'Once Upon a Time' , (as all good stories began when I was a small child), Collene Kalb and Karen Ter Haar (Kaz), were sharing a cup of tea (?) at the 2001 Odyssey Conference in the USA. "Wouldn't it be wonderful to have our own conference in Australia?" said Collene wistfully (photo of Collene looking wistful coming later).

After returning home, the thought became firmly lodged in Collene's mind, and it was not long before she approached Karen to see if the Marks and Papers (MAPs) team would take some of their innovative workshops up to Lake Macquarie for a weekend workshop.

The interest was instant and overwhelming. The weekend extended to four days - then five. All workshops were quickly fully booked and the MAPs team was asked if they could stretch their stay to a whole week, in order to accommodate all those wishing to take part. It soon became obvious that even a week was not going to fulfill the demand, and so it was decided to re-run the most popular workshops and do eleven days straight! The 1st Australian MAPs Conference was born.

From the very outset, Collene was anxious to involve as many Cyberscribes as possible, and devised various projects in which they could participate. The first of these was a request for those who wished to contribute to the Conference 'Goodie Bags' to send in a two-inch square with a letter written on it. The original idea was to put these into a small book for each student at the Conference, but the overwhelming response caused this to become impractical and Collene made paste-paper boxes to house each little collection of letters.

Art Supply companies were approached to see if they would like to contribute to the Conference. Once again, the response was generous and astounding. The list of sponsors, cyberscribes and other contributors, with links to relevant websites, can be found here

MAPs Conference 2002 | Cecilia's Home Page

MAPs website