Cindy Blackstock has just taken the Canadian government to court for injustices to aboriginal children. Cindy looks at the audience and tells us that her mentor gave her some advice which I just love – ‘don’t fall too much in love with your own organisation. And don’t fall in love with your own business card, as you might have to give them both up in the end to fight for your children.’
Read MoreDemocratising distress is about not packaging mental distress as something that can only be fixed by ‘experts with a privileged hotline to the truth’. Carl spoke about how informal community spaces frequently foster mental wellbeing through normal, everyday human practices. Being a good neighbour, treating people with compassion, making human connections, providing a space to just ‘be’ without labels and judgement were all part of the picture.
Read MoreBeen sweltering at Edith Cowan University in Western Oz and offered my sweaty palm to many a community member and their academic partner. What an exaggerator. The air con was on most of the time and I was fresh as a daisy. Hats off to the team for getting two very diverse groups of people together for both the morning and afternoon sessions – people from the uni, local council, police, schools and further education colleges to name just a few places from whence they hailed.
Read MoreGreetings from a very sunny Australia where I’m spending four weeks as Visiting Fellow courtesy of Engagement Australia, an umbrella organisation for a number of Australian universities committed to community university partnership working. Temperatures here are hitting 40 degrees. And that’s before we get down to discussing the complexities of community university partnerships.
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