Better Together began as an answer to something I kept seeing everywhere: good people doing good work beside each other, often for the same community, but each organisation building its own event, campaign, audience, mailing list, sponsorship ask and set of resources from scratch.
In a regional community, that duplication matters. The same people are often being asked to attend, speak, volunteer, promote, fund and participate. The pool is not endless. Better Together asks a different question: what happens if we start with the common ground, make participation easier, and let people bring what they already do well?
The way I say it now: our region doesn't have a shortage of good people. It has a surplus of separation. The people best placed to solve our regional problems are spending scarce energy competing in silos for the same limited resources to serve the same end user. So Better Together partners up the experts, services, businesses and leaders across the sectors. It amplifies what is already there. It shines a light on the people and work already doing good. It connects. It saves money and resources by ending duplicated effort, and it finds new ways to cut through. It does not invent; it amplifies. It does not compete; it connects. The promise is one line, and I stand by it: Better Together brings good people together to do great things.
The idea
The idea has a real history, and it matters to tell it straight. My first Dubbo event was the Dubbo Slide Night — a room full of people sharing stories and images. The first one-day Dubbo Women's Festival came next, and it came out of a conversation. Lorna Brennan — who went on to co-manage the first two festivals with Joanne "Nurse Jo" Phillips and me — was organising a mental health month event and asked me to do something for it. I told her about one of my Sydney Writer clients in Sydney, Susanne North, who did menopause talks and women's day events, and how I'd been wanting to bring her to Dubbo. Lorna and I got talking, and suddenly we had decided to do the Dubbo Women's Festival.
That festival carried the Better Together instinct from the very start: why were there so many separate International Women's Day events in Dubbo, all drawing on the same speakers, venues, sponsors and audiences, when we could create the one space for everyone to come?
And because I'm someone who wants to improve wellbeing for the whole community, not one slice of it, I caught myself thinking: we should have a men's festival. Then I thought bigger — why stop at one group? Let's do the Better Together Project: a season of wellbeing that holds everyone. The Sprint's DNA reaches back further, to my fifteen years running Sydney Writer with a very particular niche clientele — coaches, psychologists and wellbeing experts, people whose work is helping others improve their lives. The Sprint is that world turned into a program.
Better Together is three things at once: the thesis above, the value Social Gain is built on — community is a practice — and a flagship project, The Better Together Project, an annual season of wellbeing. Underneath all three sits the same way of working: collaborate before duplicating.
Sometimes the common thread is International Women's Day. Sometimes it is a difficult conversation. Sometimes it is grief, belonging, community safety, creative participation or simply the need for people to find one another. The subject can change; the method stays surprisingly consistent.
First, listen. Find out what already exists, who is already trusted, where the useful work is already happening and what people are actually asking for. Then create a shared invitation broad enough for different organisations, businesses, artists, services and individuals to take part without having to become something they are not.
A health service does not need to become an event company. An artist does not need to become a social worker. A small business does not need to solve a whole social issue. A community organisation does not need a brand-new campaign. Better Together is about making it possible for each contributor to bring their part, while the shared project creates the connective tissue.
The flagship: the Better Together Project season
I once had this idea — a whole Better Together season of wellbeing. Weeks of it, across Dubbo and out to the towns, pitched for 7 April to 14 June 2025, on Wiradjuri, Wailwan and Kamilaroi lands. And it was too big to get up.
So I did what the method itself teaches: I kept the philosophy, focussed on what was working, and implemented that. The idea, the concept, the philosophy stayed exactly the same. The forms morphed. The Moment Lounge found its home inside the Orana Every Woman Festival. The discovery-and-shopfront idea became Made Out Here. And the Festival itself grew from one day in 2024 to a full week in 2026.
The season stays where it belongs: the flagship ahead — the shape of Better Together at full scale, an annual season of wellbeing that can hold a Women's Festival, Youth Week, Men's Festival and more. The design still exists, and it's a beautiful plan:
• The Sprint — the season's designed revenue engine: a ten-week workplace wellbeing coaching program co-designed by Renee Webster and Daniel Sullivan, blending evidence-based psychology and leadership with community activities, ticketed to businesses from their wellbeing budgets at $25 a participant. There are more than 14,000 businesses in the Orana; if 1,000 of them each send three team members, that's $75,000 of earned income paying for the free community events. Trade funding purpose, no endless grant cycles. Designed, not yet run — and ready.
• Better Events — the free pop-ups: The Living Museum: Voices of the West, Well-being Check-Ins, Harmonious with Camilla Ward, The Moment Lounge with Kim V Goldsmith, and a Meeting of the Minds.
• Roadshows and Community Challenges — town-hall roadshows out to Wellington, Dunedoo and Coolah, outreach designed alongside Transition Dubbo, Orana Artists (Wisdom of Trees with Aunty Doris and Inga Simpson) and Tradies in Sight (Men's Shed), and gamified challenges linking it all together.
The champions team for the season was assembled and still stands: Erifili Davis (Event Manager & Curator), Alicia Leggett (Creative Community Engagement Lead), Camilla Ward (Inclusive Artistic Director), Gargi Ganguly (Multicultural & Inclusivity Advisor), Lorna Brennan (Event Manager, Family & Community), Sophia Johnson PhD (Research Support), Jo and Bruno Efoti (Tradies in Sight), Joanne Phillips (Community Health), and The Sprint co-designers Renee Webster and Daniel Sullivan. Underneath it all sits the evidence base the method keeps drawing on: bridging social capital, festivals and placemaking research (A New Approach 2020; Brownett & Evans 2020; NCOSS 2024).
The Better Together Project is the pillar's flagship, and it's my baby. What 2025 proved wasn't the season — it was the method: keep the philosophy, back what's working, and let the pieces find their own life.
What it looks like in practice
The Orana Every Woman Festival is the festival-scale expression of the method — the Better Together Project season is the umbrella, and the Festival is its biggest annual expression. It began from the question of why one town needed multiple disconnected International Women's Day events all drawing on many of the same speakers, venues, sponsors, audiences and media channels. The Festival became a shared invitation: one larger reason to participate, with many different ways in.
But Better Together also appears in smaller projects. The Moment Lounge brought business, wellbeing, film and local participation together in one free space. Taco'Bout creates an informal way to talk about subjects people often avoid. Dubbo's Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever used a ridiculous, joyful piece of participatory art to turn grief and cancer fundraising into something people could do together. Every Woman Circles amplify conversations and community rhythms already happening through trusted local people.
The scale is not the point. The practice is.
What we are trying to change
We have become very good at broadcasting and surprisingly rusty at being together.
Institutions are encouraged to have their own strategy, their own outputs, their own KPIs and their own visibility. Funding programs often divide health, arts, youth, tourism, business, social services and community development into separate boxes. Real life does not behave like that.
A woman who comes to a market may have a conversation with a mental-health organisation. Someone who turns up for music may discover a local support service. A creative project may lead to a referral, a friendship, paid work, a new collaboration or the first time someone feels confident enough to speak.
Better Together deliberately creates conditions for those useful collisions.
How Social Gain approaches it
The practical approach is simple:
Listen before designing. Map what is already happening. Find the people who already have trust. Look for duplicated effort. Create a clear common thread. Reduce unnecessary barriers to participation. Use creativity and play to make the space feel human. Credit people properly. Make contribution visible. Measure more than attendance. And leave relationships, stories, referrals, content or shared infrastructure behind when the event is over.
The best result is not Social Gain owning more things. It is more people being able to find one another, use what already exists and make something better together.
When we're Better Together, everyone wins.
Better Together is the thesis, the pillar and the flagship season — but it is also the test I keep applying: are we creating another thing beside the community, or making the community around us easier to see, join and strengthen?
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