Living Melbourne Communication Toolkit
Lead
Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action
Working Group
Melton City Council, City of Greater Dandenong, City of Whittlesea, Greener Spaces Better Places, Melbourne Water
Objective
The purpose of this this initiative is to develop a communications toolkit that will help Living Melbourne stakeholders and partners increase the community’s awareness of, and support for, the urban forest through consistent messaging, and interesting and engaging education content that can be tailored for local audiences.
The project is complete and the communications toolkit is available above.
Background
The Communications and Engagement Working Group developed a survey to identify communication needs so we can pool resources in preparing materials to help empower Living Melbourne partners and stakeholders to communicate the benefits of urban forests and manage perceptions of risks.
Survey responses were received in October 2022 and upon review, indicated the following key topics as the most important for Living Melbourne partners’ key messaging:
Benefits of urban greening:
1. Biodiversity
2. Heat island effect
3. Economic benefits
4. Wellbeing benefits
Perceived issues with urban greening:
1. Hazardous trees (fear of falling limbs)
2. Mess (dropping leave, blocking drains etc) & ongoing maintenance
3. Allergens
Introducing the communications toolkit!
After several months of development and feedback, we are happy to share with you the attached communications toolkit – a key resource to support your urban greening communications.
What’s included?
• A narrative guide – tips and tricks for tone of voice and key messages on each of the above key topics
• A statistics deck – a suite of facts and figures on urban greening, as well as references to the original sources
• Social media tiles – graphics and catchy captions for promoting urban greening on social media
How can I use the toolkit?
The toolkit can be used to support your internal and external communications goals. The messages have been designed to promote the benefits and demystify perceived risks around urban greening. The toolkit has been designed to be adaptable so that you can integrate the messaging and statistics into your organisation’s style and strategy. Please share the communications toolkit with your colleagues and make sure you pass it along to your in-house communications team so that they can spread the word about urban greening.
For more information about urban greening, visit https://treenet.org/
