We invite you to share your skills, insight and expertise at the 8th Annual Bioneers in Alaska Conference, to be held October 14-16 2011 at U.A.A.. Our mission is to create a movement to educate, connect and inspire people to act effectively with practical solutions and innovative social strategies for restoring the Earth’s imperiled ecosystems & healing human communities. Our vision is to be a leading catalyst for reinventing the human relationship with each other and the Earth.
Bioneers in Alaska is part of a larger movement. Kenny Ausubel founded our parent organization, Bioneers, in 1990 because he realized that people working to restore health and justice in the interdependent arenas of economics, jobs, ecology, cultures, and communities didn’t know about each other’s work. The annual Bioneers Conference brings together these “biological pioneers” to cross-pollinate ideas, strategies, and plans for action. The conference expanded in 2002 to include communities across North America who recieve the plenary speakers via satellite. Anchorage became one of these satellite sites in 2004.
*** In keeping with the spirit of Bioneers, we are looking for workshops that emphasize practical solutions, instead of staying stuck in the problem or factors creating the problem. *** Conference participants are generally more aware of problems – and even many solutions – than many past presenters seemed to realize. Bioneers attendees want to know what they can do, both individually and collectively, to make a difference here and now. We are looking for workshops that reflect Bioneers’ 13 areas of interest: ecological medicine, social and environmental activism, ecological food and farming, environmental education, women’s leadership, ecological design, independent and alternative media, indigenous knowledge, youth leadership, restoring our ecosystems, eco-nomics, the arts, and nature, culture, and spirit.
Our workshops are generally 90 minutes in length and we encourage dedicating 45 minutes to participant interaction. We will also consider workshops for longer durations (up to 3 hrs total). We urge you to stretch your thinking about how you can make your workshop more experiential for participants – is there a key question that they can discuss in small groups? Is there any activity they can do? Can they brainstorm ideas for action, or even create an action plan? Or maybe they have experiences or suggestions to offer. In our conference evaluation forms, participants repeatedly ask for more experiential workshops.
We invite all Bioneers participants – presenters and attendees alike – to consider themselves simultaneously “teacher” and “learner,” as we all have both ideas to offer and ideas to absorb. Presenters are given free admission to the entire multi-day Bioneers in Alaska event. We urge presenters to take advantage of this opportunity to connect and collaborate with fellow Alaskans – that’s what Bioneers is all about.
We look forward to reviewing your workshop proposal. We prefer that you fill out the proposal and submit it electronically. Please submit by August 31st to bioneersinak@gmail.com and we will let you know by Sept. 8th whether or not your workshop has been accepted. If there is not space for your workshop this year, please let us know if you would be interested in presenting another time outside of the conference. Thank you again for your time, and for your important work in healing our world.