Engaging Culturally Diverse Communities in Times of Crisis: Identifying best practice for the ACT

Industry Collaborative Research Seed Grant application (ACT Govt and DVCR&I)The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted many challenges for governments in engaging with all sectors of the community. It also highlighted how government communicators could innovate to ensure that vulnerable populations received necessary information and messaging. The ACT Government wants to develop more effective ways of engaging groups within the community that they have identified as harder-to-reach. These include Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples. This project will identify how the government currently seeks to communicate and engage with these communities, how these communities interact with and respond to government messages and strategies and how they could be improved through the development of more trusting and meaningful relationships.