ABOUT US

The Think+DO Tank is a community consultancy. It also creates its own projects with public outcomes. The Think+DO Tank brings a unique way of working with the communities around government agencies and departments; corporations; and not-for-profit organisations. We work through storytelling to get to the heart of what people care about. Our work gives you more than an insight into what the communities around you envision it builds a partnership between community members, governments, corporations and community organisations to generate joint and lasting communities of action. We have a strong track record working with young people. Here are some examples of our work with young people.

CASE STUDY 1 HOW BIG ARE YOUR DREAMS?

Jane Stratton, Director of the Think+DO Tank, developed and continues to lead the How Big Are Your Dreams? program for the University of Technology, Sydney; Gilbert + Tobin Lawyers; and Tranby Aboriginal College. Our team works closely with Indigenous high schools students across Sydney, together with their families and school communities to build aspirations, selfconfidence and cultural confidence and knowledge through performance, storytelling and long-term projects that participants pursue together and alone. We follow the challenges and talents of each participant and our programming responds to each cohort of participants. We provide them with opportunities to continue to contribute to the program after graduation and aim to build a long-term community around the program. We think of How Big Are Your Dreams? as: o a dressing room where participants can try on all kinds of ambitions and possibilities; o an unfamiliar classroom where they learn by doing and experimenting; o a stage from which participants can tell the stories that they care about; o a tall ladder that offers fresh perspectives and new opportunities; and o a warm home away from home that offers participants a supportive peer network, and adults who are committed to them. See http://www.howbigareyourdreams.org.au

CASE STUDY 2 POWERPLAY (Parramatta City Council)

The Think+DO Tank was retained to engage a group of young people from the Telopea/ Dundas area in the question of how they might identify and enact improvements that are meaningful to them in their local communities. We worked through film-making, role-play, graffiti and games to explore power and to elicit the issues that the young people cared about most in their local communities. We worked to allow the young people to embody and inhabit the issues rather than merely talking about them. They showed us their neighbourhood. They identified drug use; transportation; redevelopment of public housing; protection of a local environmental reserve; external perceptions of their community; the improvement of the local skate park; the lack of consultation with youth when a graffiti wall was destroyed; incidence of crime; and dangerous interaction with cars. Through a role-play they narrowed the issues on which they wanted to act together to be the drug use in their community and the protection of the local environmental reserve. We will undertake further work in a local high school from September November 2011.

CASE STUDY 3 UNI@SCHOOL (University client, Sydney)

The Think+DO Tank was contracted in February 2011 to undertake an inquiry for a Sydney-based university. The objective was to build relationships and to explore the possibilities of how the university could work with schools, students and their families to improve school retention and attainment in Year 7 9 students in a network of priority schools in South-Western Sydney. The Think+DO Tank used a variety of imaginative processes to engage school leaders, school staff, parents from a wide range of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, and students in this inquiry. We created games and activities to encourage every group to experience the joy of learning something, and having fun. We strengthened relationships between the university and the stakeholders to enable active partnerships. And we produced a major report that let the university hear the voices of each group and further, a report for the stakeholders to be kept abreast of what next.

CASE STUDY 4 SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM (Bankstown City Council)

The Think+DO Tank proposed a school-based consultation with high school students across the Bankstown Local Government Area in 2009. We worked with over 250 students in six schools representing the Catholic, Muslim, government and private systems. The young people shared their visions for Bankstown. They described what they value in their communities and how they would improve their everyday environments. They envisioned a more perfect Bankstown, creating large-scale maps brimming with ideas. During our sessions, we delivered education about the role of local, State and Commonwealth governments, and questioned them about how they would like to participate in governance or be heard better by the people governing them. Our report, Shock to the System, informed Councils, and other local human service agencies, planning and engagement with young people in the area.