Please note: as we learn to adapt to COVID-19, the needs our of communities change. For this reason, the Connect in Canning Community Board is no longer live.
In response to COVID-19, the City of Canning developed the Connect in Canning project to build community resilience, work collaboratively across community services and to encourage acts of kindness in the local community.
To support the project, the City of Canning became an early adopter of the Creating Communities community board, launching its customised board Connect in Canning last week.
Canning, in Perth’s southern suburbs, joins the Pilbara communities of Newman and Port Hedland in hosting the community boards to keep local residents connected to each other and to vital information in this time of uncertainty and isolation amid the COVID-19 crisis.
COC-iPad_V1 from Creating Communities on Vimeo.
The community boards are a central feature of Creating Communities’ Stronger Together COVID-19 approach, a multifaceted response to the creation and distribution of vital resources tailored to meet the varied needs of local communities. The community boards are an online hub of community activity and information, including a calendar of events, heart-warming stories of local heroes, virtual events from local businesses, and opportunities to connect with neighbours.
The boards also provide a crucial connection to the wider world with links to activities and entertaining online content from across the globe. They also provide links to vital health information, and the ongoing Stronger Together series of video conversations from thought-leaders and social commentators, produced by the Creating Communities team.
The community boards and the wider Stronger Together strategy provide a framework that can be adapted for the needs of local communities, local councils, not-for-profits, and other organisations.
The boards are a key part of the way Creating Communities has innovated to meet the changing needs of our clients and communities, and maintained our level of important community engagement amid the social restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, we are co-designing with local stakeholders to ensure the boards remain a vital source of information as communities develop their pandemic recovery action plans. Our next steps are to develop the functionality of the community boards to make them an even more flexible tool for community engagement.
The City of Canning had a clear understanding of how the community board model could be tailored to meet the objectives of its Connect in Canning project. Primarily, this involved providing a support network for community-led initiatives, facilitating access to community activities and events, and engaging with the community to collect input and help shape its response.
Tailored to meet needs and match ambitions
The Connect in Canning board has been customised with specific features:
Homepage Banners
Update hero image of the homepage to become a slideshow of current promotions. Enabled the hero image to become interactive and direct users to key promotions on the Canning website.
Homepage Video
Provide a visual and personal introduction to the Community Board from the Canning team. The homepage video helped humanise the Canning team, providing context for the community board and offering words of encouragement.
Community Connectors
A dedicated page to introduce the concept of Community Connectors and encouraged others to get involved. Helping put a face to a name and providing direct access to community advocates within each ward.
Your Neighbourhood – Navigation restructure
Following the addition of Community Connectors, NLO’s and the prospect of more pages being added to the navigation, a restructuring of the navigation was proposed.
The sub navigation structure allowed us to group related content and avoid overwhelming the user. While the development of the Your Neighbourhood landing page provided an overview and introduction each of the sub-pages.
Ask us a question…
The “Ask us a question…” section of the board was developed to provide two-way communication between users and the team, and to make the board feel more alive/active. Stimulating discussion whilst creating a greater level of transparency and accessibility. To achieve this we’ve integrated comments functionality to create two-way dialogue and an interactive FAQ section. Additional functionality was developed to provide to accommodate internal reviews and moderation.
Neighbourhood Liaison Officers
Helping put a face to a name and providing direct access to support services within each council ward.
Grants and Support
Page dedicated to the new Connect in Canning Grants Centre. Providing the community with an incredibly valuable resource with an opportunity to support local business and (re)grow economy
Neighbourhood Map
Canning commissioned the development of an interactive asset map to document favourite locations and support the ‘ward’ areas. This map was integrated into the board and within the Your Neighbourhood section. With links to the map being placed on the homepage and supported with a fun, eye-catching graphic to direct users to the map.
Contribute
The Contribute section of the board allows users to submit good news stories, events, or ideas. With the goal of helping celebrate the strength of community during these times.
Creating Communities and the City of Canning will continue to work together to develop and tailor the community board as an essential way of keeping local people informed and connected.
The Stronger Together community boards have been developed as a flexible tool that can be co-designed in line with local needs to strengthen and build connections in your community. The model is adaptable to local government, not-for-profits and other organisations to provide an effective digital solution to support other work in engagement and building connections.
