European Speechwriter Network

European Speechwriter Network

Book and Periodical Publishing

About us

EUROPEAN SPEECHWRITER NETWORK LTD is a publishing company based out of RIFT HOUSE, 200 EUREKA PARK UPPER PEMBERTON KENNINGTON, ASHFORD, United Kingdom.

Industry
Book and Periodical Publishing
Headquarters
ASHFORD

Locations

  • RIFT HOUSE, 200 EUREKA PARK UPPER PEMBERTON KENNINGTON

    ASHFORD, TN25 4AZ, GB

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Employees at European Speechwriter Network

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    View profile for Brian Jenner, graphic

    Speechwriter & Conference Organiser

    Every year, for the European Speechwriter Network conference, I do something creative. During some train strikes in my home town of Bournemouth, I noticed a picket line outside the station. The picketing union members had a banner. I was not so impressed by the lack of trains, but I was very impressed by the banner. Maybe we could have a banner for the ESN? I googled, trades union banner artists, and I found Edmund Hall. I asked him if he would be interested in creating something for us. He said he would. I then had to think of what image to put on the banner. I confess, being a traditionalist, in awe of the American rhetorical tradition of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, it had to be something Biblical. One of my favourite Biblical scholars is Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. I read her book on Moses and her comments on Moses’s reluctance to speak in public. Moses realised his limitations as a leader and he knew that communication would be an important part of his role. (Moses chose Aaron to be his intermediary because he was eloquent, but every leader needs interpreters, which is where speechwriters come in.) The image of Moses at the burning bush seemed very appropriate. Mr Hall went with that. And he also used a badge of Erasmus with the Latin line ‘De Copia’ - of copiousness - we’d created to reflect the speechwriters debt to Classical rhetoric. We unveiled the banner at our conference in Oxford last year. Later in the year we had a lecture from Mr Hall on the history of protest banners - and how important they are on any demonstration. The beauty of a creation like this is that it stimulates ideas. I’ve been watching the Netflix drama about Moses this weekend. His task was to articulate to the Israelites something they couldn’t understand in Egypt, the meaning of freedom. The burning bush also shows how ‘revelation’ is as important to us as ‘rationality’: where exactly do our good ideas come from? I decided to get a postcard of the design printed to put in the delegate packs for this year’s conference in Cambridge. Now everyone can ponder the what the image means to them.

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