Wollongong City Council has been announced as the first city in the world to team up with global technology and design company Canva on an exciting pilot partnership.
Together, we’re exploring a new way of community engagement that brings the technology, creativity and reach of Canva to the people of Wollongong. The pilot is part of Canva’s Global Goals Platform, a new global initiative built on a simple idea: give everyone a voice towards shaping a better future.
“Wollongong is no stranger to standing up on the global stage and giving something that we think will benefit our community a crack,” Wollongong City Council General Manager Greg Doyle said.
“This unique collaboration with Canva supports Council’s commitment to connect with everyone in our community. To reach even more people that call Wollongong home, we will try new engagement approaches. And this project will complement the existing ways Council already engages.”
The project also enables the City of Wollongong to work creatively with the Canva team.
“Already we have collectively benefitted from knowledge and expertise sharing – even prior to the community sharing their ideas and goals,” Mr Doyle said.
“Once the community has shared its goals, we will collect them and share that information back to the community and Council. This will be fed into Council’s planning and delivery approach and include conversations to discuss how we address these goals and priorities.”
Canva is an Australian-founded platform with more than 260 million users across more than 190 countries. Their new Global Goals Platform is an initiative that asks people what they want to see to drive change in the world by submitting a goal to the platform.
“We have a long and proud history in Wollongong,” said Melanie Perkins, Canva co-founder and CEO.
“We ran some of our very first community workshops here in the very early days, long before most people had heard of Canva. The City of Wollongong has always been open to dreaming big, and they have been fantastic partners from the start. We came to them with an incredibly ambitious idea, and they immediately shared our belief in what this could become.”
Canva’s Global Goals platform has already been launched in the US in a country wide initiative being delivered in partnership with the US AdCouncil.
This July, Wollongong will be the first city in the world to launch the Goals Platform at a city and local community level.
“We’ve more than 220,000 people who call Wollongong home and while we have a strong track record when it comes to community engagement, we know there are voices we don’t always get to hear,” Lord Mayor of Wollongong Councillor Tania Brown said.
“This is an opportunity for people to take a fresh look at local government and to build understanding that they can help drive Wollongong’s future.”
Mr Doyle said while Council and Canva had been working on this project for some time, it was exciting to be at the point where we turn to the community for their input.
“What I’m particularly excited about with this project is the unknown elements of it. While we have been collaborating with Canva throughout this journey, soon it will be time for our community to be a part of it. What are they going to say? What are their goals going to be? That is what I’m pumped about.”
Cr Brown said as it goes live, the community will become a key player in the project with the data collected published as an interactive data visualisation and information about people’s goals shared back with the community.
“We really prioritise listening to our community and Council is no stranger to goal setting,” Cr Brown said.
“We have a well-established process through our Community Strategic Plan (CSP), which outlines a shared vision for our city, and is guided by four goals shaped by community feedback. We’ll be using what is gathered through this process as a check-in on the CSP and continue to build our connection to those who call this wonderful city home.”
