PEN REPORT FOR AGM 2006
During the year from APRIL 2005 – 6, our main activity in Scottish PEN was to move into our first ever office, provided for us free of rent in the Writers’ Museum by City of Edinburgh Council. We had a party to celebrate at the end of June and operated from the office for the Book Festival that August. The Council gave us a couple of desks and a filing cabinet and we share a photocopier with the museum. We had to supply computers, chairs and stationery. John Law helped us to define our computer needs and John Cant helped us to buy and install what we needed. There were teething troubles with the emails lasting into the autumn however.
Funding for this came from the generosity of Judy Russell’s private Trust and we are most grateful to her. She was inspired by Jean Rafferty’s article about attending the trials of writers with international Writers in Prison in Turkey earlier in the year. J.K. Rowling accepted honorary membership in the autumn. We put forward Edwin Morgan for the Nobel prize for literature.
In September we held an office launch inviting executives from literary organisations and the Council and also foreign consuls and officials in Edinburgh. We used our power point presentation equipment to show our work. We held a similar event in February 2006 for business people, generously hosted by former Provost of Edinburgh, Eric Milligan, (who has accepted honorary membership) with a view to fundraising for office costs, sending delegates to conferences abroad and our various projects. For this we have set up a supporters’ fund. We raised £1000 from the generosity of our members for Russian PEN, when it was threatened with closure early in the year 2007. Mary Baxter and volunteers held a three-day booksale in Glasgow just before Christmas, which raised £1,700. Earlier The Scotsman had made a donation from their Xmas booksale or £563
The CD project had a serious setback in the spring and was not ready for the International PEN congress in Berlin as we’d hoped. The British Council were prepared to arrange an event but that too had to be cancelled. The sound quality was not good enough from the first recording. Fiona Morrison took over the rescue strategy and has personally overseen and conducted the re-recording. We hope to have it ready for the 2007 Congress, which will be in Senegal.
The Penpower project for work in schools on freedom of expression and skills in expression was taken forward voluntarily by Robin Lloyd Jones and Jean Rafferty, who each made several visit to schools to hold workshops. We were able to procure ten part-funded visits for the autumn of 2006 from Live-Literature Scotland, and some money to administer this from the Russell Trust. However we still need to raise funds for training sessions, administration, and future visits to more schools. Fundraising is continually going on, mainly in vain, but Andrew Campbell and Jean Rafferty are making a lottery bid, and they have made a video about a school visit for this purpose.
A new committee for Writers in Exile has been set up under the convenership of Linda Cracknell, which has already achieved a great deal, including another translation project with immigrant writers in collaboration with Artists in Exile Glasgow, culminating in printed cards and leaflets. Events were held in Refugee Week in Glasgow organised by Zoe Strachan and Anne Clarke, and for International Women’s Day at the French Institute in Edinburgh: ‘women translated by women’, organised by Morelle Smith. Two talks on translation-related topics were held at the French Institute in the autumn given by Professor Ronnie Jack and Ian Rankin respectively. An event for Writers in Prison Day in honour of Ken Saro Wiwa was held successively in Glasgow in November and there were two related events in Edinburgh during the G8, one with African and another with Palestinian writers We had a visit from the president of Afghan Pen. At the book festival we had Gregory Pasko as our guest, an imprisoned writer from Russia for whom we had campaigned. We held our annual PEN lecture with Elaine Feinstein talking about her biography of Anna Akhmatova. We held a reception and dinner for her and Grigory. The 2005 Alternative Arts Breakfast took place during the Festival, chaired by Mike Russell with Alison Kennedy and Sandy Stoddart as speakers to a lively audience.
The 2005 congress took place in Slovenia and was attended officially by Tessa and Rody Gorman. Rody has kept in touch with the International Committee for Translation and Linguistic Rights, sending them information from Scotland. Robin, Andrew Campbell and Jean Rafferty also attended the Writers’in Prison conference in Istanbul in March 2006. Paul Scott and Laura attended the Writers for Peace conference in Slovenia in March 2006 at their own expense.
We are indebted to the good work of Laura Fiorentini in patiently taking over the membership secretary and treasurers’s tasks from Mary Baxter. This was a fairly complicated exercise and did not happen overnight. After a false start in trying to recruit an accountant to present quarterly accounts under new treasury rules, we are delighted to say that the one and only accountant-who-loves-the-arts, Eric Wishart, has agreed to do this for us. Marylin Jeffcoat has agreed to act as auditor. Morelle Smith nobly helped in the office with getting email lists and mailing lists in order. Meantime Simon Berry was liaising with E-tellect to completely re-design our website and get it online, which he did with great success and it is now in use and kept up to date in the office by Morelle. She has also taken over convenership of the Women’s Committee from Patricia Ace, who organised the Naomi Mitchison lecture in November. This was given by Scottish land historian, James Hunter. In spite of a demanding new job, Jules Horne once again produced excellent newsletters for us.
Since the beginning of financial year 2006 – 7 we have continued to improve systems in the office, to develop the projects and plan events. We have attended the annual congress in Berlin and appointed a Writers for Peace representative for Scottish PEN in John Coutts. Three women members went to Paris for the second set of Scottish-French PEN dialogues on the subject of women’s writing. We have also worked with City of Literature and Edinburgh Council on taking forward the proposal that Edinburgh should join the City of Refuge network organised in Stavanger with Norwegian funding. We are planning the details and raising the money for a writer in exile to be welcomed in Edinburgh in the next year or two. The 2006 Scottish PEN lecturer at the Edinburgh International Book Festival was James Meek on ‘Life,Liberty and the pursuit of Ignorance in Afghanistan and Guantanemo’. The 2006 alternative arts breakfast took place in the Writers’ Museum with a sparky panel on the subject of Scottish culture. Alan Gay is organising a sponsored walk in October 2006. None took place in 2005.
I hope to relinquish the presidency in the New Year of 2007, when vice-president Jenni Calder has offered to take up the duty. I have had a wonderful three years and am very grateful to the Scottish PEN committee and members for giving me these opportunities to serve the cause, to meet many of you and get to know you, to widen my horizons on many fronts,(including the web), for marvellous international congresses, and also better understanding the complex, democratic, flexible and strong organisation that is International PEN, in which we play an important part through our witness and efforts in Scotland being also in communication with the various networks abroad. In 2007 we will be celebrating 80 years of Scottish PEN with a travelling poster exhibition, making our work better known in various parts of Scotland and providing a focus point for events of various kinds, including the launch of the CD. Prof. David Daiches, who died in July 2005, was a major funder of the CD.
Thank you all: especially the committee – including Simon Berry -, those who work in the office, Jules for the newsletter, the conveners and members of the working committees, for your support, encouragement, and tremendous hard work.
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Statement for Scottish PEN AGM, 23.09.06, by Jenni Calder
I am sorry I can’t be with you at the AGM, but I couldn’t make it without truncating a long-committed week on the Moray Firth. As I am standing for president of Scottish PEN, I feel I should make clear my hopes and intentions for PEN over the next year or two.
Under Tessa’s presidency, PEN has come a long way. We now have an office, and a higher profile than ever before. To reach this position has required a lot of hard work, and to sustain it is going to require a great deal more. We have several challenging projects under way, and some new departures which we need to develop and expand. The current state of the world means that International PEN is more important than ever before, and the Scottish contribution to this is valuable both to PEN and to Scotland.
I believe that the main emphasis for PEN now is consolidation. The key areas, in addition to the essential work of administration and communication, are:
Writers in Prison, where we make a strong contribution, and will be hosting the 2008 WiP Congress
Writers in Exile and the development of Edinburgh as a City of Refuge
PENpower, crucial for reaching the younger generation and building future support
Border Crossings, the CD, which needs energetic promotion and marketing
International exchange and translation work, building on recent initiatives
Marking Scottish PEN’s 80th birthday in 2007, with events related to the above
Fundraising, without which much of what we aspire to will not be possible
With this in mind, it is perhaps perverse for me to say that I am standing for president knowing that I am not in a position to take over before January 2007, or to give as much time to PEN as Tessa has done over the last three years. But I feel I must be realistic. This means that, as president, I would be relying on the support of the committee and the membership. I would like to see every committee member having a role, however small, in one or more of the above areas, and helping to recruit new members. I would want to continue to encourage the membership to participate in and to initiate PEN activities that support the current priorities, and to contribute in any way they can to PEN’s work. The committee needs to seek a new vice-president who will be prepared to take on the presidency in due course.
The future for Scottish PEN is challenging but also exciting. We are a key part of Scotland’s literary environment, and our international responsibility is at the heart of what we stand for. Of course, we are all writers or editors first, but PEN should be seen as part of our creative work as well as an essential voice in Scotland’s literary community.
Have a good AGM.
Jenni Calder