Making Open | Content & Design Kit
Helping people who want to make the world a better place.
Making Open is a platform to connect a global network of advocates and changemakers using visual design and stories.
It includes a content library and design kit to help people who don’t have time or resources to simply communicate what policies, data, and systems can be put in place to make positive change.
We’ve made Making Open for advocates and changemakers in industry and government to explain, learn, and apply new approaches to improve transparency, access to information, good governance, and transform systems.
Explainers, guides and workshops include ways to improve access to information, corruption prevention, environmental impacts, community participation in decision making, and increase transparency in areas like government funding, contracting, development, natural resource governance, energy transition, and climate change planning.
We’ve developed and shared the prototype of the Making Open kit and storytelling guides with over 100 advocates and government changemakers who participated in our research and content development phase.
We are seeking funding to launch the kit, making it accessible to everyone. We also want to make it possible for people to add their own stories, case studies, and design assets representing different countries, cultures and contexts, and connect with others who can help.
To help us get the kit online and easy to use, you can make a tax deductible donation via the Australian Cultural Fund.
If you are interested in a content partnership or investing in our product development to help us grow, please get in touch with Mel.
make paths | pathway design tool
Helping people demystify complexity and follow processes.
Make Paths is a content design and collaboration tool we are developing to help people design beautiful, engaging, interactive, animated, and printable pathways of processes, policies, projects, and product life cycles.
Perfect for plotting a journey, demystifying complicated government information such as legislation and regulation, licence applications, environmental and consultation processes, mining, oil and gas, energy and infrastructure project life cycles, procurement or contracting pathways, and many other kinds of decision making processes.
Pathways help people navigate complex processes or visually show a journey, past, present or future. They are a great way to help people immediately see the big picture, understand how things are connected, what steps need to be or were taken, who the decision makers are.
They have proven to be a powerful communications, educational, and engagement tool.
We’ve been self-funding the development of Make Paths through our open process content creation partnerships.
If you are interested in a workshop, content partnership or becoming a funder, please get in touch.
make platform | reporting and engagement tool
Making data meaningful and connected to improve transparency and community engagement.
Workshops, training and engagement platform combining data, storytelling, design to help governments and companies publish and connect data about programs, mining, oil, gas, natural resources, renewable energy, infrastructure projects, land uses and climate change plans.
Most government data platforms are technical and lack contextual content. Open data is out there but not in formats accessible for non technical people. Platforms publish information but rarely have feedback loops. We’ve identified a global need to help inform and engage communities and industry, and deliver transparency commitments.
In 2014 we created a revolutionary community engagement tool, Common Ground, in collaboration with the NSW Government. You can read more about the background to this project and our participatory design approach from in this article.
Our work has been internationally recognised as best practice and inspired other governments. Many people have approached us with a similar problem - wanting a way to connect and present data and policies in a community friendly way.
Over the last few years we've been in research and development to further this work by exploring different uses, themes, audiences, ways to connect more relevant data and create content assets to drive citizen engagement, often in a fast paced deadline driven environment.
Our vision is to use our experiences and collaborate with governments, companies and communities across the world to create a reusable open source platform for everyone and anyone who wants to connect and share data, publish useful contextual content, and enable public participation in decision making.
We're looking for content and funding partners, if you are interested, we’d love to hear from you.