Harbinger Consultants

Culture + Complexity + Change

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SERVICES | Skilled Facilitation

13/10/2016 at 7:15 am · Filed under facilitate, leadership, learning, services, Uncategorized

Harbinger Consultants are highly skilled facilitators, and we work with diverse organisations and groups in diverse and complex situations to achieve high-quality results. We are especially attuned to complex issues and processes that require nimble handling and problem solving.

Our experience, which includes government, strategic planning and design, community and cultural organisations, higher education and non-profit boards, also means we have a strong commitment to social leadership and effective participation to achieve organisational learning and development. Every meeting and decision-making point is an opportunity for an organisation or a community to grow. As members of IAP2 and Australian Facilitators Network, we have a professional approach and draw on a wealth of experience to achieve highly engaging and creative facilitation.

Our achievements include:

  • facilitating board and committee meetings to reach programming decisions and develop strategic and business planning
  • facilitating stakeholder engagement and multi-stakeholder workshops in regional and urban contexts to identify and rank community development priorities and needs
  • facilitating charettes and co-design processes to explore options for future planning and development paths including social and economic infrastructure, social innovation and enterprise and urban development options
  • facilitating regional development workshops that identify place-based strengths and opportunities for innovation
  • facilitating intercultural, creative and cultural processes
  • facilitating learning, dialogue and deliberation, including the use of Theory U

We are always keen to discuss and understand your needs. Please contact us for a chat.

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INFO | Positive Impact & Vibrant Communities

02/07/2013 at 9:29 am · Filed under capability, community, projects indigenous_business lecturing cultural_plan, services, team

We’ve developed an infosheet about our current and recent achievements working in public art and placemaking, feasibility studies, strategic planning, research, partnership brokering and stakeholder engagement. This is available online via SlideShare. Please take a look and download a copy. Or email to receive a copy by email or post.

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2012 | Our Year in Review

17/12/2012 at 11:00 am · Filed under project, services, team

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The summer days and suburban streets are ablaze with brilliant red poinsiana blooms in the lead up to Christmas.

Harbinger Consultants has experienced a challenging and rewarding year in 2012, working to realise sustainable and creative opportunities for communities, organisations, places and regions through planning, visioning, engagement and teaching. Here are some of the highlights of a year packed with ideas and momentum.

January

  • We started the year with public art masterplanning and curatorial projects underway at North Lakes and Fitzgibbon Chase (last year featured workshops with local schools, pictured above), research and fieldwork for several Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessments for Connect for Effect, feasibility study for Blackall-Tambo Regional Council, and content and editorial with Aboriginal Business Magazine

February

  • Peer reviewed the Green Star Communities Rating Tool developed by the Green Buildings Council of Australia
  • Workshop on Financial Inclusion for Social Enterprises presented by Forresters Community Finance and The Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies

March

  • Visit to the Torres Strait to undertake preliminary work on the development of a community cultural plan for Erub Island, commissioned by the Torres Strait Regional Authority
  • Review of the anthology, From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen, edited by Marcus Foth, Laura Forlano, Christine Satchell and Martin Gibbs, for Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement (published in October)
  • Dialogue, Deliberation and Public Participation Masterclass at the University of Technology Sydney and University of Sydney
  • One of John’s photographs was selected for exhibition and competition in the 2012 Josephine Ulrick and Win Shubert Photography Award, Gold Coast City Gallery
  • Participation in a social design roundtable with Dr Ingrid Burkett of the Centre for Social Impact
  • Commenced tutoring in QUT’s School of Design

April

  • Public art project funded by Brisbane City Council and Queensland Rail. This project will see an artwork by Brisbane-based artist Mandy Ridley installed at the Ernest Street tunnel, under the railway near Southbank
  • Essay about Placing published in Semi-detached: Writing, Representation and Criticism in Architecture, edited by Dr Naomi Stead (pictured above)

May

  • A goal setting workshop with a regional development agency, which was reviewing its regional and strategic planning
  • Linda attended the Regional Development Australia National Forum in her capacity as Deputy Chair of RDA Brisbane
  • John contributed the foreword to artist Russell Anderson’s monograph surveying his work over a 20 year period

June

  • Public artworks were installed at the Fitzgibbon Community Centre for the Urban Land Development Authority
  • Visit to the Torres Strait to work on community and stakeholder consultation for the development of a community cultural plan for Erub Island, commissioned by the Torres Strait Regional Authority. John pictured above with the renowned Seaman Dan.
  • Interview for iforme/informe, a new cultural publishing venture

July

  • Grant from the Australia Council’s Visual Arts Board to undertake a year-long cultural writing project exploring contemporary public art as an interdisciplinary practice and process. The project is called Fieldworking.
  • UQ Winter School on Digital Equality
  • Research and fieldwork trip to the Hunter Valley and Sydney for two Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessments

August

  • Second semester tutoring in QUT’s School of Design
  • Commenced stakeholder engagement for a national project about Indigenous Led Enterprise developed by the Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, based at QUT.

September

  • Commencement of Long Time, No See?, a generative art project developed by artist Keith Armstrong with an interdisciplinary team of artists, scientists, curators, programmers and designers, and funded by the Australia Council’s Broadband Arts Initiative.
  • Field research and consultation for the Tambo Visitor Experience Study for Blackall-Tambo Regional Council. Linda pictured above facilitating a community workshop.
  • Visioning/Strategic Planning workshop for the Tambo Multipurpose Centre.

October

  • Delivery of World Health Organisation’s Healthy Cities Leadership Course held in Brisbane with Dr Evelyne de Leeuw
  • Harbinger Consultants’ Outsider Art collection grows with new acquisitions from the Art from the Margins exhibition
  • Completion of two modules of the International Association of Public Participation accredited training

November

  • Opening speech at Art Talks exhibition of Creative Conversations at State Library of Queensland. John pictured above.
  • Participation in the Community Planning Team for the BCC Active Aspley project due to commence in 2013
  • Chaired a session at QUThinking 2012 where postgraduate architecture and urban planning students presented their research
  • John joined the Art from the Margins Steering Committee and the Board of Kurbingui Sporting Association Inc., a competitive boxing and community oriented fitness club in the Brisbane North Region based at Bracken Ridge

December

  • Research and academic papers published at Academia.edu, a social network for researchers, including a strategic planning case study of Kelvin Grove Urban Village
  • Facilitation of Long Time, No See? team meeting to develop collaborative process, core concepts and project planning. Project team pictured above.
  • Article about Changescaping publised by CURB Magazine, University of Alberta

Looking Ahead

  • Our work on Long Time, No See?, Fieldworking, QUT’s Indigenous Led Enterprise Project, Ernest Street tunnels public art, North Lakes public art and other projects is ongoing.
  • We will be heading to MONA/FOMA in Hobart in mid-January!

Thanks so much for your support for and interest in our work this year. Please be in touch if you would like to discuss how we can work with you to realise your ideas, needs or projects. Contact John at jmjarmstrong@hotmail.com.

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CONNECT | Joining the Dots

14/11/2012 at 7:51 am · Filed under services, social innovation

We are constantly undertaking environmental scanning, joining dots across seemingly disparate bodies of research and information. This week we attended Regional Development Australia Brisbane‘s CLICK! Digital Expo where the findings of the Brisbane Digital Audit. The Audit was jointly commissioned by Regional Development Australia Brisbane and Brisbane Marketing and found that there is much to do to build digital capability in Brisbane. However, according to the report, the Health Care and Social Assistance Industry is lagging in its digital capability. This is the second report commissioned by the Regional Development Australia Brisbane that has found vulnerabilities in this industry. The Skills Shortages in the Greater Brisbane Labour Market 2012-2021 report projected that the Industry required 58,519 additional employees, of a total of 342,333 for greater Brisbane, are required for the period 2012-2021.

We are also presently hearing of significant funding and staffing cuts across the Health Care and Social Assistance Industry – an industry that plays a vital role in designing and delivering primary to tertiary interventions – and the wage disparities experienced by its female dominated workforce. Most recently, we spoke with health promotion officers working in a remote community who had been made redundant, leaving that community without sufficient primary intervention and therefore more likely to require more expensive secondary and tertiary interventions. The Public Health Information Unit website reveals that people living in remote communities are more vulnerable to a wide range of health issues and social disadvantage; poor health is a factor in social disadvantage and exclusion and mortality rates. For example, the Public Health Information Unit reveals that those living in remote and very remote regions are much more vulnerable to avoidable mortality than those in other regions, with the risk faced by those in very remote regions more than double those in major cities. As we are presently preparing a community health promotion plan for a remote community and having just played a role in the delivery of WHO’s Healthy Cities Leadership Course, such matters are uppermost in our minds. The significance for cities is that most of that tertiary health care and infrastructure is delivered in urban centre. Hence, the dynamism of Brisbane’s Health Care and Social Assistance Industry has ramification for the whole state and the regions within.

Interestingly, also at the CLICK! Digital Expo, we heard the citation of OECD figures ranking Australia 20th in product innovation and 7th in process innovation. We can’t say for sure whether that process innovation capability is directed to service design and delivery, but we assume so. We wondered how this process innovation is inflected in the Health Care and Social Assistance Industry, provoking some serious questions about the appropriate resourcing and staffing in the Health Care and Social Assistance industry as foundational for social sustainability. Without such resourcing, this industry is challenged to provide the necessary preventative interventions, which can ultimately slow any need for significant tertiary investments in the future. That is, an investment in health promotion officers or screening programs now may reduce the need for million dollar hospital beds in the future – it is not only part of the safety net but integral for the social sustainability and liveability of the city. It also represents a social debt that is cast into the future, delaying and compounding expenditures, which negatively impact on other sustainability considerations such as productivity and innovation. While social, causal and system relationships are always more complex than this, there is a need to seriously look at the Health Care and Social Service Industry, as we cusp one of the most challenging demographic shifts of our times (i.e. aging population). Obviously, skilled labour and digital capability are necessary for enhancing the ability of this industry to meet changing demand and develop process innovation not only for Brisbane but for Queensland.

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SERVICES | Research, planning & strategy

01/05/2007 at 7:12 am · Filed under services

Harbinger’s service provision is focused on research, planning and strategy for the realisation of creative and innovative places, environments and spaces. As project partners we deliver:

:: Strategic environment and strategy design
:: Research, analysis and investigation including feasibility studies and evaluation
:: Vision and innovation development and method
:: Planning, knowledge and leadership
:: Stakeholder and community engagement
:: Cultural mapping and cultural planning
:: Creative Industries incubation and development including smart linkages and clusters, culturally diverse and Indigenous enterprise, art-science and new technologies development
:: Project, concept and creative development
:: Professional editing and writing for specialist documents such as ICOA, tender documents, annual reports and masterplans

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