Are You All Tired?

What a fantastic weekend!

Everywhere I looked people were sparking with the energy of new learning, new connections and new collaborations.

Our presenters were impressed with your energy and enthusiasm. And we were impressed with the depth and breadth of our presenter’s workshops. We are so pleased that many of them were able to stay and enjoy the whole conference with us.

Chris Else has made his Contract workshop available so we can email that to you.

Sue Copsey also has made her E-Publishing workshop available.

Just drop us an email at Tinderbox if you want them.

Once again a huge Thank You to you all for making the weekend go so well, from the Sparks Teams that were a high energy fireworks display on Friday ... to the sustained rocket launch that was Sunday.

The Illustrators had a magnificent day on Monday getting to grips with new media while the Writers had a drooling session in the National Library. Research never looked so good!

You can drop in on our Face Book page to see pictures... or email us some to put on here.

Maureen... for the Tired but very Happy Tinderbox team!

 Pic: Flickr- Creative Commons- SJ Liew

What happens on Friday?

On Friday, the conference officially starts at 9am with a formal Maori welcome. Registration will happen after that, with conference bags being handed out and the committee on hand to answer any questions. We will give priority to those attending Mandy's workshop which starts at 9.30am. The timetable is here, but will also be provided in printed form in your conference bags, along with your individual timetable for the workshops. 

                                                                                                        

A note about the timetables: some of the workshops have proven very popular, and in those cases we’ve had to resort to your second choices. In general, we’ve used the principle of first come first served; but where workshops were designed for specific groups, priority was given to those who matched the criteria. For example, the ‘Creature Making and Drawing’ workshop was designed for illustrators, so in that case they’ve been given precedence.

Sessions before morning tea on Friday also include a catch-up for Sparks teams and portfolio critiques for illustrators. If you're not involved in any of those activities, you'll be free to start socialising, finding your way around the venue, meeting old friends and making new ones (and possibly even have time for a quick trip down to the Children's Bookshop).

If you can't make it to St Cath's by 9am, don't worry as registration will be happening all day, but your best chance of catching one of the committee members might be during a break in the programme, eg morning tea (10.30-11am) lunch (12.20-1pm) or afternoon tea (3.10-3.30pm). But try not to miss Andy Griffiths who will be speaking from 1-1.30pm. 

At the end of the day, we'll be heading down to The Children's Bookshop - 5 mins walk away - for the cocktail party which starts around 6pm. 

Friday night dinner is not included in the conference cost and we’ve suggested that you may like to make up a group and go out somewhere. (Alternatively, you may want to go home for an early night before a busy day on Saturday - all up to you!) There are not many dinner places in Kilbirnie itself, but Newtown (or even the city) is just a short car, bus or taxi ride away. This is also WoW (World of Wearable Arts) season in Wellington, so restaurants may be busy, especially in town, but at others you'll find you can't book but just have to wait a while for a table. We'd encourage you to look out for other conference attendees who may be on their own or don’t know many people - or if that applies to you, please don't feel shy about asking any other group if you can join them. 

And more helpful stuff!

Travel tips and other useful hints to help you make the most of next weekend.

(Click on the image below to make it bigger.)

Presenting... the Tinderbox committee!

We'd like to introduce our hard-working committee so you know who to buttonhole if you have any questions about the conference during the Tinderbox weekend. (You're also welcome to shower them with praise, congrats and thanks for the fabulous time you are having.)

Maureen Crisp

Over the past year, Maureen has fielded hundreds (if not thousands) of emails and filled up many, many folders of notes as she battled with the intricacies of IT requirements, budgets, programme make-up, selection of possible presenters, accommodation, food, transport and a million other details of conference organisation. She has also managed to keep up with her weekly Thursday deadline for posting the latest writing news and helpful tips on her Craicer blog: http://www.maureencrisp.com/

And the rest of the organising committee, in alphabetical order:

Fleur Beale

Fleur is one of the four assessors who have generously offered to help with the ms assessments.

Fifi Colston

Fifi is not only helping to plan Tinderbox, but also has an entry ("Morphology") in this year's World of Wearable Arts show (in the Weta section) - so fingers crossed for her on award night.

She is also organising the Illustrators Day on Monday with Adele. 

Adele Jackson 

Adele has been in charge of design work, so we have her to thank for the logo, the wonderful programme and all other Tinderbox printed and online material.

She is also organising the Illustrators Day on Monday with Fifi, as well as the "Lightning talks" presentations.

Johanna Knox

Johanna is running the Sparks programme, which has already generated plenty of excitement and lots of cooperation - exactly what we hoped for.  

Sabrina Malcolm

Sabrina has spent untold hours extracting data from the conference registration forms and re-formatting it into lists of workshop attendees. She has also been answering emails and looking after the ms assessment programme, fielding queries and matching up writers with assessors. 

Anita Nalder

Anita (with Bridgette) has been tirelessly seeking sponsorship from all sorts of companies, business and local shops - often a thankless task, but together they have had some great successes. 

Pippa Werry

Pippa has been spending her time applying for grants, studying the budget, sending out receipts and paying invoices - if you've got any money-related queries, please ask her.

Bridgette Yates

Bridgette (with Anita) has been on the hunt for sponsorship, asking everyone from power companies to wine merchants, and together they have come up with some great surprises that you'll find in your Tinderbox goodie bags.

All of these people have been fitting their committee work in and around paid work, school visits, travel, moving house, child minding, everyday-life-cooking-cleaning-and-shopping and of course trying to find time to do their own writing and /or illustrating, and we are deeply grateful to them all!

Presenting ... Sparks!

Tinderbox 2015 is all about enjoyment, collaboration, and finding new ways to work together. From that has sprung an awesome collaboration with the Kiwi Conservation Club (KCC) - Forest & Bird's organisation for children.

'Sparks' offers a chance for Tinderbox attendees to get published in KCC’s science-and-nature magazine for children - Wild Things.

Registered conference attendees team up in groups of two to four, to produce a fun, innovative feature that will be submitted to a special summer 2015 issue of Wild Things - themed around biodiversity.

Enrol for Sparks by this Saturday 29 August (details below!) and you'll receive a list of everyone else who's also enrolled, so you can start to form your teams. The Tinderbox Facebook page will facilitate this, and people from different creative disciplines are encouraged to collaborate with each other. 

You'll also receive from KCC a sample copy of the magazine, along with a full brief for the project, including a list of New Zealand native animals and plants to choose your team topic from. (Each team chooses a different one - first come first served.) 

After that, you'll have until the Tinderbox weekend to work together - in person, or by email, phone or any other means of communication - on a single-page work about your topic. Think articles, comic strips, stories, skits, activities, puzzles, games … OR some new, creative combination of those things. 

During Tinderbox, you'll get together at Sparks workshops to talk with Wild Things editor Johanna Knox, who can answer any questions and advise on fine-tuning your work to meet Wild Things requirements.

After the conference NINE fantastic works will be chosen by KCC and Wild Things from all those submitted. If many exceptional works are received, there may be room to include more of them in future issues of Wild Things, on an occasional basis.

Work will be paid for at usual Wild Things rates.

Find out more about Wild Things and KCC here.

To enrol for Sparks: Email 2015tinderbox@gmail.com with 'Sparks Enrolment' in the subject line, and your postal address in the body of the email.  

Sparks deadlines:

Saturday 29 August: Register for Sparks 

Friday September 4: Have your teams decided on

Monday September 7: As teams, submit 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice topics

Updated Programme

Hi all- sorry if yesterdays facebook link didn't work- it's what happens when you notice a teeny mistake and correct it; the link doesn't update... but here is the updated programme with Andy Griffiths. Exciting much! www.andygriffiths.com.au

Registrations Closing Soon

Registrations for the Conference will be closing soon!
We are nearly fully subscribed. It is going to be a great conference. We have people coming from all over New Zealand and overseas as well!
With the late addition of a special guest speaker, Mr Andy Griffiths (Australian superstar children's author) we can't wait until the conference kicks off on October 2nd.
If you can't wait to join us… Register Here

Any questions? email us here