Wollongong is asking a question most cities are afraid to ask

Yesterday evening, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki AM and Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins sat down at the University of Wollongong for Big Questions. Melanie spoke about her journey building Canva, a company now used by more than 260 million people each month. But the conversation also brought the focus back to Wollongong, and why this city was chosen for a rather unusual experiment.

In Canva’s early days, Melanie and her husband, fellow co-founder Cliff Obrecht, came here to hear what people thought of their ideas. Wollongong was one of the places where they could ask questions and learn from the answers. Years later, it feels like a full circle as they’ve now returned with a question for us.

Wollongong was nominated the first city in the world to pilot Canva’s Goals platform at a local level. It asks people what they want to see achieved in their lifetime: for Wollongong, for Australia and for the world.

It’s an interesting thing for a council to ask. Seeking honest feedback can be uncomfortable for any organisation. Ask a whole city what it wants, and there’s no way to know what will come back. Lord Mayor Tania Brown and council's general manager, Greg Doyle, have backed the project anyway.

"There isn’t a lot of space right now for dreaming about the future that we want,” Melanie told the audience in her conversation with Dr Karl.

We’re often so caught up in what needs doing today that we don’t stop to think about what we’d like life here to look like years from now. The goals shared so far have covered very different ground. Some people have written about peace and the kind of world they want future generations to inherit. At a local level, Melanie said people have raised things like footpaths, trees and places where communities can come together.

Those everyday ideas may seem small alongside hopes for the whole world, but they still say something about the kind of city people want to live in. They may also be shared by more neighbours than the person who wrote them down realises.

If we get collectively clear on the vision that we want, ideally we’re also excited to contribute to bringing that into existence, Melanie said.

Canva will put the goals into a report, and council says it will use what people share to check its existing plans and discuss the priorities that emerge. What happens with those ideas will matter. But first, people need the chance to say them out loud.

So, what do you actually want for the future of Wollongong?

Share your goal at wollongonggoals.org by 5 October 2026.