Innovation Case Study: Mallee Women: Sharing Stories, Shaping Equality
Mildura Rural Shire Council
Powerful Storytelling to Inspire Local Change
Mallee Women is a short film launched June 2025 to support long-term cultural change within the Mildura Regional City Council and community. It features diverse local women, sharing personal reflections on gender inequality and equality, power, privilege and action.
It introduces concepts and terms related to gender equality to deepen understanding and community dialogue.
2025 MAVlab Innovation Awards Finalist:
The Engage Award for Storytelling, supported by Fireside Agency and
The Wellbeing Award for Community Health Impacts supported by VicHealth
Project statistics:
- Core project team: two Mildura Council staff members, the local artist and Director, the film videographer/editor and six cast members.
- Project inception and design: October 2024 through to launch in June 2025.
- Community wide promotional campaign ran during the 16 Days of Activism in 2025 and promotion and embedding in training programs, etc. will be ongoing.
Project goals:
- Share and amplify the stories and voices of women in our community, highlighting their lived experiences of gender inequality and ways to address it.
- Use storytelling and community-led change to promote understanding of complex topics, including the gendered drivers of family violence, intersectionality, power, privilege, and community-led solutions.
- Create a free, accessible, values-based messaging resource for staff training, community engagement, and advocacy.
- Foster cultural change by educating staff and the community about gender equality.
- Support the primary prevention of family violence through inclusive, authentic storytelling.
Challenge and context:
Mildura Rural City Council faces complex challenges in addressing gender inequality and the drivers of family violence. The region’s remote context is shaped by conservative values, geographic isolation, cultural diversity, a strong First Nations population, and limited access to services. Of Victoria’s 79 LGAs, Mildura has the third-highest rate of family violence — an epidemic that requires urgent, innovative action.
Discussing gender equality in this environment can be divisive. The language and principles commonly used in these conversations can feel abstract or exclusionary, making community engagement difficult. Many women in the region experience intersecting forms of disadvantage — based on gender, culture, disability, age, and rurality — and their stories are rarely visible or understood.
Council’s challenge was to develop an accessible and engaging way to introduce gender equality concepts and create deeper understanding. They needed to empower diverse women to share the barriers that prevent them from reaching their full potential, as well as the actions they take to overcome them.
Council had funded and coordinated gender equality and primary prevention training through the State and Council-funded Free From Violence project. However, accessing and organising training can be a barrier in remote areas, and the content is rarely contextualised to the unique needs of the community. Council needed a way to localise gender equality concepts for a wide range of audiences, including Council staff, staff in local organisations, clubs, and community members.
They also needed to move beyond traditional awareness raising, slogans, data, and campaigns — to connect community members with the real experiences, stories, and ideas of women in the community, and to demonstrate that gender equality is about fairness and safety for the women in our lives: mothers, grandmothers, partners, daughters, and friends.
The concept itself was unique — a publicly accessible and inspirational short film about gender equality that explores key concepts, connects audiences with the lived experiences of diverse local women, and generates dialogue and deeper reflection.
The Mallee Women video project was created in response to these challenges and this unique local context.
Innovation and solution:
The Mallee Women film emerged from the Free From Violence Local Government initiative, which identified a need for authentic, community-led storytelling to complement traditional training and top-down messaging approaches. Many women in the region experience intersecting forms of disadvantage — based on gender, culture, disability, age, and rurality — yet their stories are often unseen and unheard.
Council developed a project plan and engaged local feminist artist Jill Antonie to direct the film, working with videographer/editor Rob Klarich. Together, they cast diverse local women to share real experiences of gender inequality and equality, prioritising ethical storytelling and consent.
They refined the concept, questions, and topics to produce the first-of-its-kind short film for the region, which is innovative and unique by:
- Adopting a values-based messaging vision–problem–solution structure to engage with audience values, navigate difficult ideas, and inspire action.Introducing complex concepts and terms — intersectionality, power, privilege, and gender equality/inequality — in a conversational, accessible format that eliminates barriers and increases confidence for people to engage.Honouring the complexity of lived experience and social identity.Featuring women from diverse backgrounds and social identities: First Nations, culturally diverse, living with disability, survivors of violence, and women across ages, rurality, careers, and parenting status.Adopting a peer-to-peer, narrative-driven approach, proven to be impactful and sustainable for cultural change.Shifting from top-down messaging to community-led storytelling, embedding lived experience into strategic communication.Being designed for flexibility — used in inductions, training, events, and social media — and supported by a facilitation guide to deepen reflection and learning; online and accessible to all.Moving beyond generic campaigns and data, harnessing the power of visual storytelling to communicate the evidence base.Presenting a scalable and replicable model for councils wanting to create cultural transformation through inclusive, community-led education initiatives.
Council needed a new way to spark conversations about gender equality. This project demonstrates that storytelling — especially when led by peers — can be a powerful tool for education, inclusion, and systemic change.
We wanted to go beyond traditional awareness-raising, slogans, data, and campaigns to connect the community with the real experiences, stories, and ideas of women in our region.
Impact and outcomes:
The Mallee Women video launched in late June to an audience of 70 community leaders, supporters, and stakeholders. The film’s director and the cast of local women presented the work, ensuring their voices remained at the centre of the project. The screening received a standing ovation and emotional feedback, including:
- “The intimacy of the production. Simplicity of the formula and power of the stories.”
- “A truly extraordinary video.”
- “Magnificent. I almost ugly cried.”
Within one month — and with 730 views — the video became the most-watched piece of content on Mildura Council’s YouTube channel in the past year. Despite broader promotion not yet commencing, it is already one of the most viewed videos in recent years — an excellent achievement given the challenging topic.
The film now plays on rotation with other Council content on meeting room and customer service screens. It also screens nightly on the Powerhouse building wall, a prominent community and visitor space along the Murray Riverfront, further amplifying its reach and visibility.
Broad community promotion commenced during the 16 Days of Activism 2025. The video will be supported by a facilitation guide for use in workplaces, clubs, community groups, events, and training. This resource will help prompt deeper conversations and reflection on gender equality and lived experience.
Accessibility is a priority: the video is free, online, and features diverse voices, making it relatable and usable across multiple settings. It is designed as a flexible tool for education and advocacy.
The most profound impact to date has been qualitative. Staff and community members have seen themselves reflected in the stories, raising awareness of gender inequality that had previously gone unrecognised. Women involved in the project have expressed pride and have become informal advocates within their networks.
Quantitative measures currently include video views, and Council will continue to build engagement metrics and capture feedback from training sessions to support ongoing evaluation. The project is being embedded into Council’s training programs, DEI Network initiatives, community events, and other opportunities to ensure sustained impact.
Its reach and influence will continue to grow as it is shared across the community and wider region from November.
Scalability:
The Mallee Women film project is highly scalable and adaptable. Its short, values-based storytelling format can be replicated by other councils using local voices and community-led design. The video serves as a template for others to develop their own questions and engage local storytellers, supported by an ethical and co-design framework. With a template now created, it is a low-cost, high-impact, and deeply engaging model for councils with limited resources.
The existing video is free and highly accessible online, allowing other communities to use it directly to introduce key concepts and connect audiences with impactful stories of lived experience. The supporting materials will also be made available alongside the video to guide its use.
Within Mildura Council, the film is being embedded into training, community engagement, and events, and will be shared widely on social media and other communication platforms when broader public promotion commences in November.
The project aligns with the Local Government Guide for Preventing Family Violence and the Gender Equality Act 2020, making it relevant across Victorian councils. It also directly supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions).
Mildura Council is open to sharing resources, learnings, and templates with other LGAs. There is potential to create a local, regional, or statewide series, amplifying diverse voices and strengthening collective advocacy.
This project demonstrates that by investing in authentic, inclusive storytelling, councils can create tools that educate, connect, and inspire — well beyond their boundaries.