Senator Fatima Payman was the first hijab wearing member of parliament representing the Australian Labor Party and in 2024 she was removed from the ALP caucus in response to her campaigning (and crossing the floor of parliament) calling for the ALP to recognise the genocide in Gaza and the need for a Palestinian State. As it turns out, her leadership was ahead of its time, with much of the world now finally recognising that more must be done to end Israeli aggression and support the right of Gaza to exist.

In this conversation she shares the long history of her rise as young Senator from Western Australia. The guiding strength, voice and resilience she learnt from her parents, and how determined she was to bring all of herself - her faith, her gender and her voice - into the Parliament when she was elected. And yes - we talk about what happened when she crossed the floor and what she it has taught her about politics, political parties and making change.

For more about Senator Fatima Payman go to https://www.fatimapayman.com.au/

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There is a lot of talk about co-design and community engagement in research and public policy - but in practice a lot of that talk ends up looking like window dressing rather than real community partnership.

We talk to one of the world's leading co-design, community engaged researchers in nursing - Professor Brendan McCormak Head of the Nursing School at the University of Sydney - to find out strategies for how he involves patients and nurses in the creation of research. The result is not only an amazing story about a career of co-created knowledge, but a series of powerful insights and strategies for anyone interested in the art of working WITH others in building solutions and knowledge.

You can find out more about Brendan here.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

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Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

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The second Trump Administration has brought with it an unprecedented attack on migrants, led by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) focused on people who are living in the United States without formal documentation. In this conversation we talk with Alexandra Pineros Shields - a long term community organiser, immigrant rights campaigner and researcher about how communities are fighting back to defend the rights of migrants and change how policing is done.

This conversation explores Alexandra's history of organising and building strategy to make change, as well as the kinds of innovative tactics being used by communities to combat ICE. She runs through techniques like power analysis and shows how a practical understanding of different dimensions of power can help build effective strategy. She talks about the power of communities using prefigurative action - where they model what the state should be doing - as a way to tell a story to make change more compelling.

This episode is a deep dive into what you might have seen on the news - it is a reassuring and inspiring reminder that even in the face of repression and abusive of power, there is also power in community to respond and make change.

In the podcast a few different organisations are mentioned, here is where you can find out more:

John Gaventa - When Alexandra teaches she asks students read chapter 4 from The Miner’s Canary. We also have links of a diagram that Alexandra uses with organisers on our website.

‘Midwife for Power’: Towards a Mujerista/Womanist Model of Community Organizing - https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/article/view/7771/7855

Ayni Institute - https://ayni.institute/

The Right Question Institute (Cambridge, Massachusetts) – Question Formulation Technique - https://rightquestion.org/what-is-the-qft/

City of Boston – City of Belonging Campaign

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

Via our Website - https://changemakerspodcast.org (where you can also sign up to our email list!)

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Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

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Climate change has led the Northern Rivers has been inundated by flood and flood threats, but it has also shown Australia - and the world - what it looks like to lead a community response to climate change. In this episode we talk with Rebecca McNaught, a community researcher on disaster response who shares with us how the community did respond to the extreme floods in 2022, and what all communities can learn from what they did.

Bec has decades of experience in community-led climate work, having worked across the Pacific and the world before focusing on researching best practice in community strategies. She was undertaking field work when the 2022 floods began, and she helped lead emergency support with others in her neighbourhood before she finished her PhD documenting best practice.

In this conversation she argues that big concepts like "climate change adaptation" and creating climate infrastructure are at their heart about building strong social bonds between people who can be there for each other when dialling 000 no longer works.

For more on the Northern Rivers Community Resilience Alliance see here.

For information on the University of Sydney's University Centre for Rural Health see here.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

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Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

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On the Winter Solstice in 2025 Amanda spoke at an event in Albury held to raise awareness about Mental Illness and Suicide. She shared about her story of living with bipolar and some of the lessons it has generated about how we make a difference.

In this podcast we replay that speech.

Thanks to Survivors of Suicide and Friends for creating this event. For more on their work and previous events, visit their website https://survivorsofsuicide.org.au/

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

Via our Website - https://changemakerspodcast.org (where you can also sign up to our email list!)

On Facebook, Instagram, Threads - https://www.facebook.com/ChangeMakersPodcast/

Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In light of the release of Victoria's landmark truth telling inquiry, we are re-releasing this important ChangeMaker Chat with Terri Janke, one of Australia's leading advocates for the recognition of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property.

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Terri Janke is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lawyer who uses the law to protect and advance Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property. As a Meriam and Wuthathi woman who grew up in Cairns in northern Queensland, for over 20 years she has crafted a set of legal instruments that allow for the protection of Indigenous Culture. From an Indigenous perspective, Culture is the embodiment of life, and it can be represented in anything from art to dance, from bones to research. She is well recognised across Australia for her work in protecting Indigenous Culture using a series of True Track protocols that enable Indigenous Culture to be recognised as intellectual property. 

Here she explains her journey and how she found the law. She explores her ICIP principles and then applies them to the process of research, and in particular Country-based ‘placed-based’ research. This is a powerful conversation for non-Indigenous listeners as Terri generously shares an Indigenous perspective on Culture that is very different to white understandings of culture.

For more about Terri’s work you can visit her website – https://www.terrijanke.com.au/. Or read her book True Tracks, available from UNSW Press.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

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Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Saturday 21 June, ChangeMakers Host Amanda Tattersall is speaking at the Winter Solstice Event in Albury organised by the Survivors of Suicide & Friends. There she will share some of her experiences of living with bipolar and what reflecting on those experiences have brought to her work as a change maker.

You can find out more and tune into the event online at survivorsofsuicide.org.au.

This event is an extraordinary event to mark the longest and coldest night of the year and commemorate those who have died by suicide and those who live with mental illness. Amanda is truly honoured to be invited, and to mark this important event, we are re-releasing a podcast memoir written and recorded a couple of years about Amanda's journey with bipolar, co-founding GetUp and creating the Sydney Alliance.

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How can we hold together big ambition for social change on issues like climate alongside the small work required to build powerful connections across our diversity and difference? This piece explores the tensions of scale between big and small, fast and slow through stories and reflections across a life of organising. Our host Amanda Tattersall reads a memoir that she wrote for the Griffith Review in their August edition entitled Hey Utopia.

You can find the Griffith Review here: www.griffithreview.com/editions/hey-utopia/. and it is also here not behind a paywall.

You can download this episode on Apple, Spotify, LiSTNR, Stitcher, and all your other favourite podcast apps.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

Via our Website - https://changemakerspodcast.org (where you can also sign up to our email list!)

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Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a re-release of an important conversation with the remarkable UK organisation called Love and Power, that is seeking to respond to violence against women by building the leadership and capacity of women to lead the change.

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While we know that too many women live with the ever-present threat of violence our societies seem to struggle with what to do about it. While we have refuges services, and at times the issue is raised in national debate, we seem unable to address the problem at its core.

In the UK, Love and Power is a new organisation that is seeking to end vioelcne aganst women by putting women who have experienced domestic violence at the centre of the debate. Love and Power combines the insight and knowledge that comes from lived experience with the strategies of community organising to bring a new approach to an old problem.

In this ChangeMaker Chat we talk with Charlotte Fischer and Martha Jephcott the founders of Love and Power. Martha grew up in a violent household and brings her own experience of the limits of service provision to the movement, she combines this with Charlotte’s experience as a community organiser to create a new kind of women’s movement that seeks to show the public dimensions of women’s experiences as a way to find political solutions to the probelm of violence.

You can find out more about love and power here – https://www.loveandpower.co.uk. You can follow them on socials – @loveandpowerorg for both X and instagram.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

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Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With all the tumult in UK and global politics, and the new Labor victory in Australia, we are re-releasing an episode with UK Labour Party Cabinet Minister and former Opposition Leader Ed Miliband. The topic - big politics! This episode was recorded in 2021.

When can political parties be real change makers and produce big change? Ed Miliband, former Opposition Leader for the UK Labour Party shares some of the lesser known stories that have shaped his political identity and his ambitions for a politics that can go big. We discuss the role of labour and social democratic parties in the change making space. We reconsider the idea that ‘politics is the art of the possible’ and Ed shares some of his insight into the kind of politics that is needed for these challenging times.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

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Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

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Too often, when we think of public servants we think of paper shufflers and number crunches. But nurses, teachers and care workers as well as officers working in government departments - aren't doing it for the money! These public servants - bureaucrats - are driven by a sense of service, commitment and care that is so vital to support all of our lives.

Dan Honig, from UCL (UK) and Georgetown (US) is one of the world's leading researchers on public service practice and he talks with us about what it takes for public servants to be supported to deliver a big mission of care and community support. Building on the research published in his recent book Mission-Driven Bureaucrats he talks about the difference between managing for compliance and support for mission driven work - and how important those systems are for shaping whether public servants can thrive in their work.

Dan spoke to us from Washington DC and we also talked about how the current US context is affecting public servants and public service.

You can find out more about Dan at this website: https://danhonig.info/, and find out about his latest book - Mission driven bureaucrats - https://danhonig.info/missiondrivenbureaucrats.

For more on ChangeMakers check us out:

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Blue Sky Social - changemakerspod.bsky.aocial & amandatattersall.bsky.social

On X/Twitter - @changemakers99 or @amandatatts

On LinkedIn - Amanda.Tattersall

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.