Social impact in the Regions Conference
Brief Overview of Social impact in the Regions Conference Stanthorpe 2nd-4th September 2026
This conference was about “taking it to the regions”, the program was designed to support and provide advice and constructive interaction among community groups , government, private business and philanthropy from around Australia. Five representatives from GBSAN were able to attend thanks to Win Lindstrom for Drought Hub, who sponsored our tickets.
Day 1 allowed us to interact with a number of panels in regards to designing responses to regional problems, balancing competing priorities, limited resources and different types of communities. Small group discussions were highly entertaining and thought provoking. There were a number of similar organisations to ours, however, I think we had the broadest scope of community activities under one umbrella.
Much of the conference related to how to influence philanthropists, government agencies and other forms of funding. We need to have a plan, understand the problem at hand, understand the collective power of economic and social groups, take the politics out of it, be pragmatists and form coalitions of the willing.
Rick and Ken both presented some of their work from our water resources group.
Our local choirs combined to perform a ‘flashmob” song at the meet and great function at the end of the day, it was very well received.
A train ride was taken from Stanthorpe to Ballandean on day 2 and small groups met at different winery venues. I attended a workshop on data analysis and found 2 companies with free data we could use, Remplan and Seer.
Day 3 was at the Stanthorpe High School, we discussed place based development and how to link place based research; how to be inclusive, establish hierarchies of need, translate research to development in the community and how to use this to influence change.
A gala dinner provided great music and magic entertainment.
Overall great networking and hopefully we might gain some further actions for The Granite Belt as a result.