There is a lot of talk about co-design and community engagement in research and public policy - but in practice a lot of that talk ends up looking like window dressing rather than real community partnership.

We talk to one of the world's leading co-design, community engaged researchers in nursing - Professor Brendan McCormak Head of the Nursing School at the University of Sydney - to find out strategies for how he involves patients and nurses in the creation of research. The result is not only an amazing story about a career of co-created knowledge, but a series of powerful insights and strategies for anyone interested in the art of working WITH others in building solutions and knowledge.

You can find out more about Brendan here.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

Via our Website - https://changemakerspodcast.org (where you can also sign up to our email list!)

On Facebook, Instagram, Threads - https://www.facebook.com/ChangeMakersPodcast/

Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

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The second Trump Administration has brought with it an unprecedented attack on migrants, led by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) focused on people who are living in the United States without formal documentation. In this conversation we talk with Alexandra Pineros Shields - a long term community organiser, immigrant rights campaigner and researcher about how communities are fighting back to defend the rights of migrants and change how policing is done.

This conversation explores Alexandra's history of organising and building strategy to make change, as well as the kinds of innovative tactics being used by communities to combat ICE. She runs through techniques like power analysis and shows how a practical understanding of different dimensions of power can help build effective strategy. She talks about the power of communities using prefigurative action - where they model what the state should be doing - as a way to tell a story to make change more compelling.

This episode is a deep dive into what you might have seen on the news - it is a reassuring and inspiring reminder that even in the face of repression and abusive of power, there is also power in community to respond and make change.

In the podcast a few different organisations are mentioned, here is where you can find out more:

John Gaventa - When Alexandra teaches she asks students read chapter 4 from The Miner’s Canary. We also have links of a diagram that Alexandra uses with organisers on our website.

‘Midwife for Power’: Towards a Mujerista/Womanist Model of Community Organizing - https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/article/view/7771/7855

Ayni Institute - https://ayni.institute/

The Right Question Institute (Cambridge, Massachusetts) – Question Formulation Technique - https://rightquestion.org/what-is-the-qft/

City of Boston – City of Belonging Campaign

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

Via our Website - https://changemakerspodcast.org (where you can also sign up to our email list!)

On Facebook, Instagram, Threads - https://www.facebook.com/ChangeMakersPodcast/

Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Climate change has led the Northern Rivers has been inundated by flood and flood threats, but it has also shown Australia - and the world - what it looks like to lead a community response to climate change. In this episode we talk with Rebecca McNaught, a community researcher on disaster response who shares with us how the community did respond to the extreme floods in 2022, and what all communities can learn from what they did.

Bec has decades of experience in community-led climate work, having worked across the Pacific and the world before focusing on researching best practice in community strategies. She was undertaking field work when the 2022 floods began, and she helped lead emergency support with others in her neighbourhood before she finished her PhD documenting best practice.

In this conversation she argues that big concepts like "climate change adaptation" and creating climate infrastructure are at their heart about building strong social bonds between people who can be there for each other when dialling 000 no longer works.

For more on the Northern Rivers Community Resilience Alliance see here.

For information on the University of Sydney's University Centre for Rural Health see here.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

Via our Website - https://changemakerspodcast.org (where you can also sign up to our email list!)

On Facebook, Instagram, Threads - https://www.facebook.com/ChangeMakersPodcast/

Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.