Shopfront Episode 1: Where It All Began

UTS in the mid-1990s was, as many other institutions were, most of them were in Australia, going through a period of transition.

It was the beginning of the corporatisation of universities and it was also a period when universities were being asked by governments to ensure that they actually had impact and had social concerns driving their programs to a much greater extent than they had in the 60s and 70s.

So the whole community sector was starting to change and it was also corporatising.

UTS had asked for expressions of interest in community-based programs.

A group of us in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences started talking about the possibility of getting some broader program together that would actually cover not just our faculty but all of the university faculties.

I think our general approach was we're about social justice and inclusion.

So a group of us got together and decided to write an application.

And being very cheeky people, we decided we would ask for all the money, not a little bit of it.

So we got our dean, Liz Jacker, into a room for half a day and basically told her on the idea of a shop front.

And it was based around the European Science Shops, the shopfronts there in part.

And that was about getting people, academics and their students, final year and post-grad students out into real live projects that would have impact.

They weren't just theoretical, they would have a positive impact on communities.

It's called shopfront because it's based on a Scandinavian model.

which is science shops but it was a science faculty would actually have a shop front to allow community to come in and it would be like they'd come in and share their project and then they would try and match the community need to the students the same way that shop front does but it was based on science so it's called the science shop but back in the mid 90s everything was called shop or shop front it was about access

That was former program manager, Paulino Laughlin, who helped build Shopfront from the very beginning.

At its core, Shopfront was built on a simple but powerful idea.

Universities have knowledge, resources and talented students.

Community organisations have expertise, lived experience and a deep understanding of the issues affecting the people they serve.

The proposal was straightforward.

Create a single point of connection between the university and the community and give students opportunities to apply their learning to projects that mattered beyond the classroom.

So over about two or three years we actually developed a database of about 3,000 community groups.

We went to community get-togethers and conferences and things like that.

So we ended up becoming really well engaged with communities and we would twice a year put out a call for projects, just an expression of interest, and in the end we were getting 60, 70, 80 projects a semester.

coming in for people that wanted a business plan done for their little NGO or someone that wanted to do a campaign around an issue with visual design students.

What was unique about Shotfront was that students engaged with communities as part of their coursework under academic supervision.