Kicking Off 2026 in Partnership: Strategy, Storytelling and Systems Change
If 2025 was about sowing seeds, 2026 began with momentum.
We stepped into the year in active partnership as an anchor organisation with the New Economy Network Australia (NENA), co-creating spaces for strategy, dialogue and imagination — all grounded in a shared commitment to building an ecologically healthy and socially just economy.
Rather than easing slowly into January, we chose to begin with intention.
While much of the country was still in holiday mode, we kicked-off our partnership and gathered on New Year’s Day for a strategic visioning workshop. This wasn’t about resolutions.It was about direction.
Together, participants explored:
The structural conditions shaping the year ahead
Where leverage points for change might lie
How personal projects connect to broader economic transformation
What it means to act with coherence rather than urgency
The session invited people to zoom out from individual initiatives and locate their work within a wider system. We mapped tensions, identified opportunities, and clarified priorities.
Starting the year this way sent a clear message: change doesn’t happen by accident. It requires deliberate design.
🎧 Launching Voices of the New Economy Through Changing Times News
A major milestone in our early 2026 partnership with the New Economy Network Australia was supporting the launch of Voices of the New Economy — a new podcast amplifying the thinkers, organisers and practitioners building economic alternatives across Australia.
Through our Changing Times News platform, we helped bring this podcast to life as more than just an audio series. It was positioned as a transmedia storytelling initiative — integrating written reflections, cross-promotion, and narrative framing to situate each episode within the broader new economy movement.
Voices of the New Economy creates space for:
Deep conversations about post-growth futures
Practical examples of community-led economic models
Reflections on wellbeing, democracy and ecological limits
Honest discussion about the tensions and trade-offs involved in system change
By supporting the launch, HCN contributed both production infrastructure and narrative strategy — ensuring the podcast doesn’t simply inform, but helps shape the story of what economic transformation in Australia can look like.
Stories matter. If policies shape structures, narratives shape possibility. Through Changing Times News, we are committed to strengthening the narrative ecosystem that makes new economic thinking accessible, grounded and compelling.
The launch of Voices of the New Economy is an important step in that direction — and another example of how collaboration between networks can amplify collective impact.
A Deep-Dive Webinar with Ted Trainer
We were also honoured to host a webinar conversation with Ted Trainer — one of Australia’s longstanding thinkers on simpler living and alternative economic models.
The session examined:
The limits of growth-dependent economies
Community self-reliance and localism
The cultural assumptions underpinning consumer capitalism
Practical pathways towards post-growth futures
Rather than treating degrowth as an abstract academic debate, the conversation grounded it in lived practice and long-term experimentation.
For many attendees, it was a chance to engage directly with ideas that challenge dominant economic narratives — and to do so in a reflective, respectful space.
🌏 Supporting Reclaim the Economy Week
Our partnership with NENA also extended into Reclaim the Economy Week, a coordinated national effort to spotlight alternatives to business-as-usual economics.
Throughout the week, we supported and amplified:
Events exploring wellbeing economies
Conversations on economic democracy
Storytelling initiatives reframing what prosperity means
Cross-hub collaboration across regions and themes
The week wasn’t just a series of events. It was a collective signal — that the new economy movement in Australia is growing in coherence and confidence.
For HCN, this partnership reflects our belief that strategy and narrative must move together. Training changemakers in tools like Theory of Change and systems thinking matters — but so does connecting those changemakers to broader networks shaping structural transformation.
Why This Partnership Matters
The collaboration between HCN and NENA represents something deeper than co-hosting events.
It represents alignment.
HCN brings structured strategy, systems literacy and impact design tools.
NENA brings a national network, economic vision, and cross-sector convening power.
Together, the work becomes more than capacity-building. It becomes ecosystem-building.
In an era defined by polycrisis — climate instability, social fragmentation, economic insecurity — isolated action is not enough. We need shared language, shared analysis, and shared direction.
That’s what these early 2026 events began to cultivate.