Narrating the future you want

Joining the dots to a way of life where people and nature thrive

We work with companies, government agencies and social enterprises.

We create policies, communication strategies and ways to connect hearts and minds.

Methods

Insightful thinking, playful design, practical solutions. Thrive Story uses systems thinking, ecological design and storytelling to engage hearts and minds.

Services

Policy research and writing
Service design
Communication strategy
Stakeholder engagement
Facilitation
Imagination

Sectors

Infrastructure and essential services - water, energy, waste, transport, health
Strategic land use planning
Environment and sustainability

Clients

Public sector e.g. NSW Department of Planning Industry and Environment
Social enterprises e.g. Good Cycles
Peak bodies e.g. AIRAH

Project examples

Just a little more time - A story for Fossil or Flesh

Australian Fairytale Society Conference, Brisbane, 1-2 October 2022

Before people the trees were bigger, the animals were larger and time... was endless. That was before the blackness came and swallowed up the gaint trees, the giant animals and the sunshine of millennia. The eternity of time was compressed, buried deep and forgotten.

Many years passed new plants grew, animals were born and people evolved. In a faraway land, maybe China, a small child found a slither of deep time, washed up in a storm. Deep compressed time, with the heat of a century of sun and the work of a thousand horses you could hold in your hand.

The child fashioned the deep time into an earring fit for an empress or maybe a time lord. There began a dangerous game of power in the search for just a bit more time.

For more information, visit the Thrive Story blogpost

Heart of Dulwich Hill

Reimagining the village centre of Dulwich Hill as meeting place, cultural centre and affordable housing.

Policy

Client: Department of Planning Industry and Environment

Brief: Create a strategic framework for communicating air quality

Issue: Multiple agencies have roles in delivering clean air but lacked a cohesive approach to communicating and engaging people on the wicked problem of air pollution.

Solution: Thrive Story identified relevant NSW Government, national and international policies as well as industry standards for quality, communications and environmental health and emergency management. Thrive Story also interviewed key subject matter specialists. Thrive Story synthesised the findings into a strategic framework to unite key NSW Government agency heads, senior executives and their service and program managers in working together effectively to reduce air pollution and its harmful effects on human and ecological health in NSW. This supports the NSW Government Brand Promise , Customer Commitments, Charter for Public Participation , Emergency Management Plan and legal and policy commitments to clean air, climate change and human health.

Collaborations

Humans of HVACR

Liz Locksley is co-founder with AIRAH’s Phil Wilkinson of Humans of HVACR. Humans of HVACR is a sector-wide collaboration to humanise and transform what is possibly the most invisible industry, with the greatest potential to reverse global warming - heating ventilation air-conditioning and refrigeration. Liz is the story and secret sauce mix master. Mechanical heating, cooling and refrigeration is the elephant in the plant room. The equipment collectively chews through 22% of all electricity generated in Australia! Refrigerant management is the surprising #1 action to reverse global warming in Paul Hawken's latest project #Drawdown.

Creative work

Thrive Story Blog
Just a bit more time....Carboniferous
Australian Red Riding Hood
Cumquat Fest
Sunshine Power
Goblins Gold

Goblin’s Gold

In a dark cave, on the wooded escarpment of Alderley Edge in England, a fragment of Goblin’s Gold, is snatched from behind the wizard, by a band of wise and ancient flower fairies. In that fragment, they discover one of Planet Earth's toughest and most tenacious of creatures.

Contact Thrive Story to organise a live storytelling with Liz Locksley

GOBLIN's Gold - Book for web A4 V2.0.pdf

Goblin's Gold - the mini-book!

The tale of a quest and the thrivability of all things

Read the full story here

Coming soon.... Sunshine power

Nature's magic is 100% renewable and 100% solar powered. Homegrown cherry tomatoes and cumquats are the inspiration for a new project.

Watch this space.....

Australian Red Riding Hood

Thrive Story created a new eco-feminist version of Red Riding Hood for Dark Enchantment hosted by the Australian Fairytale Society and Storytellers NSW. It was told live on 17 November at Dark Enchantment.