What I learned through ChangeFest about collaboration and systems change.

This is a challenging story to tell. In 2019 I stepped out of the arts, where I had worked for over twenty years, to take up the role as Director of ChangeFest, the national celebration of place-based social change.

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I made a commitment to First Nations people and community leaders to make positive change at a critical time in our Nation’s history when Ecological crisis is threatening everything we hold dear. I believe this story of ‘walking together’ holds important lessons for our journey. I am no white saviour and sharing this story is an act of solidarity.

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The initial proposition and design of ChangeFest was inspiringly unique. Communities grappling with complex challenges invite the ChangeFest event to their place, co-design it with the Director and National Conveners, bringing together a field of place-based collective impact practitioners, funders, charity workers and local participants to gather, celebrate and accelerate the changes they are all working towards.

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Place-based social change is taking place in communities across Australia, funded by Government departments (Social Services, Education, Health, Justice), a range of philanthropists, some forward-thinking businesses and the communities themselves.

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I came to this work with long experience in the arts sector of creating events and working with communities. The place-based approach resonated with my understanding of Indigenous cultural principles, strongly connected to Country. It aligns with ideas of ‘radical localism’ that are growing with the ecological crisis. Colleagues in this brave new world of work spoke openly about power and change in refreshing ways that I hadn’t encountered in the arts. Despite a lot of frameworks and processes, it was clear that no-one knew exactly how to make these systemic changes, so the practice was experimental and creative, and with a strong focus on equity, we would be learning together. That mission inspired me and I felt at home, improvising solutions is part of my DNA.

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Aiming for strength in collaboration, ChangeFest was convened and led by four organisations. This group acted like a highly motivated board. They provided infrastructure so that ChangeFest did not have to become an organisation, when so much of our organisational machinery stifles change. The Director role was hosted by one organisation, another provided admin support, another marketing and all brought contacts and expert advice.

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After the first ChangeFest18 event and prior to my appointment, expressions of Interest were sought from communities wishing to continue the action and host the event. Mount Druitt and people from the Northern Territory put up their hands so these events were sequenced, starting with Mount Druitt, where I began working to create ChangeFest19.

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First Nations first

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In this role I inherited yet another painful story of exclusion of First Nations people. The first ChangeFest event had taken place in Logan in 2018, where the local First Nations community had been left out of the organising process until about six weeks before it took place. By then, the agenda was set. Local First Nations people came together and took over the event demanding ‘nothing about us without us anymore’. They established a working group and rewrote the policy document, known as the ChangeFest18 statement, informed by the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Aunty Faith Green played a strong part in this action and remained a valued mentor during the ChangeFest journey. Her commitment to improving conditions for mob has been a guiding light.

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I told and retold this origin story many times as I built new relationships because it had set the path and learning agenda for ChangeFest. It’s well known that First Nations people are disproportionately disadvantaged in our systems following generations of subjugation and abuse. After years working interculturally in the arts with a deep understanding of structural inequality, I knew that my job, first and foremost, was to work with First Nations Elders and community Leaders in each place, listen carefully and take direction from them.

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I started with the Elders.

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The Directors of Baabayn Aboriginal Corporation in Mount Druitt are committed to walking together with non-Indigenous people. They work inclusively and collaboratively in highly complex conditions with few resources. Their work is inspirational. Neither they nor I had been to ChangeFest18. With six months to deliver the next event, Baabayn invited local Aboriginal workers and leaders to meet and establish shared local ownership, purpose and direction. I was a guest at these meetings and immediately saw a completely different approach in the way they were conducted. My role was to listen and bring in agendas from other parts of the system, mostly from the white intermediaries working across this field, translating them into the local context as we started to piece the event together. We met regularly with the National Conveners and two community champions from Darwin (one black fella and one white) who were following the process ahead of the Northern Territory ChangeFest event (CFNT21). Elders from Logan were also consulted, constantly reminding us of where ChangeFest had started. This weaving approach of transferring knowledge through building relationships was inspiring. I was determined to do things differently and earn the trust of all these Elders.

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It was clear when I took on the role that the appointment of a middle class middle aged white woman was contributing to a gross imbalance of power in the wider system. I came with long experience in producing events plus some cultural and social to help fundraise and broker relationships. I was conscious that the conditions that led to me to gaining this expertise form part of the problem we were collectively seeking to address. With a tight 6-month deadline and hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise, I resolved to do all I could to deliver ChangeFest19 well, learn, and then see what else could be done to rebalance the ChangeFest power structure in the name of equitable change.

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From the outset I saw similar patterns of leadership and systemic injustices that I had experienced in the arts. The National Convenors were all white led organisations, as were many of the sector ‘leaders’ I was asked to consult. They massaged power through their influence in the system, often without engaging with the communities they said they were working to serve. That felt uncomfortable.

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The emphasis on First Nations people in place-based communities brought many complexities. I found white workers to be proud of their associations with First Nations people without necessarily listening to them or considering their own privilege and position in the system. Instead they extended their own social capital exclusively to certain First Nations colleagues. Non-Indigenous Australians from diverse backgrounds were largely missing from the power structures in this field. When I pointed this out, the language quickly changed from ‘black and white Australians’ to ‘First Nations and other multi-cultural Australians’. This language shift demonstrated a concerted effort to respond to shifting priorities but over time exposed a fundamental failure to acknowledge that white people and privilege play a specific role in colonial power dynamics throughout our sadly racist culture.

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The foundational ideas underpinning this place-based collective impact work were developed overseas, mostly by other privileged white people in rich countries, and these ideas had not been re-interpreted for the Australian cultural context. This is a persistent habit in our culture that we urgently need to break. We import and impose foreign systems and ignore incredible local cultures and knowledges. Noticing the pattern, I resolved to act in whatever small ways I could to address it. For ChangeFest19, I resisted all suggestions of white international speakers and only invited International First Nations people and people of colour. This helped to support the systemically disaffected locals and resist the urge to lean into dominant power and privilege.

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For ChangeFest19, the local Elders were clear that the event had to be held in Mount Druitt. Like many deprived communities, Mount Druitt lacks a dedicated venue for large events. Luckily Kimberwalli was about to open, a beautiful First Nations led space in a decommissioned high school. Spirit was strong there and in November 2019, despite alarming bushfires nearby, our program brought over 500 people together from across the country for conversations about shifting power. Days 0 and 1 ran smoothly, although bushfire smoke was intensifying. We had just arrived at the heart of the agenda on Day 2 – how to shift power to First Nations people – when the event had to be evacuated due to unsafe levels of toxic smoke. As the buses arrived 7 minutes after the emergency call, I was on the phone to Rooty Hill RSL (a place the aunties had previously boycotted for ChangeFest), where the program continued. We had little idea that this ‘pivoting’ skill would be so needed in the following years. Next day, the gathering returned to Kimberwalli for a conversation about Climate Justice – sadly missing from much of the work I encountered in this field at the time. It is an ongoing contradiction, as people experiencing complex challenges in our systems are more likely to be impacted by converging climate crises. Despite the chaos of disruption, our event was widely considered to be a success and another step on the journey to celebrating and shaping change.

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Then came COVID-19.

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Place based…in every place: the art of localism

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According to the Australian Institute for Families, ‘Place-based initiatives are programs designed and delivered with the intention of targeting a specific geographical location and particular population group to respond to complex social problems. Typically, they focus on areas and communities with entrenched disadvantage or deprivation.’

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Tragically, ‘entrenched disadvantage’ still describes many regional and remote places with strong Indigenous communities. One of the tenets of place-based work is a strength-based approach, and ChangeFest provided a context of celebration for people from communities across the country to share incredible stories of success. However, I was also schooled early on by a fierce young First Nations leader from Western Sydney who told me that place-based initiatives were yet another way that Government and white-led NGO’s have appropriated First Nations approaches in efforts to control them. This insight landed heavily and stayed with me.

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The Collective Impact Forum states that. ‘Collective impact brings people together,? in a structured way, to achieve social change.’

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As the world joined our organisation, already working online across the country, language shifted from social change to systems change in keeping with trending agendas. While I encountered plenty of structured process in this work, I was repeatedly surprised by how little attention was given to developing vision for what social or systems change might look and feel like. I was repeatedly told that ‘change is slow’, as we spiralled into lockdowns, learnt to adapt, collaborate online and ‘pivot’ quickly. Meanwhile communities welcomed me in as I tried to be a useful stranger. People grappling with incredible challenges articulated insightful analysis of the broken systems they were impacted by and ‘slow’ seemed out of step with the hunger and urgent need for change on the ground.

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Following ChangeFest19, one of my mentors proposed that we take ChangeFest On the Road to continue building muscles for change-making so that more communities could invite ChangeFest in, host smaller local events and build collaboration with First Nations people. Through this work, we continued rehearsing new ideas and developing new practice within the movement. Miraculously, through the lockdowns in the second half of 2020 and early 2021, we managed to realise three regional events in Murwillumbah, NSW; Clarence Plains outside Hobart, Tasmania; and Nowra, NSW. We also made a memorable trip to Parliament in Canberra - for ChangeFest on the Hill. This was a way of engaging with more First Nations Elders and communities across the country, connecting them to local actors as well as to the national conversations.

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I was deeply inspired by the people I met and got to work with in each place, grappling with contradictions within the structure of place-based work. The burden of participation was firmly placed on local communities who were supposedly ‘at the centre‘, but mostly unpaid and sidelined because they lack the social and cultural capital needed to effectively influence those in power. By contrast, I could see the growing ranks of intermediary FIFO (fly in, fly out) ‘businesses’ and consultants soaking up disproportionate funding and cementing the inequality they claimed to be addressing. As a key indicator, I observed that many professional workers and leaders didn’t bring their local selves to ChangeFest events, unless it was a specific part of their professional role.

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I came to understand that wealthy communities were not expected to participate, and that a ‘place-based’ approach seemed reserved for the poor. That summer of fires, COVID lockdowns across the world and accelerating natural disasters were shifting many to engage with a more local perspective, a reality we’ve been encouraged to forget to get back to the broken ‘normal’.

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Creating the 2021 event in the Northern Territory was really challenging. I live near enough to Mount Druitt to have been regularly present and engaged. Working in the NT, virtually and unable to travel (during COVID), to plan the next national gathering proved much more difficult. The people who had proposed to host the event were intermediaries, working for various agencies, but did not represent any specific local community. Their idea was for the event to reflect a range of communities across the NT, engaging many strong First Nations voices. Few of the community members had been to ChangeFest but thankfully Larrakia Elder Aunty June Mills and Warumungu traditional owner Norman Jupurrurla Frank had been ceremoniously handed the baton from Mount Druitt and brought cultural authority to the process. After months of meetings, the Palmerston Indigenous Network stepped forward to host ChangeFestNT21and took a leap of faith, with support from the Larrakia Development Corporation and Aunty June to ensure the event was locally connected, followed protocols and embedded in ceremony.

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As these tensions played out, I was conscious of my own role in our FIFO culture, and started to build local relationships in Sydney, to try and apply what I was learning. I could see that the communities living with complex challenges are far better connected and more resilient at the local level, something richer places mourn and yearn for. Research and painful experience repeatedly show that strong communities are far better able to act together when crisis strikes. The Climate Emergency continues to test this resilience and increasing number of crisis events dictate that everyone will need these skills now, not later.

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We can’t grow our way to a fairer future

Underneath so much of what I encountered through ChangeFest – and in my arts work – is an underlying growth mindset, rooted in colonisation. This is a story of social mobility, where ever-expanding possibilities, dreamt with infinite resources, enable people to avoid personal responsibility for inequity in the system. ‘Success’ can be aspired to, measured and achieved without engaging with tough values-based analysis and the decision making needed to responsibly redistribute power and resources. There is a lot of spin and jargon supporting this growth fantasy. And it’s hardly surprising, given Australia’s colonial history of genocide, land grabs, and a recent 30 years of continuous growth. A determined focus on progress and development, delivered through ‘scaling’, ‘building capacity’ and 'measuring impact' continue to hold inequality firmly in place.

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The place-based collective impact workers I met generally agreed that top-down government programs do not deliver change and that empowering local communities can. As I worked deeper into these systems, I found a lot of emphasis on personal development but too little attention paid to how the structures themselves perpetuate inequity, embedded in failed ideas of trickle-down prosperity. This is another tension. Change agendas require people to become more self aware. I believe we also need to unpack how power structures inform and manipulate attitudes and behaviours that we take for granted.

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Over years, the social services ‘market’ has been outsourced by government and privatised. ‘Start up’ intermediaries now build ‘for purpose’ businesses to tackle social disadvantage. To attract government and philanthropic money, they model themselves on for-profit business structures. This trend has already transformed the arts and other labour intensive social ‘industries’ to devastating effect, led by ideas of productivity, efficiency, and perpetual growth. The focus on business has led to more administration, marketing, development, fundraising, finance and management staff – with correspondingly less money available for artists, teachers, nurses, social and community development workers.

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In the arts, this trend has further separated artists from presenters and audiences, a process overseen by boards of directors perceived to have enough wealth and influence to be useful and these structures are steeply hierarchical. I saw similar patterns in the social services, now heavily reliant on unpaid community members, who are told they are the most important part of the system but not paid or supported accordingly. This enables intermediary businesses to grow in scale and influence, mining communities for information that is then ‘sold’ on to attract further funding, all in the name of collaboration and addressing disadvantage. It is particularly galling in First Nations community settings when resources have not reached those systematically excluded for generations. For-profit models entrench competition and conglomerate services concentrate in urban centres, thus undermining place-based initiatives in regional and remote areas. Now burgeoning digital monitoring and evidence-based evaluation are becoming an additional burden, as an emphasis on technology and data replace vital human services. This undermines place-based knowledge and is another cause of critical tension.

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Part of the challenge?in breaking this cycle is to unpick expectations of funders who typically favour short-term, high impact financing. Government and philanthropic funding supports, on the one hand, programs with ambitious (and fanciful) claims to be solving a problem once and for all and, on the other, business models that promise to make themselves self-sustaining by paying for spiralling core costs through profits from ongoing ‘socially beneficial’ work. Philanthropic money (such as from the Paul Ramsay Foundation) or contaminated fossil fuel money (such as from Minderoo or Woodside) is targeted at entrepreneurs and social enterprises, attached to an expectation that the investment will result in growth. In reality, inequity has accelerated and the wider community further disadvantaged, all in the name of positive change.

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This fundamental belief in the wisdom of business and the market continues to brainwash Australia. It is part of a mindset we have to shift. The once clear distinctions between for-profit business, publicly funded government services, not-for-profit NGOs and the voluntary sector have all but disappeared, along with the clear operating principles that once applied in each area. As a result, there is little transparency and few healthy checks and balances. Everyone is a business now; corporate language dictates that individuals and community organisations talk ‘brand’ and 'customer' in transactional relationship. The way things appear is vastly more important than how they operate or the values that drive them. This reality is particularly devastating for First Nations communities where fundamental principles of Respect for Elders, Care for Country, and sustaining future generations cannot function effectively in a society driven by the cult of the new, short term profit and endless growth. ‘For purpose capitalism’ seems the latest trampoline to environmental collapse.

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Our finite and increasingly fragile planet is demanding a new approach.

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Recognising my role in this problem, I started taking small steps to redistribute money and power. Following ChangeFest19, I split the salary offered to me to employ a First Nations Co-Director position for ChangeFestNT21 and started conversations to find a new cooperative model that would manage ChangeFest events, so the communities themselves could have more control and rehearse new ways of working and leading.

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Leadership and Fellowship

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My ideas about Leadership were radically transformed through working closely with First Nations people at ChangeFest. I have worked interculturally for most of my working life but immersing myself in Elder led cultural principles meant that I had to reassess the role of Director. I tripped and stumbled over my own privilege, expectations, impulse to ‘problem solve’ and be in charge. I learnt every day, my assumptions and motives tested and challenged, trying to show up as responsibly as I could to rehearse different ways of doing things. That often meant saying ‘yes’ to Elders even when I couldn’t see the path. Learning about a new field of practice with all its complexity of stakeholder, community and specialist agendas was enriching. In First Nations circles I started to notice deeper intangible exchanges, learnt to respect the many things I could never know, and to listen as a whole-body experience.

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I recall one occasion, early in the relationship building for ChangeFest19, when the Conveners’ and local host's agendas were at odds, and the local Aboriginal-led meeting was trying to find compromise. There was a key item that we could not agree on and one of the Aboriginal?leaders was furious. After a heated exchange and some time in uncomfortable silence, she came and sat beside me. I felt a wave of energy move towards me, like water. I have no other way of describing it. I knew in that moment that I was accepted and that we could proceed by holding our differences together. In hindsight, I believe I could have worked harder to resist pressures from the dominant white-led field.

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Following this experience, whenever I felt completely at sea, I learnt to sit in the heart of that discomfort and wait for signs, to find the way forward. Elders consistently led this process. For the closing ceremony of ChangeFestNT21, the people gathering had been bussed to a beautiful lake in Palmerston. It was in the heat of the day with little shade, we were ready to start. And we waited. After some time, Aunty June Mills started a smoking ceremony, asking the assembled company to gather fuel and everyone obediently collected wood, waited for the fire to settle and walked through, to be cleansed by the smoke. And we waited. Then a large flock of black cockatoos flew overhead. Aunty June thanked them, and the closing proceedings began. ‘Country is alive’ she reminded us, ‘You are never alone’.

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When I started at ChangeFest, we engaged in co-design processes with agreed principles that drove decision making. This included upholding the strength-based approach practised in communities, spending as much money and time in local places as possible, and dealing with the challenges of disrupting the unquestioned power relationships that maintain an inequitable status quo. I also brought a strong environmental sustainability agenda to the table, drawing attention to resources and supply chains, to actively care for Country.

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What I tried to demonstrate, particularly to the conveners overseeing this work, was that change is made in every decision of producing each event and so much needed to be disrupted to ‘walk the talk’ of change. And applying new principles requires extra effort: whether it’s seeking out the local social enterprise which has never catered a major event and requires dashing to the supermarket on day 1 because they didn’t get the quantities quite right, as happened in Mount Druitt; or, following the direction of the Palmerston Indigenous Network, creating a multi-site event to incorporate a range of spaces across the city, using the golf club, a school, a community centre, the local swimming pool to weave different parts of the community into the work – rather than hire fancy hotel conference rooms that exclude disadvantaged local people. By doing this we were crossing invisible boundaries and barriers to bring disparate people together. For ChangeFest21 in Palmerston we held the plenary sessions outdoors in the public square. I am still reeling from the complaints of some of the visiting participants about the presence of local homeless Aboriginal people. These people were so respectful of the gathering when they could have caused a ruckus. Surely the social change we were there to create was for them. Yet the act of inclusion was perceived as a disturbance to ‘important business’. I have no words. On the flip side, others said the events felt locally owned, that the form of the events matched the content, driving change through artful design. Sadly, it seems that some of the powerful still didn’t understand that change would look and feel different for them.

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There will always be tensions in bringing such a range of disparate perspectives from across the country while everyone takes another step on their change journey. Listening to locals in different places meant each event was unique. It’s useful to notice how the term ‘community’ is used so differently by different groups. Many of the intermediary NGO’s and Government departments have outsourced their core work, and their staff have little experience of working with a place based community, outside of carefully structured meetings. Leaders of social service organisations are labelled ‘community’ and substitute for the many who are left out and ignored. I find that First Nations people tend to have much more inclusive and equitable practices embedded in consultation that respect and welcome everyone, characteristic of a radically different culture. And we all have to function in the hierarchies of our colonial system, no one has escaped their influence.

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Following ChangeFest19, three of the four National Conveners left the alliance. This presented an opportunity to bring First Nations leadership to ChangeFest’s governance through new convening partners. I was inspired by the vision that Noel Pearson had outlined in his 2018 declaration of Australia: ‘Three stories make Australia: the Ancient Indigenous Heritage which is its foundation, the British Institutions built upon it, and the adorning Gift of Multicultural Migration.’ I believe we must consciously build new structures where all three of these stories are represented so we can practice ‘that we know we can and always will count on each other’ and help us all find new stories together. Sadly, we didn’t find a multicultural Convener for ChangeFestNT21; the new Conveners were black and white. We’d only taken one small step forward, and held a vision for more ambitious change.

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First Nations first means dismantling colonial attitudes and behaviours. Even after some years of working with First Nations people, I have to consciously go through my lists and put the First Nations related items at the top. That requires me to pause rather than launching into work, because I need to find others to do that work with, I cannot lead it. This practice slows me down, instills collaboration and prioritises other ways of working. I am still learning.

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Walking together and systems change

As changemakers in this world of place-based work will tell you, we are all part of the system.

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Coming from the cultural sector, I wanted to build more intercultural understanding as a way to ‘work and walk together’. We have many diverse cultures amongst us and yet tend to dumb down to single lanes rather than filtering onto intersectional knowledge super highways. Having been so attracted to the talk of systems change, I started to understand that too few people had ideas about how to actually achieve it. Instead, old models, techniques and mindsets, developed for other times, were being busily repurposed. The structures and cultural machinery remained uninterrogated and unchanged.

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One of the basic principles that I struggled with was that facilitators in this work claim to be neutral. This assertion hides a multitude of sins in plain sight. If everyone is part of the system and are all invested in it, then no one is exempt. As the late great Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

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I intrinsically understand that systems change work is new cultural practice. It requires all the conditions that artists need; safe spaces to experiment and permission to fail in order to develop new vision, equitable levels of investment, firmly led by shared principles and values. I was learning how to harness ChangeFest events to make change rather than simply delivering an event and then moving on. This learning was shaped by the Babayan Directors and their indignation when left out of initial plans for ChangeFest21. I was sharply reminded that I had a responsibility to them – ‘we are on this journey now’ – and I received another valuable lesson in how I must become fitter to be able to walk together.

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As a white fella, I sit in privileged spaces and witness horrendous acts of betrayal. White people in power extend their cultural and social capital to include First Nations people when it suits while avoiding the harder work of shifting their own position. This white privilege perpetually reinforces hierarchies of influence and often fails to notice when there is little or no social or cultural diversity in the room. I saw self-appointed ‘thought leaders’ consistently failing to comply with decisions made in co-design processes, mining communities for information and then using it to demonstrate their knowledge of the field and raise funds to grow their empires. Mystifying jargon is used to protect power. The idea of First Nations people’s ‘self-determination’ seemed to offer relief to some who clearly felt they were no longer implicated. Conversations were too often focused on First Nations individuals with positional power in the colonial system, creating fantasy leaders rather than embracing the collaborative consultative approach found in communities. Community divisions are weaponised by non-indigenous people who don’t or won't see how culpable they are in creating them. Following the devastating referendum result, this is a critical moment in our nation’s history. The consultation that led to creating the Uluru Statement from the Heart is rich evidence of a more equitable process that we could all learn from. It’s not perfect, none of us are, but it offers an alternative ‘how’.

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As one Indigenous leader said to me ‘We are stuck in your squares and on your ladders, trying to get back to our circles, connected to the earth’, a beautiful articulation of how the system needs to change.

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Broken

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After juggling many challenges and learnings for two years, having delivered two national events and several local events, bringing people together, hosting tough conversations, celebrating place and starting to shift power and money towards local communities. After taking tentative steps towards a different structure so that the organising system could be community owned, reflecting the mission of the work. After trying to introduce disparate new thinking from other sectors to catalyse a growing movement and accelerate the change that so many are calling for…

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I’d undertaken a big personal journey, redistributed funds offered to me, evacuated ChangeFest19 due to hazardous bushfire smoke and maintained delivery of ChangeFest on the Road across the country during two years of COVID-19 when so much progress seemed to have stopped. I hoped that I had done an imperfect job with integrity and care... ?

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Then I was abruptly cancelled.

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It’s true that the contract period was nearly over, but there was promise of further work, I had been encouraged to make a two-year plan, make further connections to funders and think carefully about how to apply what we were all learning to transform the events. We were in pointy conversations about redistribution of power to the First Nations people and local place-based communities – the people we all sought to ‘empower’.

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Then, one fine day, a meeting was hijacked. Told that my association and commitment to the event ‘needed to be broken’, I was dismissed in a Zoom room, kicked out of all systems within an hour. I got a call the next day, to discuss what ‘story’ we would tell the communities. I was shell shocked; it felt like punishment. I pleaded for a process that would honour the First Nations led ceremony that had been woven through ChangeFest events, so I could hand over all the trusted relationships and unfinished work, respecting Elders and communities I felt responsible to and had grown to love. I was refused and threatened.

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In hindsight, I see there were warning signs along the way: testy conversations, a meeting where leaders role played ChangeFest to attack my character. The informal governance structures offered no support to explore contested agendas. The leading convenor seemed to have undisrupted influence over every aspect of this system. In the painful aftermath I understood that I had been systematically demoted in my role. No longer the Director of the event with a convening governance group acting like a highly motivated board; instead I'd been reduced to an insubordinate employee in an organisation focused on growth. The fledgling independent organisation of ChangeFest had been co-opted and colonised; its leaders had changed direction.

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Colleagues withdrew support saying they sensed danger to themselves. I have reflected a lot since on this particular impact. When a unifying vision is lacking or destroyed, people who are dependent on that system for their livelihoods will inevitably narrow their focus to look after themselves. Of course, complying with the dominant system is generally rewarded with better roles, more pay, and it’s understandable to want to succeed. However, the possibility of creating real change for others is surely diminished if we operate selfishly 'for purpose' within a hostile competitive environment. That's another major tension. It’s tragic that our broken systems encourage self-preservation rather than collective action towards much needed systems change. I recognise similar behaviours in the cultural sector.

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After ChangeFestNT 21 and these painful experiences there was silence. I couldn't help but wonder if conveners workplaces would tolerate these methods of 'leadership' without any process of appeal. Ongoing work planned for ChangeFest and ChangeFest on the Road was abandoned and relationships left with me. I had no opportunity to pass it on. Reports do not serve this important process. Just before Christmas I ran into a colleague who had partnered in ChangeFest on the Road in Nowra, linked to Kangaroo Valley. He shared wonderful stories of success and said it all stemmed back to our event. This should be part of a growing story of change. Marcia Langton describes the ‘destructive culture of silence’ as an intrinsic characteristic of colonial power. ChangeFest23 took place in Tasmania, and I learnt from Elders that the thread was broken, the ongoing story was not being told. Leadership and logo subtly changed. I hope there is more change coming in that system.

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None of this behaviour is new. The cognitive dissonance of working with leaders who say one thing and do another remains devastating. One Aunty said to me, with deep resignation ‘this is what happens’, and I caught a glimpse of her truth, on repeat since invasion.

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A young First Nations leader who participated in the co-design process for Palmerston told us: ‘Blackfellas are always telling the truth; we want white people to tell the truth’. The fury, disappointment, and resignation that I saw and heard from colleagues in communities has compelled me to write this experience down, although it’s taken some time to do it. I was recently approached to be interviewed about my experiences at ChangeFest by a paid consultant. I said I would only talk to them with Elders, respecting the processes we had developed together and reinforcing collective knowledge building in the spirit of collective impact. She politely declined. Again.

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I don’t want to dwell on the devastating personal impact, it's minor compared to what others suffer daily. I am not the only person to have been treated unfairly in that particular system and those are not my stories to tell. Failure to face our brutal history and fear of speaking out, compounded by lack of self-awareness amongst people with power, maintains an inequitable status quo. We’ve all heard big stories of whistle blowers and seen the backlash. Racism and inequality are daily practice, fed by a myriad of micro aggressions and transgressions, compounded by misplaced pride in the way things currently work. The system only works for those who benefit from it. Why would they want it to change?

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I know I made many mistakes; in a culture that resists critique, my critical edge and relentless striving can be disarming and confronting. But at this crucial moment in Australia, with a planet in crisis, I believe we must be braver and consciously dismantle the old as we build the new. We can only do that through careful analysis, truth telling and problem solving. There is a fine line between promoting positive news and propagandising success. In the arts I live amongst marketeers, focused on spin and self-promotion, I know that score. Perhaps the wider vision we were developing for ChangeFest was too ambitious? I am impatient for change. The need is urgent. Since the pandemic, inequity has grown across Australia. First Nations people are still disproportionately disadvantaged, 10-year-olds still thrown into prison, black deaths still counting. The soaring cost of living and energy prices, as Climate Change accelerates resource wars and social division, makes finding equitable solutions even more urgent. Those new to economic hardship can be slow to notice those already suffering. People with comfortable lives and regular salaries can easily forget how precarity and poverty persistently undermine anyone’s ability to engage on their own terms. Those of us with privilege need to step up.

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ChangeFest is not the first time that I have been appointed to a role with a brief to make change, only to discover that the folks in charge didn’t really want to tackle the most difficult challenges, and certainly didn’t want the tough questions to be addressed directly to them. I have learnt that systems will scapegoat individuals to avoid confronting themselves. Thankfully, awareness of the need to reimagine our systems is growing; more people are talking about how power works and tuning in to address these challenges. Systems change needs many hands and voices.

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Our characters are truly tested when crisis strikes, stakes are high and the mission seems impossible. That precipice, at the edge of our imaginations, is where the real systems change work begins.

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Gratitude and Cultural Gardening

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I remain deeply grateful for the opportunity to work on ChangeFest. I met and was schooled by extraordinary people, particularly the patient Elders and resilient community members. Skillful colleagues offered expert help to enable me to explore a new field across many sectors and Government departments. I made firm friends and am proud of what was achieved, testing ideas of redistribution, planning for community ownership, rehearsing new futures.

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I saw the strength of my own creative practice in new light. It was relieving to be out of the arts for a time, a field also deeply invested in broken systems and in need of change. Meeting so many communities connected to place and focused on collaboration to find new ways forward together, filled my heart and soothed my spirit.

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Recognising and naming destructive systemic patterns is strangely reassuring. It's not personal but individuals make personal choices every moment of everyday that either support, resist or change these systems. I’ve gained confidence as a systems thinker and am developing tools to share new ideas. If in any doubt about where the power lies, follow the money, then look for the mindsets of decision makers that are directing resources.

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We need to name powerful tensions and contradictions in our workplaces to broker new relationships; between First Nations and non-indigenous Australians, between radical new ideas and dominant group think, between local and national agendas, between expertise and flailing opinion, between self-determination and collective action. We also need to see past the silos with intersectional lenses to understand how class, gender, ethnicity, age and ability play through our structures. The systems change that many are now calling for is urgent experimental work, as Climate Crisis and mass extinction threaten all our lives. Society needs new imagination and creativity to step off the broken merry-go-round, to test new futures that honour intangible values. Artists are often missing from these processes and yet creative skills are desperately needed. I learnt through ChangeFest to develop events as a catalysing moment on a much longer journey of change. There are opportunities for cultural events to model and accelerate these changes, creating new pathways and connections, First Nations first.

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Most importantly I learnt about trust. I was repeatedly told that trust takes time, and it would be many years before we saw the benefits of place-based work. I reject this narrative. We don't have years. Change can happen quickly when there is will, united vision and purpose - let Covid be our guide. As I continue to work with First Nations leaders, I know for sure that progress is slowed by people with privilege and power failing to step into the transformational work required. If change moves at the speed of trust, and this strikes true; then truth is the antecedent to trust.

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I remain determinedly optimistic most days. We are tipping into 2 degrees warming in a crisis threatening the whole of humanity. I want to keep learning, walking with First Nations colleagues, following their lead as custodians of this Country. Place based solutions led by communities continue to quietly transform Australian society. I have joined with others to convene the Cultural Gardeners, a cultural alliance for Climate Justice, with a strong emphasis on Care for Country and taking care of culture, addressing the cultural crisis fuelling the Climate Emergency, building imagination for transition.

Best of all I have imagination for new ways forward. Many more people are calling for systems change. Radical change is needed NOW. Building bridges between siloed ideas and sectors can accelerate social transformation. What we say we want must be backed up with long term plans for action. And what we do is only part of our story; how we do it – the structures, behaviours, and machinery we use – are critically important. Together, across the great diversity of our vast country, we can listen to place and follow Elders to create a vibrant, equitable and sustainable future.

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