Community-led place based initiatives are modelling new ways of working - shifting away from top down, program-focussed approaches towards an approach grounded in systems thinking and community-led innovations.

However, while these stories of change are sitting in communities, they’re often not being told or celebrated. Researchers wanted to understand why this is, and what might be done to better enable these stories to be shared and heard.

The researchers talked to a range of people to uncover the story of storytelling - including collective impact backbone team members, community members, storytelling experts, and those working in and around community-led systems change initiatives across Australia.

They explored the roles stories play in different communities; what good storytelling looks like; what barriers to storytelling might be; and what role stories can play in supporting systems change.