Let’s meet two graduates of UQ’s Master of Communication coursework degree. Here we trace their experiences as they learned and applied key knowledge and skills from their postgraduate studies, both in a real-world class assessment and then into an industry placement. Gracella Raga Lawa (or Grace) is an Indonesian communication professional, and Chanrachana Chhum (or Rachana) is a development practitioner from Cambodia. Both Australia Awards scholars were enrolled in the field of study of Communication for Social Change (CSC), which UQ is the only Australian university to offer. Grace and Rachana both graduated in December 2024, completing the courses COMU7013 and COMU7015 as part of their postgraduate study.
Teaching and learning participatory development communication
COMU7013 Participatory Development Communication (affectionately known as “PDC”) is taught in Semester 1 each year. It is a mandatory subject within the CSC field of study, and one of its major assessments requires completing a participatory consultation activity that feeds into a real-world project with a community organisation. Past collaborations have been run with SANDBAG Inc., the Green P Community Farm for migrants and refugees, and the Pasifika Young Peoples Wellbeing Network (PYPWN).
Students regularly comment that COMU7013 is the most hands-on course in their master’s degree. In previous course evaluations, for example, they valued that the “course was well-grounded in real-world practicality” and lauded how “it was really cool to be able to apply learned practices to real situations where change may occur.” Speaking for both Rachana and Grace, the latter said that COMU7013 was “one of the most interesting courses for us. … I wish we could have more big, intensive courses like that.”
In 2024, the community partner for the COMU7013 project was The Gabba Ward office. Councillor Trina Massey has held this seat on Brisbane City Council since 2023, representing the inner-Brisbane suburbs of Kangaroo Point, Dutton Park, West End, Highgate Hill, South Brisbane and western Woolloongabba. The COMU7013 students supported The Gabba Ward in its work to make iconic Davies Park – home to West End’s renowned Saturday markets – as open as possible to local residents and visitors. Davies Park, although it feels like a community asset, is actually controlled by numerous leases held by Souths Logan Rugby League Club, Jane Street Community Garden, and various Brisbane rowing clubs. With so little green space available in one of Brisbane’s fastest developing areas, what did Davies Park users and the local West End community want for this valuable shared parkland? How did they want it to be used and managed under the governing master plan?
To answer these questions, carefully outlined in the brief provided by The Gabba Ward, the COMU7013 students prepared for community consultations. Within CSC, this is known as a participatory situation analysis. By engaging carefully with specific stakeholders, and bringing their viewpoints together at a public presentation, both students and stakeholders compiled a shared analysis of the circumstances around Davies Park, to the benefit of the “client” (The Gabba Ward) and the wider community.
Students formed small teams, with each team allocated 1 or 2 stakeholder groups who cared about the future of Davies Park. While The Gabba Ward supplied a detailed list, students eventually added other participants after conducting their own research. Over the first half of semester, students were trained in stakeholder identification and analysis, and in facilitating participatory communication activities. This meant learning how to run small-group discussions, guide visual activities, and elicit information and discussions using butcher’s paper, sticky notes, coloured pens, stickers, seeds, diagrams and physical activities. Once students grasped both the brief and enough tried-and-tested communication techniques, each team designed communication methods which best suited their participants, and submitted them for the approval of the teaching staff and The Gabba Ward.
Once we were into Week 8, COMU7013 students were already out on their project, engaging with the Davies Park community and seeking their participants’ views. This took many forms, as is to be expected in a project involving diverse organisations and individuals. The teams were encouraged to be inventive in their participatory methods, a challenge they accepted with alacrity. Students attended formal meetings with representatives from the rowing and football clubs. They took posters to the West End market and asked passers-by to draw their thoughts about Davies Park. They joined community gardeners at Jane Street and facilitated their opinions and analysis in a group meeting.
Along the way, each team documented its work, culminating in an event in Week 10 when the class presented its findings to its client and the broader West End community. The Gabba Ward Councillor, organisation stakeholders and community members were all invited to a poster-presentation session at the Lithuanian Club in Highgate Hill. Students came dressed in their best, offered food from their home countries or communities, and outlined what they had learnt in a World Café format. The former Head of the School of Communication and Arts, Professor Brownyn Lea, also attended.
Continuing the good work through an industry placement
Following COMU7013 in Semester 1, Grace – introduced earlier – was keen to undertake a placement in Semester 2 to benefit her careers in communications and development. This would be as part of the course COMU7015 Industry Placement. Grace asked COMU7013 course coordinator, Associate Professor Elske van de Fliert, for the names of appropriate organisations, and suggested that Grace continue with The Gabba Ward. Grace shared the idea with her teammate Rachana, and the two students spoke with Gabba Ward staff at the final presentation session. Having seen their contributions to the class consultation, the Councillor’s office was happy to welcome Rachana and Grace. Over the second semester, the women committed 60–65 hours each to continuing the project of community consultation around Davies Park. Rachana and Grace planned and ultimately delivered not one, but two, further public consultation activities over a 3-month period. Grace reported, “It was very tiring but a very rewarding experience for us.”
When Grace and Rachana began their internship, they were first given a very general topic focused on educating the West End community about plans for Davies Park, and hearing community aspirations and challenges regarding the park’s services. As Rachana explained, “it was just like a journey we were taking along with [The Gabba Ward’s] brainstorming. So at first, they gave us a very general objective, so that the two of us decided how we would like to shape the consultations. And then later on, we decided with them on the specific objective, that we were going to focus on the park users, more specifically.” This helped The Gabba Ward devise what materials and information they needed to share in the educational phase of their Davies Park campaign.
As Grace noted, “They didn’t just dictate to us what to do, but they actually trusted us, kind of like we were the experts of the communication part!” She later said it was quite inspiring to be appreciated and treated as peers by The Gabba Ward staff, recognised for providing valued knowledge and specific skills. Although it was quite a lot of pressure, the students said they revised the COMU7013 teachings on participatory methods, and “became the trainers”, as Rachana shared, describing to Gabba Ward staff how some of the communication tools worked.
One of the pair’s consultations was through a stall at the Kurilpa Derby, a wild, wheeled community event through the streets of West End, hosted by the West End Community Association. The student interns had to “go up to different people and talk to them out of blue.” As Grace reflected, “It's kind of nerve-wracking.” They printed out their consultation materials, like a timeline of Davies Park’s history and a park map/vision board, and created stickers of infrastructure items that the Gabba Ward wanted to improve. Community members stuck an infrastructure sticker that mattered to them on the vision board to show their hopes for the future of the shared parkland.
Another consultation was held via a focus-group discussion, where community members were “given the floor” to share their perspectives and ask questions. Before attending, participants were asked to fill out an online survey. This specifically included open-answer questions to allow for broader information on residents’ satisfaction with Davies Park. A small number of participants then met in person, despite the gathering being held on a “stormy and cloudy” day when 3 rugby matches were being played. “Still some people came, which showed their engagement with community issues,” Grace said. And although “it’s only a small number of people, we get to engage with them deeply, and they're not ashamed to ask a lot of questions.” Between the information participants received and their discussion as a group, the stakeholders were then guided to develop a priority matrix to identify and weigh future options for Davies Park. This helped whittle down the funding priorities that The Gabba Ward could focus on: participants were instructed, “Just give us 5.” A later consultation, to be held in mid-November 2024, was also given to Rachana and Grace to design. Grace again: “They give us the full responsibility to design the whole consultation. So it was very hectic, but productive too.”
At the end of their time at The Gabba Ward, the pair’s work plan had expanded from 17 tasks to 40 “because we wanted to do more”. Grace was phlegmatic: “we should have expected that because we used to work with community.” Rachana and Grace submitted a report analysing the survey, focus-group discussion, vision board with stickers, and priority matrix. They also refined the Gabba Ward’s work on the 10 team reports created by the COMU7013 class. The students created summaries and recommendations based on the class reports, and their “experiences of being, like a normal human being interacting with other human beings” (Grace).
Communicating into the future
Both students greatly appreciated the opportunity to complete an internship on a project so strongly linked to their coursework studies, and they recommended that UQ expand its support for students’ internship connections. Rachana also noted how much she learned from working with very engaged community members, laughing as she recalled that she learned “how to facilitate those with a high kind of outrage, who are very concerned about their community affairs”. She was inspired by the work of groups like Kurilpa Futures and the idea of replicating their work for community green space in her hometown of Phnom Penh. Grace also commented, “We just really – we were so happy with PDC. We thought that there will be more courses like that, something that was very useful and practical for the actual work that that we were going to do.” They recommended to future students that they follow the university’s suggested course progression, as it was so logical to first complete COMU7102 Communication for Social Change: Foundations, then follow it immediately with COMU7013.
The Gabba Ward also gained great benefit from Grace and Rachana’s community consultations. Both students received glowing placement reports which termed them “the ideal intern”, and Councillor Trina Massey was still singing their praises when she saw the COMU7013 lecturers a full year after their internship was completed. The Councillor was emphatic that the work completed for The Gabba Ward – as a “client” of COMU7013 and as a host organisation for COMU7015 interns – was still being used by her staff as foundational information about the Ward’s residents and their relationship to local public spaces.
Rachana and Grace each graduated from UQ with a Master of Communication in the field of Communication for Social Change in 2025, then planned to return to their home countries. In our late-2024 interview, Rachana said, “I’m looking forward to giving my community back all the things that I learned here.” As of early 2026, Grace is working for a non-profit organisation focus on development and Christian issues. Her role is Donor Engagement Coordinator, focused on planning and implementing strategies and campaigns for consolidating donor relationships. Rachana, meanwhile, is managing events and campaigns for one of Cambodia’s flagship economic development programs. She oversees multiple events as well as social and behavioural change communication campaigns, aiming to strengthen the program’s outreach and awareness-raising. We hope the two graduates get many opportunities to implement their CSC skills!
Once again in 2026, the community partner for COMU7013 will be the office of The Gabba Ward. This time the COMU7013 students will be consulting the local community about the future of the Visy site on the Brisbane River in West End. Enrolments in COMU7013 close in mid-February 2026.
