observing the value of engaging people around focused conversations and general community conversations and the role of boundary spanners across diverse topics.

We will share more insights from the evaluation process over the next month and at the Social Impact in the Regions conference, which will be held from 4 to 6 September in Kempsey. You can read more about the program in a recent overview here, including speakers and topics.

The conference is a key part of the Ready Communities program to expand networks and accelerate initiatives not only from Ready Macleay but across Australia. It would be great to see you there to learn, share, and advance the conversation on how we can collectively have a greater impact in our regions.