Repeated and prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns in Melbourne, Australia, prevented us from conducting planned in-person community workshops. We adapted our approach and developed online workshops, using digital community engagement applications and processes (e.g. use of MIRO, an online collaboration tool (Miro 2022)).

We commenced community workshops focusing on youth employment, education and mental wellbeing. Co-creation with the community revealed a strong interest in addressing youth unemployment. Our team, therefore, had to be adaptable and focus efforts on the area of interest to the community.

Practitioners requested information about a new process we used in our community workshops. In response, we adapted the process to be used more broadly (for different purposes and audiences) and developed a brief guide of the process (Riley et al. 2022).

After hearing about our work in Brimbank, another local government in Melbourne approached us to assist them with mapping and analysing employment and education supports available in the area. We responded to this need, adapted the community resource mapping process for their purpose and completed the project successfully (Mowle et al. 2023a,b).