Stan Abbott reflects on over 30 years of Guild membership , having stepped down as Chair at the AGM in Shropshire .
Stan Abbot Stan Reflects
Stan reflects
Stan Abbott reflects on over 30 years of Guild membership , having stepped down as Chair at the AGM in Shropshire .
Oh heck , I thought , as I cast my eyes round the room and realised I was almost certainly the person best qualified for the job . Almost before I knew it , my volunteering hand was in the air .
When then-Secretary Ronald Turnbull asked attendees at the Guild ’ s 2017 AGM , near Keswick , if anyone was ready to take on organising the next AGM , my fate – thanks to that rising hand – was sealed for the following seven years .
ABOVE Stan with sullen companion in Tórshavn , Faroe Islands
Having joined the committee I quickly had to take on board the manifest fact that the Guild was sailing in choppy waters , afloat thanks only to the efforts of Ronald and others who still believed it had a place in a fast-changing outdoor world .
When I first joined the Guild , in the mid-80s , membership stood at maybe double today ’ s numbers . This was perhaps the heyday of the outdoor print media , with several magazine titles and – in the days of the Net Book Agreement – several thriving small publishers of outdoor books , my own company , Leading Edge Press & Publishing , among them .
I ’ d met Roly Smith ( now our President ) through the Countryside Commission , for which I was editing National Parks Today , a thrice yearly tabloid newspaper . As the Peak District National Park ’ s lead communicator , he was on our editorial board .
Not long after joining I saw an opportunity to take an OWPG media trip to Svalbard with the Norwegian airline , Braathens . I won the Guild ’ s award for best portfolio of news stories ( a category now defunct ), and joined a fine trip to the Cairngorms , courtesy of the Mar Lodge Estate , near Braemar . All seemed good in outdoor writing land . Then I had to wind up Leading Edge and my career focus shifted away from the outdoors .
Subsequently , organising group media trips for airlines and tourist boards – including an OWPG visit to the Faroe Islands more than 20 years ago – became part and parcel of my career in PR , marketing and in-house at an airline . I must have taken several hundred journos to destinations in the UK , Norway , Luxembourg and the Faroe Islands in particular , so you ’ ll understand why I felt I had to accept the AGM role .
My first acts were to rename the event “ Big Weekend ”, with the aim of making it sound more attractive to members , and to make a three-night event standard . I began to wonder what on earth I had let myself in for as recruiting for my first Big Weekend , at a near perfect venue on Exmoor , proved an uphill struggle that demanded I spend hours on the phone to drum up attendees . Thankfully , subsequent events would prove less challenging and taking members to the Broads meant two new venues in as many years . However , all was playing out against the backdrop of static or declining membership . And then came Covid .
I would hesitate to call Covid a godsend , but what is undeniable is that it demanded that we reconsider how we should run the
Guild and what its purpose should be in an era of declining rewards for writing , and declining sales of print media .
As the IT sector stepped up and improved the quality of online meeting platforms , the Guild ’ s monthly Zooms proved a real tonic for members and gave your committee the confidence to shift the bulk of its meetings to that platform .
I had by now assumed the Chair from Peter Gillman and I was able to do this in the context of the committee having secured a degree of stability , with talented new members in key positions .
Having achieved a managed handover of Big Weekend responsibilities to the excellent Kevin Sene , my chairmanship could focus on succession planning for key committee positions so that I could stand down after my statutory three years with things in decent shape .
I ’ m hugely encouraged by both the quality of new recruits to our committee and by the fact that we have filled key positions without resort to blackmail . It leaves me free to offer advice only if sought and in the knowledge that Ronald has outlived me as the “ wise veteran ” of the committee .
My officer terms have given me confidence to assert that , yes , I do believe the OWPG still has a powerful purpose , and the Big Weekend is a perpetual reminder of the camaraderie that collective interest can bring .
Being back in Shropshire and walking the sublime Shropshire Hills also reminded me of a debt that I owe the OWPG : it was through the Guild ’ s newsletter that I learned of a project that would use European money to help small tourism businesses to cooperate with each other , develop new projects and improve their marketing . I was successful in bidding for that work , which was a joy to execute – and worth around £ 60,000 just when I needed it .
Winter 2024 – 25 OUTDOOR FOCUS 5