This year’s UALE Conference, which took place in Toronto from April 17 – 20, broke new ground in several ways.

With over 200 participants, it was the largest conference we have had in several years. One of the exciting features of this year’s gathering was the participation of over 50 Canadian labor educators. We also had attendees from Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Nepal and Trinidad & Tobago, which gave the conference a truly international feel.

See photos of the Conference in the Conference 2013 Photo Gallery. Download some of the papers and presentations here (More to come).

The conference theme, “Across Boundaries: What Are Workers Saying and Doing” was intended to make the optimal use of this coming together of colleagues from different countries, and the results were as hoped. Interactive plenary sessions gave all participants a chance to hear from and dialogue with colleagues from everywhere, and to see both the commonalities and the particularities of each country’s situation.

One plenary session was conducted as a “Town Hall Meeting”, at which all participants, working in groups, discussed a series of questions about the challenges facing labor education at this moment in time. The results of the discussion were compiled in a report that can be downloaded from the “Papers and Presentations” page of this website.

Concurrent Sessions

We also had a record number of breakout sessions – 49 in all—including paper sessions, demonstrations workshops, panels and roundtables. Here are some of the comments conference participants made about the breakout sessions:

• “Thrilled to see so many papers submitted. The topic attracted strong interest.”
• “Excellent research presented, very stimulating discussion”
• “Eclectic mix of presenters in each workshop; very stimulating”

We would like to make as many as possible of these great presentations available for others to see, so we have put up a page on this website – Papers and Presentations—where we have already begun to upload papers, PowerPoint presentations and other materials from the sessions. We invite any and all of you who presented at the conference to share your contribution by sending it in to the Website Moderator.

Featuring the Arts

The Toronto conference was also notable in its incorporation of the arts as an important aspect of labor education. There were performances of music and spoken word, exhibits of visual arts, screenings of movies and videos, and workshops on using the arts to promote social change. See the Arts at UALE page for more details.

Annual Meeting

The annual UALE membership meeting was held on Friday afternoon. Minutes from the meeting are posted on the Membership Minutes page

Awards

As usual, the Conference ended with an Awards lunch. We celebrated the contributions to our field of some great labor educators, new and old, (see separate article below) and closed with a rousing chorus of Solidarity Forever.