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URGENT !!!! 17th March 2020
By now all SRF members should have received the following important message: "SRF Trustees regret that due to the current coronavirus situation the Cultural Conversation with Professor France this THURSDAY MARCH 19th at 6.30 has been cancelled, along with the catering we had hoped to provide. We hope to hold this at some stage in the future. We shall accordingly convene the AGM purely formally at 6.30pm. Members ARE ASKED NOT TO ATTEND. This will allow us to adjourn the meeting at 6.45pm in the absence of a quorum, no business having been transacted. The Trustees expect to fix a date to reconvene the AGM in not less than 3 months' time, and will give at least 14 clear days' notice of the new date. We are very sorry indeed for this unavoidable postponement of the event, but feel that members will understand why we have decided on this step. As a result, the current Trustees will continue in office until the date of the reconvened AGM which is not expected before mid-June at the earliest. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to get in touch by e-mail. We hope that all SRF members will stay safe and well". 1 CEES SEMINARS: These Seminars likely to be postponed until further notice due to the current coronavirus situation. 2 !!!PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE FOR "STARLING"!!! The next meeting of "STARLING" for 2020 which was due to be held on March 24th at 5pm in the SMLC (School of Modern Languages and Cultures) ANNEX at 52 HILLHEAD STREET (just along from the Main Glasgow University Library) has been postponed until further notice due to the current coronavirus situation. 3 Plans were announced in the SRF November "Bulletin" for a possible SRF trip to Russia...This is an initiative of the SRF Treasurer Peter Harvey. Please contact us at info@scotlandrussiaforum.org to express interest or to ask for further information. Peter will be providing more details of costs in the near future and will talk more about the trip at the next AGM. 4. Dr. Andrea Gullotta and Dr.James Rann of the Russian Section, SMLC, University of Glasgow, together with the All-Russia State Library and the Institute for Literary Translation ran a most successful Conference in early December 2019 entitled "Translation as an Act of Cultural Dialogue" (In Honour of the 220th Anniversary of Alexander Puskhin). Follow-up information from this Conference will be available in due course. 5. It was a great pleasure to meet Anna Ishkova, a Russian journalist based in Edinburgh! She has promised to keep in touch with us and keep us informed about interesting events in and around Edinburgh. AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS 2019 JUNE 2019 LIEUTENANT COMMANDER DAIRMID GUNN, OBE, was awarded the Pushkin Medal. Members will doubtless wish to congratulate long-standing SRF member, Lieutenant Commander Dairmid Gunn, OBE, on this well-deserved honour. Author of a book on the convoys to Russia during the Second World War, interpreter in the 1950s and posted as assistant naval attache to Moscow in the 1960s, Lieutenant Commander Gunn has served the cause of the promotion of cultural relations between Russia and the UK in a tireless and in an excellent manner. In the 1980s, for example, he was the chairman of the Scottish Branch of the GB-USSR Association and a member of its Council. This has been a splendid start to the summer and warmest wishes and congratulations are passed on to Dairmid! July 2019 MIROSLAVA BRONNIKOVA has recently been elected as the first ever Russian to be on the Board of Directors of the Edinburgh Fringe! Her appointment will be ratified at the AGM to be held on August 21st. Miroslava reveals that her "...love affair with Edinburgh started in 1999 when I first came to visit the city with my family for a couple of days in late August". In 2000 Miroslava spent 3 months studying at St George's School for Girls in Edinburgh and she returned to the city in 2013 to complete a Cambridge CELTA Course. With her husband Ivan she founded a theatre and dance company in Moscow and they are especially proud of their production based on Bulgakov's " Master and Margarita" For information on the two shows Miroslava has at this years Fringe please see https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/all-star-cabaret-the-free-fringe-gala Miroslava's e-mail address is miroslava.bronnikova@gmail.com and she will be very happy to hear from SRF members! Below please find a few future events which should be of interest to members. More details will be given in due course. 1. 2020 is a special anniversary year of the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan. Morgan translated many Russian poets into Scots and if any SRF member has any personal memories of Morgan and his work we would be delighted to hear from you at info@scotlandrussiaforum.org. There will be a major Edwin Morgan Conference held in Glasgow in April 2020. Watch this space for more details. 2. In the spring of 2021 the Annual British Congress of Slavists comes to Scotland! There should be many talks and sessions that will be of interest to SRF members. More details to follow in due course. 3. "Starling" is a new Translation Forum which was set up at Glasgow University last autumn on a trial basis. Its aim is to look at various translation topics with Slavonic and other languages, including Hungarian and Finnish. It has had a very successful first "flight" and will be starting up again in September 2019. "Starling" was "founded" by Christine Bird and she will be sending a message of welcome out to all SRF members in the autumn. Finally, I am sure that all SRF members would like to join in expressing heartfelt thanks to Jenny Carr for all the excellent work she did with SRF over so many years and we all wish her well for her future projects. A quick reminder here too that Summerhall Arts Centre, Edinburgh no longer houses the SRF Office. The SRF Office there is now closed. The new postal address in c/o CEES, (Centre for East European Studies) 8 Lilybank Gardens, University of Glasgow , Glasgow G12 8QQ. We do not have an actual office space at CEES but we hope that this affiliation will be an important and a fruitful one for the SRF. We are very grateful to Professor Richard Berry for allowing SRF to be linked to CEES in this way. To contact us please use the postal address above or email us at info@scotlandrussiaforum.org. Emails are checked on an almost daily basis so we will reply to you as soon as possible. Thank you. |