There are several reasons why community collectives have been emerging over the last decade as ways for communities to take more control over their futures. In this blog post, we explore the reasons why community collectives have become more important and why they represent an important opportunity to secure place-based and community-led tourism.
What is a Community Collective?
A community collective is a group or organisation that forms around shared needs, interests, or goals. It is owned and operated by its members, and it represents a collective voice on matters that are important to the community. Community collectives are an interesting and potentially innovative structure for communities that wish to work in more holistic ways to host visitors and contribute to regenerating our social, ecological and economic systems.
Structure
A community collective generally has a flat, horizontal structure rather than a traditional hierarchical one. It is networked and the social relationships between people are really important driving change. In other words, its the members that collectively steer the organisation based on a shared sense of purpose and mutual respect.
Purpose
The purpose of a community collective may be varied. The main driver, however, is to pursue a set of social, economic, environmental and/or cultural goals that the community will benefit from as a whole. This does not mean that everyone has to agree on everything (an impossibility!) but that there is an understanding that, by working together, everyone will benefit.
Consultative
Community Collectives are usually characterised by deep sustained community engagement which is respectful and involves each member having an opportunity to have a say.
Legal status
Community collectives may adopt different legal structures depending upon the jurisdiction. They are often not-for-profits, cooperatives, or social enterprises where, if there are any profits, they are reinvested back into the collective and its activities for the benefit of the community.
Values
Community collectives emphasise cooperation, shared values, inclusion and mutual support.
Size
Community cooperatives can range from small, local groups to larger organisations serving wider communities. For this reason, community collectives take on every diverse forms and address a wide variety of challenges where collaboration is key and benefits are distributed.
Community Collectives
Community collectives can be formed for a variety of reasons and can operate in various sectors, including housing, food, energy, and education. They have been created to manage alternative currencies, such as the Sardex, a complementary currency in Sardinia.
After bushfires in Mallacoota, Australia, for example, a local community group has developed a solar power project to purify the town’s drinking water. The community wanted to reduce its ecological footprint and improve the resilience of essential services. In East Gippsland, community energy projects are powering a green transition and the East Gippsland Community Foundation was created to make a lasting difference in Gippsland by investing in projects that promote well-being, resilience and involvement in our community.
Another example is the Yackandanda Community Development Company which was established to undertake projects and initiatives which economically, socially or culturally benefit the community of Yackandandah and its surrounding areas.
These examples show that communities are identifying issues and coming up with their own initiatives and actions rather than waiting for government programs. Communities are using their lived experience and local knowledge and are using what they have access to in order to activate the change that they desire.
Why are Community Collectives on the Rise?
Community collectives have gained popularity in response to a range of issues that have emerged from decades of neoliberal public policies. These issues have included:
Reduced government services - The austerity unleashed from neoliberal policies often leads to reduced public spending, the shifting of funding to large businesses through grants, incentives, and cheap loans, and the privatisation of services. Community collectives delivering much needed local services have emerged to fill gaps in essential services.
Increased economic inequality - As wealth and power are concentrated in fewer and fewer people, and economic development is focused ‘picking winners’ with the right political connections, rural, regional and remote communities continue to receive a declining proportion of public spending. Increasing inequality and marginalisation is the result, and it’s accompanied by a centralist view that regions are less capable of looking after their own futures. Collectives offer a way for communities to pool resources and create economic, social opportunities and address environmental issues.
Decline in social capital - The decline in social capital is well documented across western economies. ‘Social capital’ refers to the connections, or social ties, between people. The quality of those social ties is an economic and political issue. Declining social capital means weaker connections between people, and results in, for example, low rates of civic engagement, fewer volunteers, less collaborative problem-solving and fewer people looking out one another. Low social capital has been linked to a decline in trust in institutions such as governments, and a rise in conspiracy theories and misinformation.
Well-designed community collectives create the space for conversation and the development of shared understandings and goals. The diminished quality of ‘fast and furious’ community consultation designed to reinforce a system that is not consultative has led to frustration. As a result, many communities are banding together to create the social spaces of connection and conversation that they crave.
Market failures - Industrial tourism is generating a range of impacts, the systemic impacts of which are poorly understood. In some cases, governments look away because such exercises might result in deviating from their pre-determined legislative role to maximise tourism. For example, the collective impact of tourism’s carbon footprint, waste generation, retail consumption, gig economy labour, and so on are not systematically addressed yet these issues are very much on the minds of local communities watching their waste facilities reach capacity, the decline in wellbeing from the rise in gig-economy work, or the impacts of climate on the environment and biodiversity.
As a result, community collectives are emerging to directly address the impacts that the tourism system only talks about. Citizen science programs, regeneration and marine clean-up programs, environmental education programs are often driven by community collectives leveraging their local knowledge and lived experience.
Empowerment. Neoliberalism, as a top-down experiment, has been associated with a loss of control over local futures. The traditional tourism organisation often provides limited and tokenistic community engagement and outcomes are always directed towards achieving the goals of the tourism system, not the community. Collectives allow communities to take more control of their future, manage local resources and engage in matters that they care about. This counters the increasing centralisation of power that is associated with neoliberalism.
Environmental concerns - With proximity to environmental issues and local knowledge, collectives often address local environmental issues more effectively than waiting for top-down solutions by consultants ‘from away’.
Alternative economic models - Collectives often adopt alternative economic models of exchange and create other kinds of social, human and economic value. For example, a local gardening co-op may share surplus food, tools and other assistance as a way of supporting local food resilience. Economic models such as collectives are not intended to replace the existing system but to diversify the way our economies operate and to build resilience in the face of continued shocks and uncertainty.
Localisation - Traditionally, neoliberal economic policy has concentrated decision power at the centre with soft power (e.g. collusion, influence, etc) embedded in the relationships between the public and private sectors. Communities are left out of these relationships and yet are likely to experience the impacts of systemic failure more directly. Community collectives have emerged to take back local economies and address local needs based on local understanding and knowledge.
Democratic participation - Community collectives often seek to address the negative effects of increased competition and individualism under neoliberalism. Collectives provide an opportunity for local people to participate in a form of direct democracy, which counters the perceived democratic deficit caused by central decision making.
Resilience - Community collectives can make important contributions to local resilience by building on the unique qualities and characteristics of places.
Community Collectives and Tourism
Tourism as an industry sector is characterised by an organisational structure and a division of roles and responsibilities that focuses on growing the industry. While this may have worked 20 years ago, increasing concerns about the meta-crisis and all its drivers means that (if we are honest) a system designed in the 1980s is increasingly less ‘fit for purpose’.
Tourism is not an isolated sector and can no longer be managed as if it were separate. It sits within a very complex system where there are many drivers of change. The challenge is no longer how to grow tourism, but how to manage an increasingly complex landscape of issues in a balanced and holistic way. It’s no longer about how to prioritise tourism, but how we can host visitors and help to regenerate the social, economic and environmental systems that sustain us.
Traditionally, tourism is addressed through Chambers of Commerce or Local Tourism Associations (as the traditional business interest group in a location). However, as we move towards a more balanced and holistic approach to sustaining and regenerating local places and communities in the face of austerity, we need to reframe existing structures. If there is resistance, we need to build new, future-fit structures and relationships.
Above: Flinders Island Food Network, part of the Furneaux Collective, Tasmania.
Advantages of Community Collectives
Community collectives are well placed to take a broader perspective and to empower people to work together to meet community needs and improve their collective outcomes.
Inclusive - In community collectives, the boundaries between being a community member and being a business owner are dissolved. Most business members are community members so there is no artificial divide. Individuals are treated as valid, they are respected and incorporated into engagement activities.
Broad benefit - Community Collectives can ensure that tourism benefits the community, the place and nature, whereas the traditional chamber of commerce is structured and motivated to pursue business members’ interests.
Holistic Approach - Instead of framing tourism as an industry sector operating in a silo, community collectives can dissolve boundaries and work across divides to address the real issues as the community sees them.
Stronger together. Collective benefit is the aim of a community collective. Thriving communities are communities where economic, social and environmental challenges are treated equally and their is no prioritisation of economic benefit.
Collectives fill the gaps. In a system where austerity reigns and public budgets are diminishing, community collectives can fill the gaps and empower communities to take charge of their own futures and not wait for government funds and solutions from away.
Builds social capital. The decline in social capital - the connections between people and the support they lend to each other - is an economic problem. It is also a health and well-being problem. Community collectives can help to rebuild declining social capital and restore connectivity, mutual respect and support.
Photo: Collectives can build social capital, increase community connectivity, and assist in developing a shared vision. Traditional tourism organisations are generally not framed to deliver community benefits.
What have collectives got to do with tourism?
So what has all this got to do with tourism, you might ask! In most jurisdictions, tourism is already organised into tight hierarchical organisations from national to regional to local. The structure is highly incentivised and money flows for those that work towards the objectives and targets that are set for them from the organisation above. Much like a cog in a machine, at the local level no thinking is involved. The objectives, structure, process, tools, and tasks are all set out for you. In an effort to address some generic diagnosis of what is needed, governments at upper levels buy tools from consultants that often do not understand the local challenges. They incentivise local tourism organisations to implement these tools, regardless of whether the tools are are suitable or not.
It is a system that imposes a particular way of doing tourism to places and communities. It’s a system where the priorities are all around economic development, investment attraction and growth (whether that is yield or arrivals or nights doesn’t matter because it’s all based on an industrial model of resource extraction, profit maximisation, and the distribution of those profits elsewhere).
However, communities are increasingly starting to question this approach. Neither traditional Chambers of Commerce nor Local Tourism Associations have an interest or a mandate to work holistically to address community needs. Ironically, in some of our work, we have seen existing organisations actively work against community interests due to old established ways and not understanding that social, economic and environmental needs are intertwined. New organisational arrangements are needed.
As a result, communities are self-organising and leveraging the points in the system where the change can be made. “We are just getting on and doing it” said one member of a community we work with.
“It’s time for a new kind of leadership,” said one change maker in a second community we also work with. “It’s time that they [the old group] just let go and trust in the next generation of leaders. It’s a different time, and there are different issues. It’s about the community, about getting things done, and it’s not about posting photos with politicians.”
Put simply, communities are rejecting the traditional roles assigned to them. They are not passive citizens expected to absorb the negative impacts of tourism. In our own conversations these tensions between the top down and the bottom-up are manifested in a variety of ways including the following:
Locals are questioning the social license of tourism to exist in their communities and don’t see top-down tools, (e.g. certification schemes, template DMPs) as relevant or useful to the real daily challenges they face.
Locals are not necessarily ‘anti-visitor’, and most accept that travel is an important aspect of learning, growing and becoming better humans. “We have all been travellers at one time” is a common reflection. However, industrial tourism is being questioned in the communities (or its never been relevant) and they are prepared to bypass a system that doesn’t work for them.
There is a creative reworking of place, community and localisation processes emerging as many regional, remote and marginalised communities fight for survival. Austerity is being met with local activations that leverage the unique qualities and resources of places. The existing structure, organisation and objectives of industrial tourism is not flexible nor adaptive enough for to be aligned with this ground up emergence.
Operators who have completed sustainability scorecards or certifications are still waiting to understand what the tangible benefits are of these tools. They are not convinced, but since they are incentivised, they may go along for the moment, and in the absence of something that makes better sense.
Some communities are questioning the value of top-down certification schemes that assume top-down solutions are relevant in their local contexts. Instead, they ask whether responsive approaches can be nurtured that build upon local knowledge and lived experience to address the real challenges being experienced.
Inspiring examples of collectives addressing community futures with a tourism twist
There is a small but growing pool of experimental approaches that are using community collectives (and complementary business structures). Two innovative examples highlighted in this post include:
Shorefast - Shorefast is a Canadian registered charity established in 2004. The charity’s goal has been to build economic and cultural resilience on Fogo Island, a 400 year-old outport fishing community critically impacted by the decline of the cod fishery
4VI - Their social enterprise model includes three interconnected entities that form the 4VI Group: 4TVI is a not-for-profit corporation, 4EVER is a socially responsible business corporation, and 4Good is a social impact fund. Together, they will continue to deliver on their four key pillars: communities, business, cultures, and the environment, to ensure travel is a force for good. Forever.
Furneaux Collective - Flinders Island, Tasmania. The Furneaux Collective was formed at the end of the first stage of The Islander Way project. At this time, it was clear that there was no existing organisation with the capacity, interest, social licence or vision to take carriage of the journey that had been co-created with the community. A fresh and energetic organisation was needed to take 2.5 years of community engagement, 6 subprojects and 40+ initiatives designed and developed by the community forward. The Collective is driven by a shared vision for a thriving community. It’s goals are ambitious, illustrating a commitment to making a positive impact on the Furneaux Islands.
Summary
Community collectives, underpinned by a sustainable economic model, represent an interesting and potentially innovative alternative for communities that wish to work in more holistic ways with the hosting of visitors and regenerative development. Established systems won't accept this change lightly and will push back in an effort to protect the old ways. In many communities, we are now recognising that a tipping point has arrived and community collectives are a vehicle for social license. Instead of tourism, communities would like to host visitors in ways that contribute to the restoration and regeneration of their social, economic and environmental systems. It is a shift that we have been seeing for many years, but it is now starting to manifest frequently in many places globally. Community collectives will become more common as these changes gain momentum and social license is acknowledged as an important foundational pillar.
About the Tourism CoLab - The Tourism CoLab is dedicated to redesigning tourism for a regenerative future. We're on a mission to redesign the way we host and experience places by restoring and regenerating our social, ecological and economic systems. To achieve our mission, we are courageous, unconventional, creative, and community-focused. In 2024, we launched our Communiversity, a community of practice that blends learning, practice and reflection. It is where you can engage in formal courses or informally network with a global community to think outside the box and activate for the change ahead.
About the Author. Dianne Dredge has a PhD in tourism policy and regional development and has published 200+ papers and 8 books on tourism policy, governance, community development, education, and related matters. She is founder and director of the Tourism CoLab and Designing Tourism, which delivers a place-based, community-activated regenerative living lab on Flinders Island, Tasmania.