We recognise that living in a world with COVID-19 presents all kinds of uncomfortable realities for our members. These have included budget cuts, working restrictions, and significant pressures on home and family life.
It also presents ARPA with challenges: How do we operate as a trans-Tasman group without highly accessible and risk-free travel? We also face the challenge of dwindling membership and engagement from members.
ARPA Conference 2021
While the trans-Tasman travel bubble has opened travel between Australia and New Zealand, the risk of travel is still high for many people who cannot afford to get stuck on either side, or the unknown physical cost of catching COVID-19.
Adding to this is the financial risk of cancelling an event at the last minute due to restrictions. With our current budget, we simply cannot afford this kind of loss.
For these reasons, we are not holding a trans-Tasman ARPA Conference in 2021.
Instead, we will continue to run the ARPA Awards, and encourage local chapters to gather in COVID-safe ways to celebrate together. It is our hope that if enough of us are meeting, we may be able to connect with each other via video link for an Awards Presentation in September.
Video-based Professional Development
Over the next year we are hoping to provide you with opportunities to upskill, connect and share—in person where we can and via digital platforms where we can’t meet face-to-face. We’re going to look at ways to encourage and foster new and existing members. We’re going to need to be flexible, creative, and open to change.
With this in mind we are planning on introducing regular Professional Development sessions, offered via Zoom, to connect members, to encourage us to upskill and share our expertise. These will be 1 - 1.5 hour interactive Zoom workshops offered free to ARPA members, and open to non-members for a small fee. More details about these will be available soon.
Please get in touch if you’d like to suggest a presenter, or facilitator for one of these sessions.
If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to be in touch with me directly.
Sophia Sinclair