I have been lucky to have been involved in an evidence, place-based initiative known as TILT or Triggering Innovation Leadership Transformation workshops. Maryborough was identified by TILT as a town facing various economic challenges related to an ageing demographic, its location as peripheral to Bendigo and Ballarat, and a lack of education and employment opportunities.
These workshops have seen Council, local businesses, Youth Council and key organisations such as La Trobe University, Australian National University and Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (Germany), come together to work on some of the issues facing Maryborough and the Central Goldfields around the lack of post-secondary education opportunities as well as the challenges local businesses face within a shortage of suitably skilled employment applicants.
Workshop one saw the group identify the need for a learning hub in Maryborough whereas workshop two looked to further develop the idea of the learning hub through exploring central components of the proposed hub and designing pilot projects to test these components. We are now in the stage of developing a steering group and project teams to work on these.
This project fits within Council’s Economic Development Strategy 2020-2025 and it’s great to see so many engaged people involved so far. Its early stages but if the level of commitment to solutions from the participants to date can be a gauge, we are going to achieve some great outcomes.
