EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Jane Stratton, CEO & Founder, Think+DO Tank Foundation
Within the next four years, the Think+DO Tank Foundation will mark our tenth birthday. And like any self-respecting 10 year-old, we are experiencing some rapid growth.
It has taken us a while to grow from a one-woman show, to the multilingual team of diverse talents that carries our work today. But through persistence, and patient collaboration with communities in the South West of Sydney - together - we have proved a methodology for community-led social change through the arts.
We have a firm purpose in mind, and the strategic nous to pursue it: to create fairer systems for low-income communities, through the arts.
Think+DO Tank Foundation’s work has generated, and is the result of relationships and connectedness. We have maintained a continual presence and program since 2013. With the investment of recurrent funding from 2020 - 2024, we gain stability; and the funding we need to maintain community trust and continuity of staff and programming. We gain the licence and resources to do our work at full strength free from the diversion of pausing to ask for permission with every funding application we write.
If the opening to the decade is a portent for the remainder of the decade, we know it will be characterised by change and upheaval. We have confidence that in the uncertainty and complexity that is afoot, our characteristic agility, inventiveness and determination to collaborate will see us thrive, alongside our partners.
Our program and plan for 2020 - 2024 is an open-handed invitation to community members; storytellers and artists from culturally and diverse backgrounds; and our rich network of collaborators to make and share new Australian stories that reflect us all.
Art asks us to examine our humanity, to amplify the threads that connect us and diminish those that divide us through geography, language and politics. Art starts conversations, holds and celebrates diverse points of view and asks each of us to imagine and create a world that does not yet exist.
Making room for artistic self-expression in the languages spoken in the communities around us means that each of us can take an equal place in making new Australian stories and imagining new possibilities, together.
We have a firm purpose in mind, and the strategic nous to pursue it: to create fairer systems for low-income communities, through the arts.
OUR MISSION + VISION
Think+DO Tank Foundation (TDTF) collaborates with low-income and marginalised communities in NSW, with a focus on culturally and linguistically diverse women and children. Together we develop a shared methodology, designing projects that have a demonstrated impact within our communities.
Think+DO Tank Foundation is a creative force for social cohesion and belonging; a champion of multilingual creative production and self-expression; an accelerator of creative talent; an investigator of complex social needs; and an agile, experimental, collaborative force. We work with community members and service partners, in shaping fairer systems through the arts.
As reflected in the “Think+DO” of our name, we have been applying critical and curious thinking to everyday realities since 2013.
ORGANISATIONAL GOALS
1. Resilience + Sustainability
GOAL 1.1 TDTF is agile, adaptive and sustainable.
GOAL 1.2 TDTF maintains its pursuit of clear and commonly shared purposes.
GOAL 1.3 TDTF sustains the employment of diverse and talented teams.
2. Catalysing Innovation
GOAL 2.1 TDTF catalyses innovative and collaborative change in the communities in which it works.
3. Engagement + Participation
GOAL 3.1 TDTF and our projects are seen and heard.
GOAL 3.2 TDTF’s work attracts high levels of engagement and participation
4. Excellence + Impact
GOAL 4.1 TDTF is recognised as a leader in the development of arts-centred projects with positive social impact.
GOAL 4.2 TDTF produces high quality, original and culturally relevant artistic works.
OUR STORY
Since 2013, Think+DO Tank Foundation (TDTF) has been working within local communities in lowincome parts of South Western and Western Sydney, co-creating artistic projects and social enterprises in which creativity and collaboration are driving forces.
Our work asks low-income and marginalised community members: “What would make life here easier, more affordable, or better?”. By working together, participating communities increase their capacity to be driving forces of change in society and in their own lives.
OUR PROGRAMS
We produce a new creative program each year to enable us to learn from the communities with whom we work about what they need, and how we can best serve them.
In 2021, our Creative Program is a strategy for:
the amplification of Australian voices that speak languages other than English;
a celebration of multilingualism and rich cultural exchange;
taking the arts to the communities most at risk of not accessing high quality arts and cultural activities - namely, low-income communities; and culturally and linguistically diverse communities, both in metropolitan and regional locations.