{"id":3908,"date":"2019-05-23T09:16:41","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T09:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/?p=3908"},"modified":"2019-05-27T18:11:13","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T18:11:13","slug":"nottwich-robert-macfarlanes-unesco-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/nottwich-robert-macfarlanes-unesco-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Macfarlane’s UNESCO lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Last night’s UNESCO lecture by Robert Macfarlane at the Council House was tremendous. Thanks to everyone who made it happen, especially the University of Nottingham for hosting it. Particular credit to\u00a0my vice-chair at NUCoL, Patrick Limb, who organised ‘The Lost Words’ crowdfunder for Notts libraries and got us involved with Robert. He can be seen in the video of the speech<\/a> introducing a beautiful short film about the book, one which reduced Robert to tears. While this was the big public event of the Nottwich conference (where Nottingham and Norwich UNESCO cities of literature host 25 of the world’s other cities of lit) it’ll be of particular interest to Sheffield friends & family as, in the main section, Robert links the community of trees to the community created to save Sheffield’s trees. It’s a powerful, moving account of recent events in the city where I was born. I don’t post much about the City of Literature on here and with the conference going on don’t have time to write much, but here’s the speech I gave before the event and above you can see me giving Robert a thank-you bottle of Acorn gin, from Sherwood Forest, courtesy of Weavers of Nottingham, which he was very chuffed with. Thanks again, Rob.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0speech\u00a0below\u00a0was\u00a0followed\u00a0by\u00a0speeches\u00a0from\u00a0the city council leader,\u00a0David Mellen, NTU’s\u00a0VC, Edward Peck and\u00a0the\u00a0chief\u00a0executive\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0Arts\u00a0Council, Darren Henley. UoN’s VC, Shearer West, introduced Robert, as can be seen on the livestream linked above. I began by thanking our director, Sandeep Mahal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the University of Nottingham for hosting their annual UNESCO lecture here as part of our Nottwich conference. I bid a very warm welcome to every one of the delegates at the Creative Cities of Literature summit, which we\u2019re proud to host. I met many of you in Dublin three years ago & look forward to catching up. And of course, a very warm welcome to Robert Macfarlane, our guest lecturer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the building where, four and a half years ago, we\nannounced that the city would bid to become a UNESCO City of Literature. It was\nan ambitious thing to do and one that many people \u2013 sometimes including me \u2013\nthought we had little hope of achieving. But we were determined to bring the\ncity together, to celebrate our heritage, yes, but also to acknowledge our diverse,\nthrilling writing scene. Most of all, we wanted to make things happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here we are, co-hosting what I\u2019ve been told is the city\u2019s biggest International Conference this year, Nottwich. By the way, as a huge admirer of Graham Greene, I\u2019m delighted we agreed to name this conference after the fictional version of Nottingham that Greene created for his novel about our city, A Gun For Sale<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene was only here for three months in 1926. He thought of\nNottingham as a cultural desert & you know, he had a point. I\u2019ve been here more\nthan forty years. The changes in that time have been staggering. Though I\u2019ll\ntell you what, we\u2019ve always had good libraries. Twenty-odd years ago, Notts\nlibraries \u2013 who\u2019ve always been superb at supporting local writers \u2013 managed to find\ntwenty of us from across the county for a photocall in the Victoria Shopping\nCentre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the only time I ever saw my friends Alan Sillitoe and\nStanley Middleton together. I often wonder what the two of them \u2013 working class\nwriters from lowly origins – would make of where we are now. By the turn of the\ncentury, new writers kept popping up all over. There was a groundswell of\npoetry, in particular. Did you know we have more poetry publishers, per head,\nthan any comparable city in the world? Credit must also be given to Nottingham\nPlayhouse who fostered the birth of the hugely successful and influential Mouthy\nPoets, giving them space and support. Under Giles Croft and Stephanie Sirr,\nthey put new emphasis on producing plays by Nottingham-based writers like Andy\nBarrett, Amanda Whittington and Mufaro Makubika.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early 2014, one of our playwrights, Stephen Lowe, became\nPresident of Bromley House Library. At his suggestion, the library commissioned\nPippa Hennessey to look into how they might celebrate Nottingham\u2019s literary\nheritage. She came up with the idea of bidding to become a UNESCO City of\nLiterature and would become our Project Manager during the bid. That summer we\nset up a company to manage the bid and, if successful, the designation. Our\nvolunteer board included several writers and representatives from the Writers\nStudio, Writing East Midlands, the Playhouse, the City Council and, of course,\nboth of our great universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We decided to become an educational charity. And we asked for\nhelp. After I was elected chair, I called Aly Bowden, director of Edinburgh City\nof Literature for advice. She told me we needed a shout line that summed us up\nin no more than six words. As every writer knows, writing short is much harder\nthan writing long. Still, I think we managed to succinctly articulate what has\nalways been and will always be our mission: Building a Better World With\nWords.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half of the money to finance our bid came from Arts Council\nEngland, whose James Urquhart was an enormous support during this entire\nprocess. The other half came, in equal measure, from the city council and our\ntwo universities. We\u2019re both grateful for and proud of fostering that three-way\npartnership, which went on to be the basis for the city\u2019s European Capital of\nCulture bid \u2013 before the embarrassment that is Brexit ruled the UK out of the\nbidding \u2013  despite being disqualified, we\ndemonstrated that we are an international city, one that, tomorrow, I\u2019ll be proud\nto tour with our visitors from around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We submitted our UNESCO bid in summer 2015. That December, we\nlearned we\u2019d been successful, becoming one of what were then just fifteen\ncities of literature. It was and is a success that belonged to the whole city\nand, in particular, to every one of our writers, many of whom are in this room\ntonight. Six months later, thanks to our four key partners, from whom you\u2019re\nabout to hear, we were in position to recruit a director. Sandeep Mahal took on\nher new role whole-heartedly, and she\u2019s done a fantastic job. Not only for us. Sandy\nnow chairs the Creative Cities of Literature network. She\u2019ll make sure that delegates\nhave a very fruitful few days here. We hope you have a great time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I\u2019d like to congratulate David Mellen, our next speaker, on his election as our new Council Leader and thank him, for coming here tonight to make his first official speech in his new role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To finish, here’s a song from the final album by Pulp, whose Jarvis Cocker is referenced in Robert’s speech. This is ‘The Trees’ from ‘We Love Life.’<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n