Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal February 2007 Volume 5(1)

Book festivals

Right on target

Aye Write!, Glasgow’s now annual book festival. Mary Greenshields explains how such festivals can both promote and engage more people with libraries – even before the event takes place.

As you read this, the second Aye Write! book festival in Glasgow will have taken place in the magnificent, newly refurbished Mitchell Library. The programme offered more than 120 sessions with leading writers, journalists and broadcasters, a schools programme with more than 70 events for Glasgow schools.

Added to this writing workshops and informal café sessions were also on offer. For instance, Literally Quizzical, when teams of readers, writers, librarians and councillors were to battle it out to find the Aye Write! Literary Team of 2007. At the time of writing, the excitement in Glasgow Libraries is tangible, as we see months of planning and preparation coming to fruition.

How it is organised
Aye Write is organised by a Steering Group made up of library staff, partners, sponsors and an employed programmer. Chaired by Councillor John Lynch, Executive Member for Cultural and Leisure Services, the group includes the Libraries’ Management Team and selected staff, representatives of title sponsor Bank of Scotland, editorial staff from media partner the Herald, academic staff from Glasgow University Creative Writing School and representatives of Waterstones and Scottish Enterprise Glasgow.
Responsibility for aspects of the festival is devolved to working groups: Programming; Sponsorship; Operational – management of venues, ticketing and staffing – as many members of staff as possible are given the opportunity to be involved in the festival; Children’s – programming events, liaising with schools and staffing; and Community engagement.

A substantial sponsorship package from Bank of Scotland means that the festival is now an annual event and has adopted the title Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival. Other funders, apart from Glasgow City Council, include Scottish Arts Council and Glasgow University.

The Herald supports the festival with author interviews, book reviews and editorial content. The paper has also published a specially commissioned short story by Theresa Breslin.

Town and gown
Input to the festival from academia has included representation on the Steering Group from Glasgow University Creative Writing School and links with journalism and media courses at Strathclyde and Caledonian Universities. Students will help out with looking after authors and introducing sessions, and write reviews of events, with the best appearing in the Herald. Journalism students have the chance to practice their skills by interviewing authors and videoing sessions, for website use and also as a resource for use by book groups.

A partnership with Waterstones gives us a high quality retail outlet on site during the festival, offering festivalgoers the chance to buy a copy of a book and have it signed by the author. An added benefit is that Aye Write displays of stock and programmes in Waterstone’s shops, in the weeks preceding the festival, provide useful targeted marketing.

Stock policy
While books are available to buy at Aye Write through retail partners Waterstones, we make sure that copies are also available to borrow from all libraries, which makes our festival more inclusive. Money is set aside in the bookfund to buy copies of books by all authors on the programme. Members of library book groups are encouraged to suggest authors for the programme and copies of their books are made available in advance of the festival.

As well as bringing the buzz of a major literary festival to Glasgow, we monitor the effect on our libraries’ performance indicators. While a 10-day festival will clearly impact very positively in terms of visitors, book issues and new members, significant gains are also made through our community engagement programme.

Community engagement
When the first Aye Write festival was at an early stage of planning, the decision was made that, as well as bringing the best literary talent to the city, the festival would contribute to Glasgow City Council’s learning, social inclusion and regeneration strategies by engaging people who don’t usually use libraries or attend book events. The success of this strategy is borne out by the statistic that, of the 15,000 people who took part in Aye Write! 2005, more than 60% were from Glasgow’s social inclusion partnership areas.

In the run up to Aye Write 2007, we embarked on an extensive community engagement programme to make sure that even more groups and individuals across Glasgow would enjoy this year’s festival. Working with colleagues across Cultural and Leisure Services, including Sports Development, Youth Teams, and Community Action Teams, and with a range of partners and sponsors, we have delivered some innovative reading and writing initiatives.

Small Island Read 2007
From January-March, along with Bristol, Hull and Liverpool, Glasgow is taking part in Britain’s biggest ever mass reading project, with 50,000 copies of Andrea Levy’s Small Island being distributed free of charge in the four cities. In Glasgow, media partnership with the Herald has been invaluable and television adverts encouraged readers to bring their voucher for the free book to any Glasgow library. We also offered a free copy to library members who borrowed another book – a tried and tested performance-enhancing strategy!

A range of events around the initiative are taking place in libraries, Andrea Levy appeared on the opening day of the festival and the programme included other events related to slavery and immigration.

As well as helping our targets for visitors and new library members, the initiative has raised our profile. Another long-term benefit of the initiative has been the setting up of new workplace book groups and contact with those hard-to-reach private book groups – more customers for our Book Group Tickets.

Creative Writing
Ignite Playwrighting Competition In partnership with Playwrights’ Studio Scotland, we offered a series of workshops across the library network and invited original scenes from unpublished playwrights. The prize for the winner – Karen Barclay – is support, advice and training to develop her scene into a full length play, which will be given a rehearsed reading at Aye Write!

One Glasgow Many Cultures
With Scottish Arts Council funding, Aileen Ritchie was appointed as Writer-in-residence, working with refugees and asylum seekers. Aileen organised a short story competition on the theme of ‘One Glasgow Many Cultures’ which attracted entries from schools, writing groups and individuals. The winning stories was celebrated at an event on the opening day of the festival.

Football Stories
To encourage more men to attend the festival, one of its themes is football. In the run up to the festival we invited people to send in football stories. This was cascaded through the Adult Literacy Network, Youth Services and Football Development Scheme. As part of the BBC RaW campaign, the BBC provided football storytelling workshops and also arranged for Tam Cowan to host an event celebrating the best stories.

RSNO
From September 2006 to January 2007, we embarked on a partnership with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra which involved some of our book groups reading books on a musical theme and being visited by musicians to play, talk about their work and improvise music around the books. Members of the Orchestra played at Aye Write, in the new Herald Café in the Mitchell, and for 2008, we are looking at a musical strand to the festival.

Aye Write! is a festival for all the people of Glasgow. Time will tell its effect on our performance – visitors, issues, membership – but even before it started this year, it has been hugely effective in reaching out to the people of Glasgow and raising the profile of Glasgow Libraries.

Mary Greenshields is Adult Services Coordinator, Glasgow City Council.

Information Scotland Vol. 5(1) February 2007

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