What is Our Town?
Our Town is a 10-year, $15 million place-based mental health initiative that aims to strengthen the capabilities of regional towns in South Australia to develop community-based responses to mental health and wellbeing, with an eye to scaling what works, and influencing regional policy. Our Town supports towns and regions to define what’s right for their community, so that they can reclaim the mental health and wellbeing of their community.
The initiative is funded by the Fay Fuller Foundation, SA Department for Human Services and the Paul Ramsay Foundation. The Our Town team consists of six Town communities, a support team (including TACSI and Clear Horizon), and a network of allies and advocates made up of interested stakeholders from the surrounding eco-system.
The challenge: Systems are not working
Our Town arose in response to the findings of the Health Needs and Priorities in South Australia Report, which was commissioned by the Fay Fuller Foundation and undertaken by The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) in partnership with TACSI.
The report uncovered a significant gap between the perceived provision of services and the actual accessibility of services for individuals. This gap was even more apparent in rural and regional areas. Further insights found that people living in non-metropolitan areas experienced higher rates of mental health challenges and were less likely to seek help.
Our Town believes that if we want different outcomes for mental health in regional South Australia, we need to think very differently across systems. Not just tweaks to programs or new services on the same old scaffolding — but fundamental change in how power, partnership, and community leadership are understood and practiced.
Our Town have written a series of positioning pieces
Our Town has written a series of positioning pieces to share thinking and learning. The first two pieces explore:
The positioning pieces are for anyone who’s ever felt the friction of trying to do the right thing inside a system that just won’t budge. They’re written for:
Funders who want to do more than fund
Policy thinkers trying to loosen the grip of old ways
Community members already leading change but looking for partners who’ll walk beside, not ahead
And for all of us who’ve asked — quietly or loudly — “Surely there’s a better way?”.
These pieces are provocations, field notes, a work in motion. It’s a story of power — who holds it, shares it, grows it – and sometimes, who lets it go. If you’re curious about what happens when we move from ‘projects’ to relationships, from control to collaboration, and from certainty to collective discovery — then take a look. They might just be the invitation you’ve been waiting for.
The shifts: Creating the space for community innovation
At its heart, systems change is about shifting the deep conditions that keep problems stuck. Not just fixing symptoms, but changing the game, so change becomes possible, transformational, sustainable and equitable for everyone.
That's exactly what Our Town is doing - shifting the conditions impacting on the mental health and wellbeing of regional South Australian communities.
Our Town is creating the space — to pause, question and reimagine what’s possible. It’s opening up space for communities to step in, challenge the status quo, and co-create something better. Something that works for them.
The hunches were that place matters, context matters, identity matters (personal and collective), and relationships matter. In regional communities, mental health and wellbeing are deeply relational, and are built on trust, belonging, safety, and local culture.
By shifting some of the stuck conditions, more enabling conditions are emerging where communities are able to build deep local insights and see their strengths and assets as a starting place, rather than their “problems”. This is a strengthening and building of the capabilities needed, in community and throughout the system, to enable community-led change.
This was a significant departure from the dominant mental health systems — largely transactional and operating at the point of either early intervention or crisis; built on referrals, waitlists, KPIs, and standardised interventions that don’t flex to community rhythm or reality.
This in turn, unlocks deeper questions such as
What happens when we are truly trust based, truly flexible, and really ensure funds are determined locally?
What happens when community controls funds?
What happens if we foster a network of learning, support, exchange and ultimately influence?
What happens if we underpin that by really thinking about what are the capabilities that are important here? Around community-led innovation, around truly understanding and measuring our impact and what we're learning, to see what best practice and innovation is happening in mental health globally, what it takes and the capabilities needed for leading change and for collaboration in community?
What principles, mindsets, and insights - what's really going on that could create change around mental health and wellbeing in regional SA?
The change that is emerging: Celebrating the tangible and intangible
Our Town are starting to understand community innovation not just as tangible innovations but also the intangible.
Tangible innovations are things that are easier to see, including projects like Humans of Cummins or spaces like the youth hubs. These are physical projects that people can gather around and make the work of Our Town visible by providing clear points for people to connect with the initiative.
Intangible innovations are harder to see, they include the continual work of nurturing enabling conditions and include activities like the ongoing conversations in town, deep listening, continuing to show up, investing in people’s capabilities, advocacy and storytelling that shifts perceptions of mental health and wellbeing.
You can see some of the community-led change within each towns’ impact shares here.
How might you shift conditions in your context
By challenging and deliberately shifting some of the deep conditions that keep problems stuck, Our Town is opening up space for communities to step in, challenge the status quo, and co-create something better that works for them. Through sharing power to do this and partnering differently, the core enabling and supporting conditions are becoming increasingly apparent.
TACSI are excited to be learning partners within Our Town and encourage others to imagine differently, challenge your own assumptions, or adapt and test the smallest of shifts to the conditions in your context. These are key ingredients in enabling community innovation, bolstering prevention and earlier help seeking, towards community wellbeing and mental health.
Learning about community innovation across initiatives
At TACSI, we’re in a great position to understand some of the learning from Our Town echoed within other community innovation initiatives we have worked with across Australia, such as the Regional Innovators Network, AMYAC - Coober Pedy, Fire to Flourish, Innovate to Regenorate, as well as initiatives across the world, such as Every One Every Day - Kjipuktuk-Halifax, The Southern Initiative, and Civic Square.
We’re starting to see common principles and practices for community owned innovation tackling complex challenges, locally:
sharing power
allyship and solidarity
strengthening social fabric
imagining , experimenting and learning
seeing the big picture together
These insights have shaped TACSI’s new Community Innovation Workshop - an opportunity to explore building the conditions for local change. You can join some of the Our Town team who will be co-facilitating this workshop on Thursday 27 November 2025, 12.30pm - 4.30pm AEDT. Find out more details here. The TACSI Learning Hub is supporting community organisations / groups / leaders to attend for free. If you’re interested email Pip at learn@tacsi.org.au.