Melbourne turned on a beautiful spring day to welcome the participants of the 51st ALA Conference in September. The theme of this year’s conference was Celebrating Adult Learning Spaces and this inspired a wide range of national and international presentations from keynote speakers about how the physical and conceptual spaces of learning are created.
The overall response to the conference was very positive with most of the surveyed attendees rating the presentations as ‘very engaging’ and finding a good balance between presentation and discussion.
The atmosphere over the two days was friendly and stimulating with reports of successful programs from Kathryn Gilbey, Alice Springs, and Peter Lavender, UK, being particularly inspiring. It was not all good new stories, however, with the women’s panel discussion highlighting ongoing gender inequalities in training and employment. There will be an in-depth report of this panel discussion in the December issue of Quest.
The conference papers from each of the presenters are available online here and we invite you to have a browse. The next ALA national conference will be hosted by the Byron Region Community Centre in Byron Bay, NSW, in October 2012.