Delivered collaboratively by Story Factory and collective impact organisation The Hive, It’s Our Turn is a three-year youth consultation and creative writing project designed to constructively tackle the emerging needs and concerns of local young people in the Blacktown LGA, with a particular focus on the Mount Druitt area within this LGA.

In early 2025, Story Factory and the Hive co-delivered three consultation sessions, which revealed that young people often felt unheard and had a strong desire to talk about the places, people and experiences that shape who they are.

We used this feedback to inform term-long and one-off programs that positioned young people as experts in their communities and provided them with opportunities to share what was important to them through poetry. In Term 3, 2025, we continued the delivery of these programs at eight Blacktown schools and community groups – six in Mount Druitt – and published a selection of student poetry in a new collection titled I Talk, It Echoes. This collection gives readers a glimpse of Blacktown through the eyes of young people, such as the streets of Shalvey where crows clutch at fence posts ‘like someone refusing to let go of a secret’ or outside Blacktown Station where ‘street lights slice rats with a cymbal slap’.

We launched I Talk, It Echoes at a joyful community event in November 2025, celebrating the 300 young people across all schools and community groups who participated in the project.



Trade - excerpt from I Talk, It Echoes

By Techin, Year 10, Rooty Hill High School

I dreamed as a child, coins shone bright in my hand,

so my family could rise, unbroken and unshielded and still stand

Not for gold’s weight, nor the market’s agenda,

but to light my home’s hearth with an easy-going flame

Each trade I took, I thought about bread on our plate,

a roof that wouldn’t collapse even against fate

Now I chase the dream so their smiles remain.



It’s Our Turn is funded by Multicultural NSW under the COMPACT program. COMPACT works across communities and sectors to inspire people to foster social cohesion, stand united against divisive forces and come together in times of need.

Photography by Natasha Capstick. Book design by Ginni Leonard.