There’s nothing quite like hearing an issue explained by the people who live it. It’s why community voices are at the heart of so much of our work.
When people speak in their own words on camera, you don’t just hear the facts. You hear the pauses, see the expressions, and feel the weight of what they’re sharing. When many of those voices come together, they show the full picture of an issue: where people agree, where they differ, and what they need.
What a camera picks up
When someone speaks in their own words on camera, you get the facts plus everything around them. You hear where they pause. You see their face change when they reach the hard part. You get a sense of how much it took to say it out loud.
Put a lot of those voices side by side and the picture gets fuller. You can see where people agree, where they don’t, and what they keep saying they need.
That can shift assumptions and build understanding and empathy in a way a fact sheet can’t, and it’s that understanding that drives lasting social change.
Four projects from this year
This year we worked with community members, advocates and survivors who chose to speak openly so that others, including decision-makers, might understand an issue a little better.
Here are four of those projects.
Victims of Terrorism Australia | Survivors call for empathy and togetherness
CHIA NSW | Community Made campaign
Multicultural NSW | Promoting community harmony and social cohesion
First Nations Advocates Against Family Violence | Community-led services keeping First Nations women and children safe
How we tell these stories
Every one of these projects followed our Sensitive Storytelling approach. In practice, that means we build trust before the camera ever rolls, and we listen rather than steer people towards a particular answer.
We stay away from stereotypes. We also follow a trauma-informed process, so contributors stay in control of their own story the whole way through. People are trusting us with something personal when they sit down in front of the camera, and we take that seriously.
