Our point of difference

• The Initiative recognises that community development is a citizen and professional practice. Not either/or.

• The Initiative holds to both honouring traditions of community development rooted in historical and place-based practices supported by scholarly work, and new innovations, always reaching for ‘community development yet-to-come’ (as new issues emerge).

• The CDI will support the development of community development (CD) practice across all sectors (that is, not only within the social/human services sectors). Our vision is not for more CD workers, nor more people be employed in CD occupations, but that more practitioners and citizens in many fields (for example, environmental, energy transitions, corporate, social) understand and use CD approaches in their work.

• Our vision is to open new frontiers of community development in practice, policy, ethics, social movement work, theory, and research.

 

Note on ‘CD approach/es:’ while CD holds to many approaches – for example the World Bank’s Community-led CD, Coady Institute’s ABCD, Dulwich Centre’s Collective Narrative Practices – this CD Institute draws on the approach that has originated in Queensland, Australia. Sometimes understood and articulated as the ‘participatory development practice’ approach,[1] or developmental process work,[2] it is grounded in place. The approach can be imagined as an assemblage of ideas and experiences from bottom-up practice in dialogue with ideas and scholars.

[1] Kelly & Westoby, 2018, Participatory Development Practice, Practical Action Press

[2] Towards the naming of a social change framework 3 July 1997 (Thesis CT Daveson)