How to register and upload your presentation
Confirmed presenters can use this link and your access code to register for the Symposium.
Instead of uploading your paper via the website (as previously advised), please email Penny Archer your Symposium paper or Workshop background notes as an attachment. Please include in the Subject line of your email: IA Final paper and Author full name. Email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Presenters need to download these guidelines for style and other requirements about your paper/workshop.
Papers and workshop backgrounds are due by 15th September. If you have any queries, please contact Penny, Symposium Secretariat, at Contact Us.
If you need to refer back to the original "Call for presenters" document, click here to download information about the theme and the range of available program presentation opportunities. Submission to present has now closed.
Exploring the theme: Peeling back the layers
As we peel back the layers, we will ‘get right to the core of what matters’ in natural and cultural heritage interpretation.
As interpreters and heritage communicators we try to ‘educate’ as we simultaneously entertain, engage and enthrall our audiences. But our visitors are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and knowledgeable, and they are questioning the traditional deliver/consume relationship. How can we meet this and other challenges in the coming decade? How can we keep heritage interpretation fresh, authentic and meaningful?
The 2010 National Symposium will answer these important questions by provoking fresh thinking that peels back the layers in heritage interpretation. Presentations and workshops will relate to one of the following challenge areas:
• Under the skin – Interpreting difficult stories
Many stories are difficult to tell, often because they describe tragic events and sensitive issues, offer conflicting perspectives or are drawn from differing traditions. So how should these stories be told? From whose perspective? And what happens when one person’s pleasure is another’s poison? This challenge view will get ‘under the skin’ to investigate new ways to deal with difficult stories and to demonstrate how other interpreters are meeting these challenges in practice.
• Fresh fruit – Interpreting for audiences of the coming decade
Who will our audiences be in the coming decade? How are they different from today’s audiences? And how can we connect with them more effectively? This challenge view will explore how we identify and analyse our audiences, the meanings they bring and take away from the interpretation we provide and the dramatic difference interpretation can make to their lives, communities and environments. Which exciting new state-of-the-art technologies can we implement right now? Which will be most effective? Can technology kill creativity? This challenge view will showcase new technologies and provide inspiration and real answers for interpreters in the new decade.
• Best of the crop – Inspiring interpretive excellence
In planning for great visitor experiences, is it best to take a prescriptive or fluid approach? Can effective marketing add to the visitor experience? What are the latest views on the value of evaluation? How do design and presentation influence the effectiveness of story? How can story be told through performance and without words using music, sound and art? How do we interpret the intangible? How do story, landscape and building relate in our natural and cultural environments? This challenge view will help us avoid the bad apples and provide fresh inspiration for interpreters who truly want to be the ‘best of the crop’.
• New varieties – New technologies that will add to our repertoire
Which exciting new state-of-the-art technologies can we implement right now? Which will be most effective? Can technology kill creativity? This challenge view will showcase new technologies and provide inspiration and real answers for interpreters in the new decade.