In June, RAV joined placemaking partners from Seymour, Warragul and Robinvale at a Shifting the Playbook Community of Practice session. This in-person gathering is the second of several sessions bringing together VicHealth’s cross-sector cohort, spanning arts, sport and community organisations including AusDance Victoria, Basketball Victoria, Football Victoria, Music Victoria and Reclink. Facilitation drew on expertise from Victoria University, Culture Spring, Munarra Limited and VicHealth itself.
The focus of the session was cultural safety and systems change. Central to the session was the idea that cultural safety is not about competency, but about ongoing institutional accountability, defined and led by the community being served rather than assumed on their behalf. The group was asked to reflect on who we are accountable to, who holds power in our current processes, and where marginalised communities sit in relation to our decision-making.
For RAV and our placemaking partners, this has meant mapping the wider context and communities that are shaping our work (including RAV’s recently established First Nations Reference Group) alongside the Treaty processes, reconciliation planning and land title negotiations that our placemaking partners are each navigating in their own communities.
RAV’s Business Innovation Manager, Stacie Bobele said,
“The VicHealth Shifting the Playbook initiative recognises that both arts and sport offer meaningful platforms for change and for challenging social norms. Working together as part of a cross-sector community of practice to address the harm caused by racism is a genuine opportunity for RAV and our partners to foster inclusion across regional Victoria.”
Evaluation was reframed as honest learning rather than compliance and asked each organisation to identify 2-3 areas of change they hope to see emerge through the project. This work starts with looking back at past programs to ask who isn’t participating, and why, before setting goals for the year ahead.
Over the next six months, RAV and Songlines will keep working closely with our placemaking partners to identify areas for change, and to map and evaluate progress. Victoria University, one of VicHealth’s partners in this work, will introduce us to a new systems mapping tool to help track the change we hope to see across the life of the project. We’ll use this to map and measure how we work alongside our communities in co-designing and delivering meaningful arts programming across regional Victoria.
Image: Shifting the Playbook leadership and partnership organisations at Community of Practice gathering Melbourne Multicultural Hub in June 2026.
Posted 21 July 2026