Tuesday, June 14, 2016

WORKSHOP - ADELAIDE 9-10 JULY

The next Australian Paralympic History Project workshop for Wikipedia editors and future editors will be in Adelaide on the weekend of 9-10 July.

As we count down to the Rio Games, this will be a fantastic opportunity to reconnect with existing HoPAu contributors, introduce new contributors and get up to date with the latest developments in the Australian Paralympic history project.

Adelaide is a beautiful city and home to many of our greatest Paralympians.

Adelaide has also been home to a very special collection of Paralympic films. The films were made by Don Worley, who attended every summer Games from 1972 to 1988. Don filmed the action at all but the last of these (when that job was done by the ABC). He then went into a studio and produced documentaries from each Games. Don recently donated all his films to the National Film and Sound Archives under Creative Commons license. The NFSA has digitised Don’s films and the APC and NFSA will officially launch the collection with Don in Adelaide on Monday 11 July.

Prior to the launch, the NFSA will make the video available to participants at the workshop so that clips can be incorporated into Paralympic history project articles. Don has agreed to come along to the workshop to talk about his films and how they were made.

This is a rare opportunity to utilise Paralympic video that is available under Creative Commons.

The video will also fill gaps in the APC’s video collection from Paralympic Games. It means that there is – however brief – footage now available of Australians at every summer Paralympics except 1968.

In addition to this opportunity, the workshop is also a chance to:

1.         Reconnect with other contributors to the project, find out what they have been doing, and get all excited again!

2.         Hear about the progress on the overall Paralympic history project, especially access to more resources, the e-book and how it relates to the Wikipedia articles.

3.         Recruit and train new editors from Adelaide.

4.         Discuss the priorities for the Wikipedia articles in the lead-up to the Rio Games and for the rest of the year, including who is doing what.

If you want to know more about Don Worley and his priceless films, you can listen to his story here: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6257617?lookfor=paralympic%20%23[format:Audio]&offset=3&max=56

Times for sessions and the venue are still being finalised, but we are organising a central Adelaide venue that is accessible, with sessions starting on Saturday afternoon and then again Sunday morning into the early afternoon.

We hope to see you at the workshop!

The Australian men's 4X100m amputee relay team won gold at the 1988 Seoul Games.