National Regional Challenge
Local Economy
How does your region keep its money working locally?
Some regional communities have worked out how to keep the value they create circulating locally. Is this your region? Tell us more.
Inspiring this challenge
Across Australia, communities are demonstrating that collective ownership works. Community banks, cooperative enterprises, community-owned stores and pubs, First Nations land and enterprise. But these models remain the exception rather than the rule. Most regional economic development thinking focuses on attracting investment from outside rather than building ownership from within.
We’d like to hear from communities that are finding ways to connect individual enterprise, shared capital, and collective infrastructure so that the value their region produces stays in it.
Practical considerations
Cooperative and community ownership models exist and operate at scale in Australia but are not always connected to mainstream economic development thinking. Small operators working independently often cannot access the capital, infrastructure, or market presence that collective models can provide. And the governance of shared assets, who decides, who benefits, how disputes are resolved, is where many collective efforts come unstuck.
Tell us how your organisation, town or region is addressing this challenge and be part of national action.
Come on Australia – show us yours.
Show australia how your region does it
We are looking for communities, enterprises, and organisations that have built or are building something that is collectively owned and are willing to share what they learned. Tell us how your region has:
- Built or expanded a community-owned asset that keeps value circulating locally.
- Connected individual operators into a collective offer that none of them could have built alone.
- Used cooperative or shared ownership to give your community a stake in the economic activity happening in their own backyard.
- Found a way to link your region’s assets to community benefit rather than external capture.
- You tried something, it didn’t work and you have some clues about the why.