What if some of the biggest challenges facing our communities aren’t simply individual problems to solve, but a reflection of how we’ve come to live, work and relate to one another?
From rising loneliness and declining mental wellbeing to the growing separation of generations, Bringing Community Back Together asks a bigger question:
What needs to change in the way we organise our society so that connection, belonging and community become part of everyday life again?
Now, in its second season, this National Australian conversation series brings together leading thinkers, researchers, authors, educators, social innovators and community changemakers to explore the forces shaping our relationships, institutions and collective wellbeing.
Through thought-provoking conversations spanning psychology, education, aged care, Indigenous wisdom, social policy and community innovation, host Samantha Heron explores not only what’s contributing to our disconnection, but what’s already working ….and what we can learn, reimagine and build upon.
Because bringing community back together isn’t just about helping people connect.
It’s about creating a society where authentic and everyday connection is non-negotiable to the way we live.
Click any of the images to listen to our conversations
Following great conversations in Season 1 with Brenton Cullen, Mel Knuckey, Savannah Fishel, Catia Davim, Dr Hugh Chilton, Luella Prasad, Ken Taylor and Jon Owen from Wayside Chapel, we have wonderful line up of conversations coming up for Seasons 2 & 3 including …
Dr Arne Rubinstein, Dr Hannah Forbes, Monique Pockran & Dr Katya Numbers, DrStephanie Ward, Chip Richards, and Aussie icons Layne Beachley AO and Hugh Mackay AO
Season 2
Season 2 Episode 5: Raising the bar for our Older Australians.Gohar Yazdabadi
“Let’s hold that mirror up and really take a hard look at what is reflected back at us and think, is this good enough? … If government sets that very clear example that older people are valued, that they’re important parts of society, then I think you will see corporations follow through. That leadership is really, really needed at this time…“
Ageing isn’t just an older person’s issue. How we support our wisdom keepers as they grow older shapes our children, our grandchildren, our workplaces and the kind of society we’re all growing older in.
In this episode of Bringing Community Back Together, Samantha Heron speaks with Gohar Yazdabadi, CEO of the Council on the Ageing NSW (COTA NSW), about what’s breaking in our systems and what’s working.
Gohar speaks openly about navigating the system of care for her own parents (while raising young children and working), who died within months of each other in early 2026.
Whilst our conversation with Gohar speaks very frankly of significant challenges our systems face with an ageing population, …. we also importantly cover ways in which we can shift our community and government thinking and priorities to embrace a more hopeful, respectful and community-minded approach to raising the bar for our older Australians … and all of us in the process!
We speak about so much, from the a failed social contract for our older people, media and Narrative that pits generations against each other, COTA’s new report The Joys of Ageing (that found 90% of their members actually want to partake in activites with interegenerational connection), lessons from Japan’s respect for the age today and first nations view of elders as ‘living libraries’, Bunnings multigenerational workforce and TV show Bluey, grannies and ageism.
“The problems we’re now facing are self-inflicted. We’ve done this to ourselves, inadvertently, unthinkingly. If you dream of a kinder, more compassionate, more inclusive society, the only way that dream comes true is for those of us who dream it to live it. Kindness, compassion, these lovely qualities that make us a cooperative species, are not just nice things to do. These are species survival skills.”
In this episode of Bringing Community Back Together, Samantha Heron sits down with Hugh Mackay AO, social psychologist, researcher and bestselling author of 25 books, who has spent more than 60 years listening to Australians and trying to understand what makes us tick. … Frequently described as “the man who explains us to ourselves” Sam likes to describe him as the ‘David Attenborough of Aussie Humans’ 😉
Hugh leaves us with a challenge as much as an insight: the fragmentation we’re living through was not done to us, it’s the accumulated result of small choices, which means it can also be undone by small choices, lived out street by street, family by family.
Season 2 / Episode 3: Dementia Social Club. Where hard topics get soft landings
“It isn’t the education and it isn’t just the people. There’s something about how it all goes together… coming here meant so much to me. It makes me feel full. And that’s the word I couldn’t find.”
Visitor to the Dementia Social Club
What happens after someone receives a dementia diagnosis and goes home wondering, “Where do we go now?”
In this conversation, researcher Dr Katya Numbers from UNSW Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing and Dementia Doula Monique Pockran from Dahlia Dementia Guidance & Support explore what dementia looks like beyond the diagnosis — for the person, their family, friends and wider community.
Together they have created the Dementia Care Social Club a place where people can learn, connect, ask difficult questions and feel less alone .. where, as they beautifully describe it, “hard topics get soft landings.”
We explore why information and services matter, but why human connection and community are also an essential part of dementia care … and ask how we can move from “How do we care for someone with dementia?” to “How do we continue to include people living with dementia and supporting them and their circel of care ?”
It was a warm, wide-ranging conversation about dementia, caring, inclusion and what can happen when we stop expecting people to navigate these experiences alone
Season 2 / Episode 2: Goodwill starts. Systems sustain. Dr. Hannah Forbes, Occupational Therapist
“A program is fantastic, but it’s only sustainable through the goodwill of the person running the program and the supports around it. When those supports falter, the good work of that program may be lost.”
What if the problem isn’t that we need more evidence about the benefits of intergenerational connection ….but that we’ve designed communities that make those connections increasingly difficult to sustain?
In this episode of Bringing Community Back Together, Samantha Heron sits down with Dr Hannah Forbes, Occupational Therapist, researcher and lecturer at Australian Catholic University, whose PhD through the GrandSchools project explored intergenerational living and learning, and the systems ands paces that allow connection between generations to flourish. But Hannah’s interest in this work began long before academia.Growing up with two much-loved grandmothers who shaped her life in very different ways, and later sharing her home with her grandmotherEstelle during her teenage and university years, Hannah experienced first handwhat it means to live alongside the wisdom of another generation. Hannah brings her years of years of research back to something beautifully simple:
Connection is the key.
Whether it’s an older person finding purpose, a teenager discovering hope, or Hannah herself being dragged nervously along to choir by her best friend Bella, we sometimes need another person to create a doorway into belonging.
This conversation leaves us with a bigger challenge.We have the evidence. So how do we now design our schools, aged care homes, neighbourhoods, policies and communities to make intergenerational connection part of everyday life?
Season 2 / Episode 1: Rethinking our Rites of Passage Dr. Arne Rubinstein OAM, Founder, Rites of Passage Institute
“In a traditional community, the ones who got the most respect were the elders. In our community, we worship youth.….
The transformation of a rite of passage is a change in our beliefs and values about ourselves and the world.”
Welcome to Season 2 . To kick off our next conversations about community, connection and our collective wellbeing, Samantha Heron sits down with Dr Arne Rubinstein OAM, GP turned emergency medicine doctor turned Rites of Passage pioneer, with his team having brought his camps and training to over 20 countries across the world, impacting close to half a million lives.
For thousands of years traditional communities globally have used Rites of Passage to guide their people through life’s critical transitions.
In the modern age we’ve lost these rituals, and in turn, have lost many of our young people. With a vision of building strong communities, a healthy sense of belonging, and help people discover their unique gifts and talents, the Rites of Passage Institute believes we can support communities to thrive once again.
Season 1
Episode 8: Human for the long haul Jon Owen, CEO and Pastor, Wayside Chapel
“At Wayside Chapel … when people realise that they’re in a place where they’re being held, they often start to move forward on their own two feet and with their own energy and momentum, which is a beautiful gift we can give …because we don’t need to be experts… we just need to be humans who can who can be there for the long haul…”
A conversation about love over hate, the courage to stay present with people in pain, and what it takes to truly walk alongside someone. This conversation feels like a natural continuation of where Bringing Community Back Together has been heading all year, and such an amazing place to end Season 1 …
from rethinking how we live, to rethinking how we measure progress, to rebuilding community from the ground up.
Jon’s work at Wayside Chapel takes those ideas and grounds them in the rawest, most human terms: what does it actually look like to remove the labels, sit beside someone in their pain, and choose connection over judgement? It’s perhaps the clearest distillation yet of what this whole series has been emphasising
…that community isn’t a concept, it’s a daily practice of showing up for each other.
Episode 7: Lifelong Truckie turns School of Life Teacher
“You’ve given me so much more than youprobably realise.” Luca, Year 10
“You might run into good times. You might run into bad ones. But that’s life. You take the good with the bad” Ken T
What happens when a 15-year-old sits down with a man who drove trucks across Australia for 37 years, and they just…talk? Ken Taylor has lived a life full of stories.From digging foundations as a builder’s labourer at 19, to hauling grain from Queensland to Victoria, mangoes to market, and steel to building sites.Ken spent decades on the open road with Glenn Campbell on the radio, a CB relay for company, and enough wisdom quietly accumulated to stop a room.At 78, Ken lives in aged care. And every week, when the students from the high school 10 minutes down the road walk through the door, he lights up.
In this week’s conversation of Bringing Community Back Together, Samantha Heron sits with Ken in his room and reads him the tribute card his young buddy Luca wrote at the end of their months chatting together. What unfolds is a gentle, funny, and genuinely moving portrait of a man who never set out to be a mentor …and became one anyway.
Episode 6: Rethinking the way we measure progress
“Human life is worth it until the very last breath. You could be 102 years old and you are still very valuable.”
In this episode with Catia Davim, Founder of the Australian Social Good Summit we explore Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness & Indigenous wisdom and how they relate to community, plus much more!
The secret to making a real impact isn’t always about doing more – it can be about starting small and building community that lasts. Catia Davim’s journey leading Australia’s for the past decade reveals how one person’s purpose, can ripple outward to create meaningful change. Catia’s personal quest for social impact was sparked by a simple question:
What can I do for the world? She shares how attending theUN-affiliated Social Good Summit in New York ignited her mission to spotlight good projects and inspire collective action in Australia. We break down:
* The power of community-led initiatives and how shared purpose sustains long-term impact, referencing examples like Ronni Kahn AO from Ozharvest and Ren & Ben from ReLove
* that emphasises interconnectedness with land, family, and community – Indigenous principles from the 2025 Indigenous Wisdom Summit from amazing leaders such as Benson Saulo, Professor Yalmay Marika-Yunupiŋu. Professor Anne Poelina and more, that can reframe our approach to social progress
* Lessons from Bhutan’s national happiness index and why collective well-being trumps GDP in creating a thriving society
*How cultivating neighbourhood relationshipsand valuing older generations is vital for social cohesion and mental health
* The importance of incorporating indigenous and local voices into leadership and decision-making, both in Australia and globally Why does it matter? Because communities fractured by individualism and neglecting ancestral wisdom risk deepening crises like loneliness, inequality, and environmental degradation.
This episode supported by Good Flock. Join the movement encouraging a cultural shift in ageing: Good Flock.org
Episode 5: Rethinking the way we school
“Education of the Mind without Education of the Heart is no education at all” Aristotle
What does it actually mean to educate a human being? Not just fill them with knowledge or prepare them for a career, but genuinely form them as a person, capable of connection, empathy, and belonging across difference?
Dr Hugh Chilton has spent his career inside that question. From twelve years on the executive leadership team at Scots College Sydney , where he co-designed ScotsX, an experimental model of schooling built around real-world learning and sustained intergenerational relationships to his current role as Head of Teaching and Learning at Wycliffe Christian School in the Blue Mountains, Hugh has been quietly building an answer.
He’s also co-founder of the Sydney Character Initiative at the University of Sydney, working alongside Professor Phil Cummins and Benson Saulo to put character formation back at the centre of what schools are for.
In this conversation, we talk about what happens when you let teenagers spend real time with older people.. fortnightly, for a whole year , and why some of the boys who struggled most in a conventional classroom were the ones who shone brightest in an aged care home. We talk about the difference between adding community connection to a school program and actually designing it in. And we talk about vocation, what it means to choose work that is more than a career.
For educators & those interested, you can read Hugh’s chapter ” Scots X : A School within a School Learning Lab in the 2026 published book Resources for Effective Health and Well-Being Practices in the Middle Grades
This episode supported by Good Flock. Join the movement encouraging a cultural shift in ageing: Good Flock.org
Episode 4: Connection is Everything
This episode with Yr 12 student Luella Prasad reminds us that friendship & connection transcend age. Luella’s heartfelt sharing uncovers the profound impact reaching out beyond our comfort zones can yield, highlighting the importance of simply being present and open to others. Luella reminds us that lifelong friendships are born in moments of vulnerability, laughter, and shared stories. We speak about
* her love of connecting with people
* appreciating friendships no matter what age
* a special bond with her own grandfather through a love of piano and ABBA
* a mutual love with her aged care buddy Louise of all things cats & ABBA (even her pet dog Fernando !)
* hopes to be a Speech Pathologist and help improve people’s quality of life
This episode is essential listening for anyone craving authentic relationships in our fast paced, digital world… especially if you believe connection is the heart of community.
Episode 3: ‘Neighbourisms’ – The Pillars of a Resilient Society
Savannah Fishel, Churchill Fellow and Senior service designer facilitating systems change across health, nature and local economies works at the intersection of social connection, intergenerational and communal housing, preventative health, nature and community, service design, systems change, and tackling inequalities
In this conversation, Samantha Heron chats with Churchill Fellow Savannah Fishel, who researched 54 intergenerational and communal living communities across the US and Australia, and authored the report Beyond the White Picket Fence. Drawing on these real-world models that are already emerging, we explore what it means to move beyond individual moments of connection and begin thinking at a systems level.
This episode invites us to consider what becomes possible when we stop treating connection as a “nice to have” and start recognising it as essential to how we live.
This episode is hosted by Heart & Soul Story and supported by Good Flock. We gratefully acknowledge their support and commitment to exploring the cultural shift needed to reimagine how we live, age and belong … together.
Because building a the more connected society we need for a more sustainable world, isn’t just an idea, it’s already beginning to happen.
This episode supported by Good Flock. Join the movement encouraging a cultural shift in ageing: Good Flock.org
Connect with Savannah Fishel: thinkitforward.net
Episode 2 : Boots on the Ground
Mel Knuckey Generations Together – Tech Together, COTA Tasmania
What does it really take to bring community back together? Sometimes it starts with a pair of boots. Mel Knuckey has spent her career doing the quiet, essential work of community connection – from her early days as a shy 18-year-old joining Rotaract on the Central Coast, to running 16 intergenerational programs across Tasmania in under a year as Community Programs Coordinator at COTA Tasmania.
In this conversation, Mel reflects on finding her purpose, the moment something “just clicked” working in community development, and why she believes real change happens on the ground
We talk about:
*The Generations Connect Tech Together program, connecting young people with older residents in residential aged care homes across southern Tasmania through digital literacy and genuine friendship
*Student Sophie, who came in wanting to work in childcare and left with a traineeship in aged care, one of many young people now considering careers they’d never imagined
*The very real aged care workforce crisis, and why intergenerational programs might be part of the solution
*What it means to embed these programs into school curriculum at Years 9 and 10 (and the funding reality that sits behind that vision)
“Working in community was where I felt really alive and found my purpose in life.” — Mel Knuckey
This episode supported by Good Flock. Join the movement encouraging a cultural shift in ageing: Good Flock.org
Episode 1 : The Prime Minister Problem
We had a chat with children’s author Brenton Cullen about his beautiful, warm and deeply relevant book The Prime Minister Problem
“Old folks might feel a little left out. Lonely. So they hide away. They can seem angry or sad — but they might just want a friend.”
This is a children’s book. Yet it captures something that researchers, clinicians and community workers spend entire careers trying to articulate with the same depth. It gently points to something many of us are sensing … that as we fragment and become too ‘busy’ as a community, so too does our everyday experience of connection and belonging
Brenton Cullen writes about a boy, his grandmother, Meals on Wheels rounds, and the quiet devastation of an older person being moved far from the community that knows them.
It is a story written for children, but it is most definitely a story for all of us.
After over 7 years working on ways to increase intergenerational connection, this is the first episode of Bringing Community Back Together, and I could not have asked for a better place to begin.
