Critical Conversations at the Queensland Community Development Conference

We are delighted to be hosting a critical conversation at the Queensland Community Development Conference in Port Douglas next week.

Building on our Life Promotion and Suicide Prevention FNQ Collaborative work, we will extend the conversation and invite conference participants and community development practitioners from across Queensland to explore how we can change the narrative on suicide.

This participatory session will explore how dominant narratives about suicide shape the way our communities understand and respond to distress, and how community development practice can help reimagine more connected, collective and life-affirming approaches. 

Rather than framing suicide solely as an individual or clinical issue, the conversation will examine its social, cultural and systemic roots. Drawing on community-based work in Far North Queensland, we will explore the shift from “what’s wrong with the individual?” to “what does our community need to thrive?”. 

The aim is not to arrive at one answer, but to create space for diverse voices, wisdom and grounded hope that can spark possibilities for narrative change in each participant’s context. 

The theme of the conference is Reimagining the Past, Shaping our Future, which brings a wide scope of community development practitioners together to learn, share, shape and reimagine. 

We are excited to see what new relationships we can forge and what new ideas and actions emerge. 

If you are attending the conference, this conversation is on Thursday at 1.30pm in the Hub (the Community Centre).