Reflections on collaboration, participation and collective impact in 2025
Happy Global Community Engagement Day from The LKB Agency team! As community engagement professionals, we believe that meaningful engagement goes beyond project delivery and strengthens culture, informs better decision-making and creates lasting, positive impact for communities across Australia.
With this year’s theme being ‘Strength in Numbers’, we asked the team to reflect and share what connection, collaboration and collective voice have meant in their work.
Nikki Edwards | Regional Director, Queensland
A standout project for me involved co-designing a community engagement approach with key local community group representatives, ensuring that the methods we used to engage residents on a new community facilities policy were shaped by the people they were intended to reach.
Kyra Stanley | Communication & Engagement Manager
One particular moment that stands out is getting to work closely with cancer survivors to create meaningful content on the importance of cancer screening to share with local communities. It’s rewarding to create content with impactful storytelling that can help educate and raise awareness when we are engaging with community.
Elizabeth Ferguson | Communication & Engagement Manager
One project that really stands out to me was running workshops with local community groups, where residents shared their ideas on fair access to community facilities. It was inspiring to see people come together over common ground, showing how deeply they care about their communities and how passionately they want to shape the spaces that matter to them.
Taylah Pobjie | Communication & Engagement Manager
One experience that shaped my approach to engagement was working closely with a Community Reference Group on an infrastructure project. The openness and care people brought to those conversations helped shape design decisions in ways that truly reflected the community, reinforcing the value of slowing down, listening and working together.
Amelia Breen | Brand & Business Assistant Manager
Placing the audience at the centre of the initial creative process and listening to community feedback to shape visuals and messaging that genuinely resonated. Taking this collaborative approach helped evolve the concept into something engaging and effective in encouraging participation.
Ellen Pilkington | Communication & Engagement Consultant
One memorable public participation event was engaging with a community about their local open spaces and community facilities, as part of a review of the LGA’s Community Infrastructure Strategic Plan. It was interesting to hear the importance of community facilities (in a non-metropolitan area), what mattered most to them, in turn serving as valuable insight to inform policy.
Chloe Beytagh | Junior Consultant
Having the opportunity to travel to different communities and locations and have genuine, down-to-earth conversations, has taught me that it is critical to listen and form connections with people in order to make a valuable difference and achieve influential outcomes.
Indiana O’Neill | Project Support
I am constantly impacted by the meaningful conversations I experience with the public at community engagement events. Here, they share authentic and honest thoughts, which can be extremely rewarding as it helps us receive feedback and acknowledge that our work serves a genuine purpose across Australia.
What does community engagement mean to our team?
Community engagement is about working alongside communities to understand lived experience, address challenges and inform better decisions. It creates space for open conversation, shared responsibility and genuine participation between those directly and indirectly affected, including residents, community groups, priority audiences and organisations.
The theme of ‘Strength in Numbers’ reflects how engagement works best: through collaboration, shared learning and collective effort within teams, industry partners, clients and alongside communities.
Over the course of 2025, we took a ‘strength in numbers’ approach across the following projects:
- We travelled over 37,000 kilometres for the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program’s Get Behind it! community roadshow to reach 23 low screening locations across Australia. We engaged with more than 15,000 individuals, and an estimated 196,668 people saw the roadshow in locations visited. With the goal to engage with integrity and create meaningful outcomes, we saw 388 individuals ordering a bowel screening test kit at our events.
- Our QLD team worked alongside Ipswich City Council to deliver comprehensive engagement to facilitate the roll out of a new kerbside collection service. The team delivered eight community pop-up events, developed targeted marketing materials and held focus groups with the target audience to further facilitate information sharing.
- We collaborated with the City of Canterbury Bankstown to consult community members on their new Community Facilities Policy. This involved developing and facilitating an initial online survey, a series of qualitative interviews, a co-design workshop, seven consultation workshops and ongoing information sessions.
See what else our team has been up to here.
At LKB, our core values of loyalty, service, trust, care and creativity, guide every project we deliver. We approach community engagement with care for both clients and communities, a commitment to high-quality service, loyalty to our partners, and creativity in how we connect and communicate.
Alongside our values, we align our work with the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation. By applying the principles of inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower, we set clear expectations, define roles and tailor engagement to suit each project. Together, these frameworks help our team deliver inclusive, effective and trusted engagement outcomes.
Curious about how community engagement could strengthen your next project, policy or program? Start a conversation with our team today and find out how we can help you connect, collaborate and create meaningful outcomes.
