The Community Builder's Journal
Guided reflections and experiments for your community building journey
Peter Westoby, Dave Andrews, Howard Buckley, Rachael Donovan, Kirsty Leigh, Gerard Dowling, Richard Warner
The Community Builder’s Journal is a companion for those who want to take that question seriously, curiously, gently, and practically. Designed as a yearlong guided workbook, it invites you to experiment with building community in your street, neighbourhood, workplace, or wherever life places you.
Part reflective journal, part practical guide, this book offers weekly ideas, stories, questions, and invitations to try something new. Organised into twelve monthly themes, it supports a year-long rhythm of deepening awareness and purposeful action.
You’ll explore how to build small groups, sustain collective energy, and respond to conflict. You’ll reflect on what gets in the way, be it personal doubt, social fear, or structural barriers, and find grounded ways forward. Through diverse lenses - including social, economic, cultural, ecological, and political - you’ll reimagine what’s possible in the places and communities you care about.
Whether used on your own, in a small group, or within a broader community of practice, this journal offers not just ideas, but encouragement to live them. Plus, each month includes a recipe from the Nundah Community Enterprise Cooperative—a small reminder that community is also made around shared tables.
Published: 2025
Pages: 175
eBook: 9781788534178
Paperback: 9781788534154
Part reflective journal, part practical guide, this book offers weekly ideas, stories, questions, and invitations to try something new. Organised into twelve monthly themes, it supports a year-long rhythm of deepening awareness and purposeful action.
You’ll explore how to build small groups, sustain collective energy, and respond to conflict. You’ll reflect on what gets in the way, be it personal doubt, social fear, or structural barriers, and find grounded ways forward. Through diverse lenses - including social, economic, cultural, ecological, and political - you’ll reimagine what’s possible in the places and communities you care about.
Whether used on your own, in a small group, or within a broader community of practice, this journal offers not just ideas, but encouragement to live them. Plus, each month includes a recipe from the Nundah Community Enterprise Cooperative—a small reminder that community is also made around shared tables.
| Foreword | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgements | |||
| Introduction | |||
| Part 1: Orienting, Understanding, Building and Sustaining | |||
| Section 1. Orienting ourselves towards community building | |||
| Entry 1: Time, patience and space | |||
| Entry 2: Experimenting with action | |||
| Entry 3: Noticing community as an emergent phenomenon | |||
| Entry 4: Start with what’s strong, not with what’s wrong | |||
| Entry 5: Relationships matter | |||
| Recipe - Banana and macadamia granola | |||
| Section 2. Understanding community | |||
| Entry 6: What is this ‘community’ thing, anyway? | |||
| Entry 7: Vision and values for community | |||
| Entry 8: Community as social capital | |||
| Entry 9: The dark side of community | |||
| Recipe - Aleppo chicken | |||
| Section 3. Building purposeful connections | |||
| Entry 10: The importance of timing when making connections with others | |||
| Entry 11: Go to the people, ask the people, see what the people see | |||
| Entry 12: Dialogue and holding your agenda lightly | |||
| Entry 13: Key words and common themes | |||
| Recipe - Dips | |||
| Section 4. Building small groups | |||
| Entry 14: Small groups: The heartbeat of community | |||
| Entry 15: Small is beautiful - and inclusion is the key | |||
| Entry 16: Movement from a private to a shared concern | |||
| Entry 17. Building small groups through the 0-1-3 method | |||
| Recipe - Spiced cauliflower salad | |||
| Section 5. Sustaining groups | |||
| Entry 18: What sustains groups? | |||
| Entry 19: Stages of group development | |||
| Entry 20: Sustaining groups when things get stuck, or conflict arises | |||
| Entry 21: Allowing groups to die well | |||
| Recipe - Caramel slice | |||
| Section 6. Interlude: What hinders your involvement in community building | |||
| Entry 22: Personal disempowerment | |||
| Entry 23: Relational disempowerment | |||
| Entry 24: Structural disempowerment | |||
| Entry 25: The decline of community in the modern world | |||
| Recipe - Tortilla stack | |||
| Part 2: Pathways of Connecting and Change | |||
| Section 6. Ecological communities | |||
| Entry 26: Connecting with the natural world | |||
| Entry 27: Learning from the natural world | |||
| Entry 28: How to be in a reciprocal relationship with nature | |||
| Entry 29: Responding to ecological crisis, with love | |||
| Recipe - Khulood’s falafels | |||
| Section 7. Economics as if community matters | |||
| Entry 30: Economics as if people matter | |||
| Entry 31: Finding alternatives within the dominant economy | |||
| Entry 32: Transforming the local economy | |||
| Entry 33: Alternative economic models | |||
| Recipe - Gardener’s pie | |||
| Section 8. Community through a social lens | |||
| Entry 34: What are the social assets in your community? | |||
| Entry 35: The pandemic of social isolation - looking out for the lonely | |||
| Entry 36: Exclusion, inclusion and solidarity | |||
| Entry 37: Identity as a vehicle for division or connection | |||
| Recipe - Vietnamese rice paper rolls | |||
| Section 9. Culture and cultural change | |||
| Entry 38: Cultivating a culture for community | |||
| Entry 39: The role of the arts in community | |||
| Entry 40: Culture creators not just consumers | |||
| Entry 41: A culture of creative resistance | |||
| Entry 42: A community of cultural diversity | |||
| Recipe - Lamb toshka | |||
| Section 10. The politics of people power | |||
| Entry 43: Personal, relational, and structural power | |||
| Entry 44: Traditional power and transformative people power | |||
| Entry 45: Subverting dominating institutions | |||
| Entry 46: Forming alliances to counter the politics of division | |||
| Recipe - Banana bread | |||
| Section 11. Endings … | |||
| Entry 47: Communities that are connected do better in disaster | |||
| Entry 48: Energy, food and water preparation | |||
| Entry 49: Local work and global connections | |||
| Entry 50: Active hope, and working with despair | |||
| Entry 51: Celebration! | |||
| Recipe - Co-op classic choc chip cookie | |||
| Conclusion |
Peter Westoby
Peter Westoby has been involved in development practice for over thirty years, working as a grassroots practitioner, facilitator and scholar in diverse contexts such as Australia, PNG, the Philippines, Vanuatu, India, South Africa and Uganda. He is currently Associate Professor of Social Science and Community Development at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Development Support, University of the Free State, South Africa.
Anthony Kelly Anthony Kelly has been involved in development work for more than forty years. He taught development practice at The University of Queensland for twenty-five years. In more recent years Anthony has worked with a range of transnational mining companies helping them form productive relationships with local communities.