Noble Park Community Garden – Melbourne, Australia (2012 – 2013)

Facilitator & Co-designer
Co-led the design and establishment of a vibrant community garden in the heart of Noble Park, in collaboration with migrant and refugee communities, schools, local businesses, council, and the Noble Park Community Centre (NPCC). The garden became a catalyst for social connection, ecological learning, and local sustainability initiatives.

→ Empowered culturally diverse residents to co-create and steward a shared green space
→ Built capacity in co-design, ecological resilience, and intergenerational collaboration
→ Initiated and supported by NPCC, with strong backing from City of Greater Dandenong, Noble Park Rotary, Bunnings Sandown, local businesses, Derek the landscape architect, and Noble Park Primary School
→ The garden continues to serve as a community activation site, hosting food-growing activities, workshops, and informal gatherings
→ Integrated into NPCC’s broader mission of community empowerment, social cohesion, and lifelong learning

This project was part of your work with Urban Reforestation, and exemplifies how community gardens can become seedbeds for broader sustainability, health, and civic engagement initiatives.

Visit their website here: https://nobleparkcc.org.au/community/

National Community Food & Social Innovation Policy - Australia (2025 – onwards)

Policy Innovation Leadership

Overview:
Australia has over 1,000 community centres and neighbourhood houses, many of which are underutilised. Research, including Bowling Alone by Robert Putnham, demonstrates the ongoing decline in social capital in Western societies, so much so that people in the 70s bowled in groups, and now they bowl along. Now is the moment to reverse this trend by transforming these spaces into active hubs for regenerative practice, social innovation, and community wellbeing.

Objectives:

• Activate community spaces with seed libraries, crop swaps, community gardens, regenerative agriculture, and convivial food initiatives.

• Equip local officers and citizens with practical skills, training, and digital tools to co-design and sustain community programs.

• Shift council and government funding away from abstraction and reports, directing it toward tangible, place-based outcomes.

• Strengthen social fabric by turning online attention into real-world participation, reconnecting citizens with the land, local economy, and each other.

Key Elements:

• Infrastructure & Capacity Building: Establish gardens, food hubs, and local learning spaces; provide training in co-design, regenerative agriculture, and community facilitation.

• Convivial Programming: Workshops, festivals, community dinners, and educational events to foster ecological literacy, social cohesion, and local food engagement.

• Digital Enablement: Online platforms to support citizen engagement, share knowledge, coordinate initiatives, and reduce passive scrolling in favour of hands-on, socially impactful activities.

• Embedded Policy Integration: Align council budgets for economic development, community development, and health to prioritise practice over paperwork, enabling staff and citizens to directly shape outcomes. (informed by Life systems, not static process and rules)

Anticipated Outcomes:

• Fully utilised community centres acting as living hubs for food, wellbeing, and civic engagement.

• Strengthened local economies and small-scale food systems.

• Increased social capital, intergenerational learning, and community resilience.

• A national blueprint for living-systems-informed, place-based policy, inspiring international replication.

Impact Vision:
By 2030, Australia’s community centres are no longer passive buildings but dynamic, participatory spaces where citizens grow food, share skills, celebrate culture, and actively co-create the economic, environmental, and social future of their place. It’s time to wake up, reclaim community, and build the fabric of social life that Western societies have long neglected.