Canning, Australia

One of Australia's most culturally and linguistically diverse cities

With 45 per cent of its residents speaking a language other than English, Canning is one of Australia’s most culturally and linguistically diverse cities. The city is an industrial and commercial hub, and it has the most diverse economy in Western Australia.  

Vision and Strategy

We have endorsed the second Learning City Strategy – Enriching Your World 2021–2024 to support our community in adapting to change with resilience, grasping opportunities with ingenuity, and responding to challenges innovatively. We seek to achieve these aims through a culture of lifelong learning. Joining the GNLC will allow us to exchange ideas, experiences and best practices to achieve the network’s goals of improving governance and stakeholder participation, boosting resource mobilization, and encouraging stakeholder to contribute in building a learning city.  

Policies, Plan and Implementation

Sustainability and health

• Canning’s ten Impact Goals ensure sustainable social, cultural, environmental and economic development, which are thematic focuses of the Community Learning programme. Events and workshops are organized to support sustainability education through projects such as the Climate Clever Neighbourhoods, and to promote a healthy lifestyle through projects such as Food Sensations.    

Equity and inclusion

• Diversity and inclusion are embedded across Canning’s business units. Integrating indigenous languages and culture into education, providing bilingual early literacy programmes, and creating platforms such as the Hillview Hub to support Canning’s diverse community in the areas of education and work, showcase the city’s dedication to equity and inclusion.   

Decent work and entrepreneurship

• The concept of decent work and entrepreneurship is integral to the Learning City Strategy. The city's Business Development Mentoring Program fosters business learning and support, while the Community Learning Program focuses on labour market skills development for adults. The Trade Skills Youth Program provides disengaged young people with opportunities to complete training courses and certificates.  

Good practices

Kaleidoscope Initiative (KI)

• The KI mentoring programme, winner of several national awards, seeks to aggregate the city’s strategic sustainability targets and data to measure, evaluate and communicate local government achievement in sustainability. As an open data project, it is designed to build public trust in the city, and will be interpretable, auditable and user-friendly.

Business Development Mentoring Programme (BDM)

• This programme provides an ecosystem of support for local businesses through partnerships with different organizations, including universities. Through these partnerships, BDM has organized workshops and events in libraries designed to connect Canning business owners to mentoring, support and networking opportunities that can help businesses build their capacities and capabilities.