Our Current Projects
Capacity building to rebuild trust in civil society, prevent social polarisation and strengthen the resilience of our democracy.
In the past few years Australia, like many other parts the world, has seen an upsurge in racial and religious exclusivism, conspiracy theories and deliberate misinformation, alienation from elected representatives, declining trust in government and non-government institutions, inter-community discord, misogyny, racism, social polarisation, and the intensification and spread of extremism messaging and action. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these trends.
Government initiatives are likely to be less successful where communities have not been seen as trusted partners with agency to design their own outcomes. Increasingly government agencies have therefore base policy and program development based on “empowerment” and “co-design” collaboration and participation. How effective is this approach, in helping to build a resilient and inclusive society, where trust between agencies and communities is under strain.
The project is designed to work with up to three pilot communities to investigate and understand activities, processes and structures that enable or hinder individuals and communities in engaging fully with civil society and democratic processes, including factors that undermine trust in civil society or increases social polarisation.
One aim of this project is the initiate work on a “trust lab” that will explore the benefits to policy making and delivery of reciprocal relationships between government and community actors.
Mapping codesign and codelivery of CVE initiatives in Victoria: lessons learnt to tackle emerging violent extremist threats
The core of building resilient and inclusive societies is for local communities to develop customised approaches based on their own understanding of the risks with which they live and the assets and capacities they bring to coping with challenge, threat, and adversity.
Co-design is based on the understanding that building increasingly self-aware and self-mobilising communities will, in the future, see a reduction in reliance on Government led top-down intervention to complex social policy issues.
While Government remains an important actor in countering these trends, policies and programs from the past few years shows that community capacity building is likely to have a more sustained impact.
The project will map (to the extent that government agencies, for security reasons, permit) the current body of work on co-design and co-delivery of CVE interventions in Victoria. This project will leverage the lessons learnt from these initiatives to inform responses to emerging violent extremist threats and a nation-leading Victorian CVE co-design framework.
Our Completed projects
Tackling Hate
Contact Zones: Understanding recruitment processes to violent extremism in comparative domains
Crisis Points: Extremism under a state of emergency
Trust Flows: Understanding trust flows to build resilient PVE partnerships between communities and government
Mapping Intervention Capacity in Preventing and Countering Right Wing Extremism in Victoria
Objects for Everyday Resilience
Publications
Our Publications
CRIS Commentary
Blog Posts
Social cohesion is often talked about as a measure of how well a society or community is placed to resist or mitigate the likelihood of violent extremism taking hold. But what do we mean when we talk about ‘social cohesion’ in relation to violent extremism? And what is the role of young people in fostering the kinds of social cohesion and social futures that can make a positive difference when it comes to building healthy communities that can resist appeals to violent radicalisation?