In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a great chat with Karen Corr, a Community Engagement and Development Specialist and the Founder and Executive Director of Make a Change Australia. Karen and I met when we were on a panel together. We were talking about liveability at the Bendigo Invention and Innovation Festival earlier in 2019. In this episode, Karen shares with us her journey from being a Water Engineer to becoming passionate about culture change and how that led to her work with Make a Change Australia. We discuss the power of engaging with the "Smartness" of people that live in regional communities and harnessing their local knowledge for ownership of Smart solutions. Karen and I chat about why liveability is so important, and the need for equity of access to liveability, connectivity and accessibility solutions in small towns and regional areas. Karen tells us about the Ramp Up Resilience project that she's been working on, and it is just a brilliant example of how to integrate across disciplines, industries and sectors. Karen explains how much time and energy authentic integration and engagement actually takes, and why she should be investing in that more. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trends of changing the language we use to engage with currently unheard voices in our communities, and also of flipping the engagement conversation on its head so that it's community-led not government-led. This episode is part of the Spotlight on the Regions that we're focusing on for December. As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it. Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community Connect with Karen via LinkedIn, or with Make a Change www.makeachange.org.au or @MakeaChangeAus on Facebook and Instagram Connect with me via email: [email protected] Connect via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook @SmartCommHQ The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.

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