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After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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Centre for Popular Education

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The Centre for Popular Education (CPE) at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) was set up in mid-1996 to undertake research, consulting, and teaching activities related to education and social justice. Specifically, the Centre studied and supported popular education that was intended to serve the interests of people who are marginalised, and/or engaged in advocacy, social action, or community development activities. Centre members researched and taught in areas such as health promotion, youth work/education, international and community development, adult and community education, basic education, social movements and unions. The aims of the Centre were to:
  • analyse what constitutes effective community cultural development practice;
  • help strengthen evaluation practices and reporting in community cultural development;
  • foster more published research and writing about the cultural, economic, health, educational and environmental outcomes of community cultural development activities in Australia; and
  • study strategies for community capacity building.
Communication Strategies

The Centre fostered research and enquiry by coordinating various networks that organised forums and conferences, as well as by supporting scholarly projects and distributing publications. The Centre's four major research programme areas included:

  • Courses, forums, and conferences related to the pedagogy and politics of teaching and youth work. For example, the Granville Schools Collaboration Project explored collaborative approaches to improving the outcomes from schooling for students from economically impoverished backgrounds. Other projects included a reconciliation kit for young Australians, a project to help Turkish youth move from school to work and further study, and a certificate in Youth Development for those in the South Pacific
  • Health education and community development: a one-day forum focused on issues including helping people learn health information in a meaningful way, fostering the exercise of responsibility for that education, and the role of community and health education in health promotion
  • Learning and action for the environment: a set of proposed capacity-building, training, and learning strategies was produced to assist conservation, environment, industry, and government groups seeking to engage in environmental community education and advocacy about air quality. Another product included an adult environmental education package aimed at meeting the needs of community workers involved in environmental actions in local communities. This package consisted of two flexible delivery short courses, a supporting monograph of current working papers from Australia and overseas, a series of case studies of non-formal environmental education in practice, and a review of current policy documents in adult education and environmental education that support adult non-formal environmental education. An assessment tool will be incorporated into this project
  • Community cultural development that included evaluative research oriented to Australia; development of a certificate in this area (through courses developed in 1994 and 1995, and 1998, for the NSW Community Arts Association).

In addition, Centre staff offered specialised support in research about teaching and curriculum politics and practices; educational and community development evaluations; training needs and capacity-building analyses; design of organisational development and learning strategies; and curriculum development.

Development Issues

Education, Environment, Health, Youth, Children.

Key Points

Programme organisers noted that, when they set up the centre, there had been little evaluation of the long-term value and outcomes of community cultural development in Australia. Much of the evaluation had focused primarily on short-term outcomes and the quality of project management.

The Centre is now closed, but the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) still maintains a publications archive.

Sources

Letter sent from Celina McEwen to The Communication Initiative on June 17, 2002; and CPE site.