VOL. 4 NO. 1 pp. 3–4, 2020 | HOSPITALITY INSIGHTS | PAGE 3 Bridging hospitality education and community Cheryl Cockburn-Wootten and Alison McIntosh Dr Cheryl Cockburn- Wootten is a flipped academic whose research focuses on applying critical communication and organisational communication perspectives to tourism and hospitality. Professor Alison McIntosh’s research focuses on issues of social justice and advocacy through tourism and hospitality in the pursuit of social change. The hospitality industry is not immune from the social issues facing our society. There are cases of hospitality initiatives for social change, including philanthropy and social enterprise [1]. In our academic work, the key driver for change is how to overcome silos in order to create engaged, meaningful relationships between hospitality scholars in academia and external community stakeholders [1–3]. We sought to move beyond the traditional confines of academic institutions in order to ‘flip’ mind-sets and practice hospitality for the benefit of wider society. To achieve this vision of hospitality, we needed to work with and within communities. Intervention on long- standing social issues requires wider collaboration – reaching across businesses, third-sector organisations and education institutions. The New Zealand government has been calling on academia to make meaningful relationships that “open up diverse networks of knowledge and resources” for tackling social change [2]. Universities have not always had a good reputation for sustained meaningful engagement with external stakeholders [2]. For instance, typical interactions at universities may include one-way guest lectures or advisory boards who may serve more as a performance of communication for accreditation boards than actual listening and engaging with stakeholders. Dissatisfied with these limiting relationships, “we adopted principles from critical hospitality and dialogue theories to create a long-term space for inclusion, collaboration, and transformational change” [2]. We held a series of community stakeholder meetings using tools, such as Ketso [4, 5], that facilitated co-created conversations with diverse stakeholders – many of whom would not ordinarily have the chance to think through a social problem together. During these meetings, individuals discussed the issue and gained an opportunity to hear, learn and understand each other’s experiences. A recommendation emerged from these meetings [2] for the formation of a network of organisations, charities, individuals and businesses that were interested in tackling social change – called The Network for Community Hospitality (NCH). This recommendation enabled a communication network for diverse stakeholders, ranging from corporates, funders and third sector to individual community organisations to share conversation, resources, knowledge and work on social issues facing our communities. NCH has worked with a variety of stakeholders within communities drawing on different sets of knowledge to