ACRN 2026 Symposium, Adelaide

#ACRN2026

Dates: Thursday 22nd to Friday 23rd October, 2026

Location: Function Room 1, Union House, Adelaide University, Victoria Drive, Adelaide, South Australia, 5005, Australia

We are delighted to announce an exciting collaboration between:

• The Australasian Coastal Restoration Network (ACRN)

• The Society for Ecological Restoration Australasia (SERA)

• The Cooperative Research Centre for Transformations in Mining Economies (CRC TiME)

For 2026, we have decided to align our programs and host all three events in the same week and city to foster deeper conversations, networking and collaboration - while also helping to reduce travel time and costs for many of our shared communities.

The ACRN is committed to becoming a more inclusive space, and a meaningful part of that is ensuring that Indigenous practitioners, knowledge holders, and partners are genuinely represented at our events to help shape the conversations we have.

We know that many of you work alongside Indigenous partners in your projects, and we'd love for those partnerships to be visible at the symposium. With that in mind, we're asking members to:

• Think about whether any of your Indigenous partners or collaborators might be interested in presenting, contributing to a panel, or attending the symposium, and start that conversation with them early.

• Explore funding options within your own institutions, grants, or projects that could support their registration, travel, and accommodation. Many project budgets have provisions for engagement or knowledge translation that may apply.

• Encourage and support abstract submissions from Indigenous partners where relevant—the abstract submission deadline is CoB Thursday, 9 July—please contact us if this deadline is an issue.

• Let us know if you're pursuing this so we can offer support, share leads on relevant funding sources, or connect you with others doing the same.

We recognise that meaningful inclusion takes planning and resourcing, and we don't want funding barriers to be the reason Indigenous voices are absent from our symposium. We're working on this from our end too, and will share more if there are new developments.

If you have questions, ideas, please don’t hesitate to contact us at: coastalrestorationnetwork@gmail.com

#1: ACRN Conversations: The Human Side of Restoration

Watch this space for more information…

#2: Ecosystem Round Tables:

• What are the key coordination and scaling needs, and practical next steps amongst habitat types?

Watch this space for more information…

As part of this year’s ACRN Symposium, we will hold our Welcome to Country and Field Trip at Yitpi Yartapuultiku, Aboriginal Cultural Centre.

Yitpi Yartapuultiku, meaning ‘Soul of Port Adelaide’ in Kaurna, was opened in June 2025.

Located on the corner of Old Bower Road and Port Road in Port Adelaide, Yitpi Yartapuultiku is an Aboriginal Cultural Destination, years in the making. Since its inception, this innovative project has worked to establish a unique cultural connection within the local community, while creating a destination where people from all backgrounds can share, learn, and experience its rich heritage.

The site is also home to South Australia's first large-scale Living Shoreline, which acts as an ecological response to safeguard the site from erosion and sea-level rise and will profile key elements of the local environment.

To bring:

• Morning tea/snacks — these will not be provided

• Water

• Sunscreen

• Sun-protective clothing (long sleeves, hat, trousers, etc.)

• Sturdy shoes (for walking around the site)

• Warm clothing (for temperatures up to 21 degrees)

• Rain jacket

Optional:

• Binoculars to spot the local wildlife

We extend our sincere gratitude to our valued funders for their generous support that has greatly contributed to ACRN's endeavours:

• The National Environmental Science Program’s (NESP) Marine and Coastal hub

• The NSW Government’s Marine Estate Management Strategy

We also thank our partners, James Cook University and CSIRO.

Here at the ACRN, we acknowledge and pay our respects to the Traditional Custodians and First Nations Peoples and communities who have cared for marine and coastal habitats for millennia. We are committed to increasing our cultural safety and capability and ensuring that partnerships with First Nations People are preferred and explored, where possible, in marine and coastal restoration projects. Our team pays respect to the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, work and play and extends that to the lands, waterways, seas, and skies of our extended network.