About | Troubled Dog

Troubled Dog is run by Carrie Lumby who brings both lived experience leadership skills and community engagement and co-design expertise to our work.

Troubled Dog is run by Carrie Lumby who has an extensive background in community engagement, advocacy and development. She has contributed to a wide range of systemic reform activity in roles spanning community organising, strategic advocacy and arts-led initiatives. She has also worked in public policy as the National Mental Health Commission's inaugural Director, Lived Experience - the first senior designated Lived Experience position in the Australian Public Service.

Carrie has led and facilitated many community engagement and co-design processes across a wide range of regional, state and national system improvement initiatives. These processes have brought together service providers, professional experts, and the people and communities most affected by a variety of complex issues, including suicide, domestic and sexualised violence, homelessness, chronic health conditions, and institutional abuse.

Carrie also regularly consults to governments and organisations wanting to more effectively engage lived experience expertise and strengthen their capacity for co-design and co-production.

Learn more about the knowledge, skills and experience that Carrie draws on here.

Our approach

design for equity and justice and invite people we work with to hold us accountable to these principles in everything we do.

maintain trust by being honest and realistic about a project's scope upfront, including the level of participation achievable.

understand how to work ethically with power across difference, taking a rights-based approach to participation.

promote open and ongoing communication, including about project outcomes to the people and communities most impacted by them.

build partnerships based on trust by working in a relational way, prioritising people and communities beyond individual projects.

sustain commitment to adaptive learning through reflective practice and by welcoming feedback about what we could do better.

Participatory approaches such as ‘co-design’ and 'co-production' are broadly promoted but not always well understood or implemented with integrity to their intent. The way we work supports good practice because we: