The day began with a grounding session in which partners had the opportunity to connect with each other and with the Fay Fuller team, while sharing about their work and the diverse ideas that they are exploring with their communities. The voices in the room represented a range of sectors and a wealth of expertise spanning changemaking, social justice, advocacy, and service delivery. During this session, we also heard from Pat Pearson from Rainbow Hub SA, our previous Spark partner, who joined us to share about Rainbow Hub’s journey. Pat’s insights on trusting the process by listening deeply to community to understand their needs, experiences and perspectives grounded us with the intention of Spark.

Attendees greatly valued the opportunity to hear from Pat about what worked well for Rainbow Hub throughout their journey and what they learnt during the process. 

The remainder of the day was dedicated to sitting in conversation around:

• The strengths that partner organisations and their communities bring to their work and the challenges that they have identified throughout their Spark journey so far

• The ways that partners are looking to gather information with their communities, engage in sensemaking, and share back their learnings 

Throughout these discussions, partners connected around the values and truths they are holding on their journey and surfaced reflections on the nature of community-led work which included the knowledge that:

• Building trust and relationships with community takes time and often occurs in non-linear ways

• There is inherent value and potential for healing in the process of listening deeply to community, and not just in the delivery of outcomes

• There is great opportunity in approaching with an exploratory mindset and being open to what you do not know

In sharing their approaches to the Spark process, partners also had the opportunity to learn from each other about different ways of working with community to surface learnings and insights. This led to conversations that explored what it looks like to:

• Build trust with community over time and at their pace

• Enact ethical, transparent research practices that honour data sovereignty and ensure community feels safe and supported to share their stories openly

• Create feedback loops with community by sharing back findings and insights and leaving room for iteration over time

• Prioritise team nourishment and wellbeing at every stage of the journey

• Centre your values and allow the ‘why’ to inform the ‘how’ of the work 

We look forward to sharing more about this journey as it unfolds. In the meantime, you can read more about our 2025 Spark partners here.