Stop Funding PDFs. Start Funding Patterns.

This essay argues that Australia’s resilience work is over-documented and under-practiced. Drawing on a database of thousands of local food policies and current state/federal funding streams, it proposes a shift from writing strategies to funding “patterns”: small, hosted experiments that turn one policy clause into a safe, repeatable practice, seed libraries and crop-swaps, cool-evening street meals with tree-watering rosters, neighbourhood preparedness walk-throughs, and similar low-overhead trials. Framed by Con Viv (“with life”) and threefold social theory, the piece outlines how councils and communities can run micro-trials with clear edges, light measures, and a one-page “how we did it” so others can copy. It closes by asking governments to reserve a modest slice of existing budgets for facilitation, prototyping, insurance templates, and pattern-writing, so resilience moves from paper to everyday life.