World-first gives Wollongong unique eye on the future

The world-first Wollongong Goals pilot program began last month when Wollongong City Council and global visual design platform Canva teamed up to ask residents what change they wanted to see in their communities, in Australia and across the globe.

Since the launch, more than 3000 responses have been submitted online or in person, supported by pop-up stalls placed at Belmore Basin, the Wollongong Botanic Garden, Crown Street Mall and other prominent locations across the city.

The initiative builds on a longstanding relationship between Canva and the region, with Canva having launched some of its earliest products at 2013 start-up workshops in Wollongong. Canva chief marketing officer Zach Kitschke began his career as a business cadet at Wollongong City Council in 2010 before joining the fast-growing tech platform. 

“He understands the council's values and how it prioritises hearing from diverse voices in the community,” a council spokesperson said. 

“Canva approached Wollongong for this pilot for broader reasons too: its strong track record in community engagement, its reputation for innovation, and established city leadership.”

While council regularly engages with residents through traditional community consultation avenues, Lord Mayor Tania Brown acknowledges that current methods often miss out on hearing from large segments of the population. 

"People are telling me out on the street, 'I didn't want to speak up at a meeting because it got toxic'," Cr Brown said. 

"I feel there are some of our cultural communities that we are missing. We may hear from some of the louder voices and the more active, but there are whole new groups coming in every day. So we want to make sure we’re reaching into those groups; I think it is so important." 

The council is also looking to hear from demographic groups that rarely attend evening meetings in community halls, noting a distinct lack of traditional feedback from local young people and growing multicultural populations. 

The pilot aims to lower these barriers to participation by offering a low-friction, flexible approach. Residents can choose to submit ideas digitally from home or fill out physical postcards when out and about. Participation is entirely voluntary and requires no extensive sign-up process.

“My mother would never fill out a survey or even go on an online platform, but she might fill out a postcard,” Cr Brown said.

“We are really keen to include traditional people that you almost know by name who engage with us every single day, and we really want them to participate in this, but also people that we rarely hear from or we don't hear from,” council general manager Greg Doyle said.

The partnership marks the first time Canva has partnered with a local government authority anywhere to deploy its Goals Platform. While Canva is running a concurrent national pilot in the United States alongside the Ad Council, Wollongong serves as the first municipal testing ground.

“This is a world first for them and for us. There is an opportunity for us to collaborate in a testing environment, to test their expertise and technical prowess and our expertise and our technical prowess in a melting pot,” Mr Doyle said. 

The project is a non-commercial collaboration that has been in development for several months, with Wollongong presenting as the forward-thinking, collaborative community best suited for the innovation and development of the Goals platform. Council is not paying for access to Canva's platform or benefiting financially.

The council is funding its own standard promotion, local printing and community activations, while Canva provides platform infrastructure, digital marketing strategies, and experiential installations.

"We're not buying a product and then applying it; we're actually trying to build expertise, knowledge, and capability with a community. This is actually an opportunity for us to do that collectively and collaboratively," Mr Doyle said. 

To process feedback at scale, Canva is integrating artificial intelligence while maintaining technical safeguards to filter out spam, duplicate submissions and potential misuse.

IP addresses are logged so data can be visualised down to a neighbourhood level, and bot activity can be detected without requiring residents to navigate log-in barriers. 

“AI helps us identify patterns across tens of thousands of goal submissions at a scale that wouldn't be possible manually and powers an interactive experience where people can explore the results themselves,” a Canva spokesperson said. 

"But the interpretation stays human, and our team reviews the themes and quotes to make sure they accurately reflect what people shared."

Following the closing of submissions on September 11, data will be compiled into a transparent public report. Two years into its current community strategic plan, the council plans to use the findings to complement its direction and adjust its delivery program and operational plan to better reflect local priorities. 

"We talk about being the 'city of innovation', now we're going to call ourselves the 'city of imagination'! And we'll see what goals people come up with,” Cr Brown said.

Community members can submit their goals online at wollongonggoals.org or via paper postcards available at council pop-up locations.

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