Centre for Peacebuilding & Transformation
Our Story
About Cygnet
Across Australia, Cygnet supports change with humanity
In a world marked by rapid change, deep inequity and rising disconnection, the need for relational, healing-centred approaches has never been more urgent. Communities across Australia are living with the enduring impacts of colonisation, systemic injustice and fractured relationships – both between people and with the systems that are supposed to serve them. Harm ripples across generations. Trust can be lost in a moment. Rebuilding it takes something altogether different.
Too often, the responses on offer are transactional where they need to be relational, punitive where they need to be restorative and fragmented where they need to be whole. Cygnet was founded as a direct, deeply relational response to this pressing need – not as another service provider, but as a genuine companion in the hard and necessary work of change.
At the core of our methodology is an unwavering belief in the power of relationships, deep listening and collective wisdom. We understand that genuine solutions cannot be imposed from the top down – they already reside within the communities themselves. By utilising culturally grounded, trauma-aware and healing-centred approaches, we address adversity and harm to support lasting, meaningful transformation.
We go only where we are invited. And when we arrive, we bring our whole selves – in service of something greater.
Cygnet Centre for Peacebuilding and Transformation is a not-for-profit charity working at the intersection of community building, restorative practice, rigorous research and systemic change. We believe that true peace is not the absence of conflict – it is the presence of justice, connection, dignity and hope. Our work is devoted to strengthening healthy social, ecological and spiritual relationships across all sectors of human activity and cultural life.
Our global reach spans urban, regional and remote contexts across Australia, as well as internationally. Regardless of geography, every engagement is guided by local wisdom, cultural safety and deep respect for the people we serve. We reject the saviour complex. Our work is bespoke, deeply relational and genuinely collaborative.
OUR VISION
Transforming relationships, conflict and adversity through peacebuilding and restorative practices.
Our Purpose
To walk alongside people and communities in fostering respectful relationships, healing harms, transforming systems and creating peaceful just futures through courageous dialogue, restorative practice and transformative action.
OUR APPROACHES
How we listen. How we learn. How we act.
Cygnet’s approach is firmly rooted in a deep awareness of the interconnection and interdependence of all life. We work at the complex intersection of social justice, healing, community empowerment and systems transformation. Our methodology is not a one-size-fits-all technical exercise — it is relational, contextual and profoundly human. We understand that to truly foster peace, we must address the root systemic causes of conflict while nurturing the everyday relationships that bind communities together.
We draw from a rich tapestry of practices to guide our interventions. By integrating the ancient wisdom of First Nations cultures with contemporary evidence-based frameworks, we create a robust, holistic methodology. This includes restorative practices, restorative justice, peacebuilding, facilitation, systems thinking, mindfulness, cultural safety, trauma-informed practice and participatory action research — ensuring that everything we offer is purpose-driven, contextually relevant and genuinely transformative.
The values that guide Cygnet are not merely aspirational statements — they are daily, embodied practices. We champion mutual and respectful relationships, empowering authenticity and deep communication. We believe in courage — meeting conflict with curiosity and inviting accountability without blame. Through enquiry and community, we prioritise reciprocal learning and belonging, while our commitment to justice ensures we advocate for equitable, restorative cultures that elevate unheard voices.
Ultimately, our approach seeks to move values from posters on the wall to patterns in the system. We intentionally design processes that dismantle transactional governance and replace it with relational coherence. Whether we are mapping systems to expose hidden inequities or facilitating dialogue to repair trust, we cultivate the ecosystems where healing, truth-telling and bold reimagination can take root.
Three Pillars: Embedding our values in our process
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Connecting
Building trusted relationships and fostering partnerships that bridge people, cultures, communities and systems
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Building
Co-creating solutions, growing capability, developing innovative strategies through leadership, governance, systemic capacity and strategy for transformation.
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Transforming
Supporting bold, courageous dialogue and action to disrupt inequality, heal harm and transform systems.
Our Guiding Values
At Cygnet, our values guide everything we do. They are more than principles – they are daily practices that shape our relationships, our systems work and our ways of being.
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Mutual and Respectful Relationships: We cultivate respectful relationships with ourselves, others and all life. We embrace diversity and difference as we seek to recognise and affirm our interconnectedness.
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Communication: We value deep listening and dialogue as pathways to mutual understanding of our shared humanity. We seek to embrace the opportunities for growth and learning that conflict contains. We engage in difficult conversations with compassion, holding the wellbeing of all at the centre.
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Enquiry: We bring a spirit of enquiry to our work, inviting connection, reflection, reciprocal learning and responsive solutions to emerge from what is present and needed.
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Justice: We are committed to restorative cultures that value, respect and uphold the dignity of all people. We advocate for equitable processes that elevate the voices of those who are often unheard, and are intent on creating spaces for truth-telling, self-responsibility and repair.
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Empowering Authenticity: We support the development of safe environments that foster connection, where people feel empowered towards responsibility and self-determination. We build authentic relationships where people feel free to express their own truth and to listen to the truth of others.
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Courage: We balance humility with courage, meeting conflict with curiosity, naming harm with care and inviting accountability without blame.
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Community: We believe in the power of belonging. We nurture connection as a path to collaborative relationships where shared purpose leads to sustainable, thriving communities.
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Healing and Transformation: We believe in the possibility of transformation through creativity, connection and courage. We hold space for healing that honours the past while cultivating hopeful futures.
Impact & Reach
Three decades of practice. One enduring conviction.
30+
peacebuilding practice
4+
engagement
8
across all scales
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Parliament, Dec 2025
Our work spans an extraordinary range — not because we sought scale, but because the work proved itself and the invitations kept coming. From community circles to parliamentary inquiries. From grief-stricken families to government ministers. What we carry into every room is the same: decades of relational practice, methodological rigour, and an unshakeable belief that those most affected by a problem are the most essential architects of its solution.
Our Services
From healing circle to Parliament. The full range.
We offer eight interconnected streams of practice – from facilitation and restorative justice to research, training and keynote speaking. Every engagement is bespoke, relational and designed to transform the spaces we enter.
1
Facilitation, Engagement & Participatory Practice
What distinguishes our service model is that it is never pre-packaged. We map systems to uncover emotional and political complexities, design processes that are emergent rather than prescribed, and stay accountable for the outcomes long after the formal engagement has ended. The work is iterative. The relationship is ongoing. The goal is always transformation, not just delivery.
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Strategic Advice & Consultancy
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News & Events
Research tabled in NSW Parliament, December 2025.
Holding Hope is Cygnet’s most recent major research project — commissioned by the NSW Ombudsman’s Child Death Review Team and tabled in the NSW Parliament in December 2025.
The research investigated the lived experience of families navigating the NSW child protection system following the death of a child in statutory care. It was co-designed with bereaved families, community organisations and practitioners — applying Cygnet’s methodology: trauma-aware, relational, and committed to the principle that those most affected by a system are the most essential architects of its reform.
The report makes specific recommendations for legislative change, practice improvement and systemic accountability. It is a demonstration of what becomes possible when communities are treated as co-researchers rather than data sources.
Our Partners
Trusted by those doing the work.
Our Partners
Universities & Research
Community & NFP Sector
INTERNATIONAL
Testimonials
In their own words.
“Christine brought a quality of presence I haven’t encountered in any other consultant — she was genuinely listening, genuinely curious, and genuinely committed to what the community needed rather than what was easiest to deliver.”
Government Department — Senior Policy Adviser
“The research process itself was healing. We had been treated as a problem to be solved for years. Being treated as co-researchers — as people whose knowledge matters — changed something in us.”
Community Organisation — Program Director
“We engaged Cygnet to evaluate a complex, politically sensitive program. The final report was rigorous, honest and usable. It told us things we needed to hear, and gave us a genuine pathway forward.”
State Government Agency — Executive Director
“What sets Christine apart is that she doesn’t impose. She arrives with questions, not answers. And somehow, through that process, the answers we needed emerged from within the community itself.”
NFP Organisation — Chief Executive
How We Work
Every engagement begins with a conversation, not a proposal.
Each engagement begins with a conversation and continues only when genuine trust has been established. We never arrive with a pre-packaged program. Every service we deliver is co-designed with the people it is meant to serve, shaped by local knowledge and cultural context, and guided by what is actually needed rather than what is easiest to provide.
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Initial Conversation
Before any proposal or scope is written, we hold an open conversation to understand what the community or organisation actually needs — not what’s easiest to provide.
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Context & Community Mapping
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Co-Design
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Delivery & Facilitation
Whether facilitating a circle, running a workshop or writing a report — we show up with full presence, methodological rigour and relational care.
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Reflection & Review
We hold space for honest review during and after each engagement — with participants, with stakeholders, and with ourselves. Learning is continuous and built into the process.
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Reporting & Recommendation
Where a written output is required, we produce findings that are evidence-based, honestly stated and practically usable — not reports that gather dust on a shelf.
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Sustained Accountability
Our Commitment
We are not interested in quick fixes.
We are not interested in quick fixes. We are committed to change that is relational, ethical and generational. This is the legacy we aim to leave: not a list of completed projects, but a network of empowered communities, more just systems and renewed ways of relating to one another and to the world.
Every engagement we take on is held within that longer frame — not what can we deliver in this contract period, but what will still be standing in ten years. We plant seeds that continue to grow long after we have left the room.
Our public engagement is not about performance, but presence. We are not about presentation, but participation. We speak not just to be heard, but to hold space.
“In every step — connecting, building, transforming — we honour the sacred trust of walking alongside, knowing that true change is always relational, courageous and led by community wisdom.”
Our People
Walking alongside with humility, clarity, and compassion.
Christine Thomas — CEO & Founder
Christine Thomas is the founder and CEO of Cygnet Centre for Peacebuilding and Transformation, and a proud Wakka Wakka woman who leads with a rare blend of clarity, compassion and cultural authority. With more than three decades of practice in restorative justice, community facilitation and applied research, she brings a depth of experience that is rare in the sector. Through her leadership and presence, she invites partners and communities into radical empathy, relational justice and bold imagination for what is possible.
She is a Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR)-registered practitioner with a track record spanning correctional services, government, community and academic settings. Her methodology integrates First Nations knowledge traditions with contemporary research frameworks — bringing the same rigour to a family dialogue as to a Parliament-tabled report. Her work has taken her from community healing circles in regional Queensland to parliamentary inquiries in NSW, from international restorative justice conferences in Europe to peer research collaborations at the University of Wollongong.
The Cygnet team is composed of highly skilled practitioners, educators and systems thinkers who bring profound compassion, creativity and clarity to complex human challenges. Our interdisciplinary experts draw from social work, human rights, trauma theory, decolonising methodologies and organisational change. This diversity of background allows us to integrate systemic lenses with deep, practical empathy. More importantly, we recognise that the true experts are those with lived and living experience — we view our role as helping communities translate their inherent wisdom into actionable strategy and collective power.
The stance of every Cygnet practitioner is one of deep humility and ethical engagement. We believe that listening is an active form of leadership. Before we map a system or design a strategy, we create the silence and space necessary to truly hear the stories, grief and aspirations of the people involved. We are comfortable staying with discomfort, modelling the courage and accountability that we ask of our partners.
Crucially, our people prioritise cultural safety and integrity — both for the communities we serve and within our own ranks. We actively navigate and support the colonial and cultural load carried by First Nations professionals, ensuring our practice is sustainable and grounded. By honouring Country and culture, our team remains centred, resilient and capable of holding safe spaces for others to heal and thrive.
“I have sat with people who have done terrible things and people who have survived terrible things. What I have seen, over and over, is that what heals — what actually changes something — is not a consequence. It is a genuine encounter.”
Christine Thomas, Founder & CEO