The first workshop, held November 30-December 2, 1994, was keynoted by Mayor Mary Hawkins, a four-term mayor from Madison, Mississippi, and focused on the Sautee-Nacoochee Valley area. Thirty attendees came from around the Southeast, including Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Kentucky. 

The second workshop, hosted on December 4-6, 1995, engaged a similar range of participants and followed the well-established Your Town format. Some of the speakers included Pratt Cassity, Leo Alvarez, and Randall Arendt. The small group breakouts were used to address design challenges in hypothetical communities, but also dug deeper into design strategies and the importance of graphic and communication design.

Learn more from the 1994 Helen Workshop Notebook.