Our work continues to incorporate the understanding that everything we do as a community depends on the quality of relationships with each other. If we want positive change, we must start from improving relationships. We look forward to continuing doing that in lots of different ways in 2025!

Our Christmas Party was one example of building relationships – what a special time it was! Thanks everyone! So many amazing people, sharing delicious food and conversation with such joy.

The Live Well team would like to thank everyone for their involvement in our community centre and farm during the year and wish you all a wonderful New Year. We are very excited about our major building face lift in January, we hope you love the design as much as we do…

Design Web workshop

We look forward to a Design Web Workshop on the 19th of January at our Community Centre. See below for information on the significance of Design Webs. We will be using the example of our Community Based Income Project to learn about how it works, and how powerful it can be.

Cultural Emergence supports us in designing the world we want to live in. The Design Web is a framework and toolkit that enables our personal and collective journeys of connection and well-being. It activates healing and revolutionises our approach to creating life-sustaining and regenerative cultures. Design can be used to plan projects, behaviour changes, products, pathways, and processes. Design supports us to walk our talk and come into alignment with who we want to be in the world. We can use the process in a multitude of ways throughout our life journey. For example, we could create designs to enhance our own emotional well-being, to bring insights to family dynamics, for clearer communication in our relationships, moving home, starting a new job, getting fit etc.

It can be used on different scales, to look at something very specific and contained such as the structure of group meetings or a trip away. We can design bigger picture things such as life transitions, career choices, and organisational structures. The Design Web can be used at home, in our gardens, workplaces, groups, neighbourhoods, within international movements, and can include for example running volunteer programmes and events, from building homes to building businesses.

see https://cultural-emergence.com/the-design-web/

Grow group at Live Well Tasmania

Starting on the 22nd January, 6.30pm, and then every Wednesday after that at our Community Centre in Saunders Street, Wynyard, we will be hosting a new Grow group. Grow is a proven program for mental wellbeing. With mutual peer to peer support within a caring and sharing community, attending a Grow group can be a life changing experience that leads to new ways of thinking and living. RSVP Robin 0421 461 724 [email protected] For more info about Grow contact Linda 0417 737 203 [email protected]

Social Activation Project

The SAP team had a busy December, which included helping out at the Live Well Wynyard High School garden, completing the food drive for the ROC Community Food Hub, and helping with the catering for the Live Well Christmas Party. In the new year planning with re-commence for a community event in April, stand by for further details!

Community Mondays wrap up

The Community Monday program was aimed at those residents in the Waratah-Wynyard area who were isolated from family and friends, perhaps geographically as many residents move to our amazing part of the world, brand new and without contacts. Or for those in our community who are feeling isolated through hardships such as gambling, financial, family or domestic violence.

The provision of food encouraged many discussions around recipes, cooking styles, gardening, budgeting and bulk preparation skills. Many of the recipes were shared near and far across the community. It also allowed us to showcase our new commercial kitchen space within the LWT community centre.

The demographic of our very regular participants was primarily female elders of the community (although we did range from 13 yrs old to 97 yrs old over the whole program), who enjoyed creative craft activities and this along with an enquiry from another service provider in our community, encouraged us to use the funding to run art therapy groups with a fully qualified Art Therapist. We ran 8 sessions and the feedback was incredibly positive about the experience. The funding also allowed us to offer more volunteer opportunities within our organisation. With one volunteer sharing that “Community Mondays had saved her life.” Community Mondays allowed her fulfill a dream of helping the elder community, creating connections and new friends, offering her a new lease on life. Other feedback we received was that the program had created a family-like feel which offered a space with open-minds and open hearts, where genuine difficult conversations could be shared, followed by feelings of being heard, helped and not alone. As an organisation we couldn’t have dreamed of the impact this program has had within our community.

We do aim to continue this program in 2025, as a result of the capacity built by the project, and we have submitted a grant to expand it as well as provide other opportunities.

Care Farming update

The participants continue to enjoy multiple benefits from being involved in the Care Farming project. Great progress has been made starting tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and herbs such as basil in the polytunnel, and in the outside garden there are potatoes, beans, snow pea’s, pumpkins, and sunflowers all thriving. We have enjoyed some walks in the bush, including some contemplation of what art we could do down the track (in both senses!).