The IPA leadership attended the Opening of the Book Fair on Tuesday evening.

Wednesday saw IPA President Bodour Al Qasimi on stage in the Studio to discuss the latest Publishing Industry statistics of the World Intellectual Property Organization. She underlined the importance of statistics in terms of making the case of the importance of publishing to policy makers.  That session had been preceded by a presentation by the Federation of European Publishers’ Enrico Turrin who detailed sector statistics for Europe.

The afternoon saw the 2nd edition of the IPA’s Sustainability Summit which was opened by IPA President Bodour Al Qasimi to a full house. Act head of UN Publications Irina Lumelsky presented the successes of the SDG Book Club and the SDG Publishers Compact with an exclusive peak at the results of a survey of SDG Publishers Compact signatories. She was followed by a double act of Elsevier’s Rachel Martin and Canon’s Jörg Engelstädter, two key instigators of the 2030 Publishing Accelerator. They delivered a compelling case for acting now and presented the different work streams of the accelerator. Rachel Martin presented the prototype carbon label for an individual book. You can read more about that here

The Federation of European Publishers, together with Fondazione LIA held sessions on accessibility, which you can see here.

That session was immediately followed by the Open Freedom to Publish Forum, which saw a presentation of the World Expression Forum and a discussion with Afghan / Canadian author and 2022 IPA Prix Voltaire shortlist, Nahid Shahalimi. She spoke about why it was important to her to share the voices of Afghan women and encouraged the audience to keep fighting for them. Daniel Martin Brennan of the European and International Booksellers Federation then presented the organisation’s brand new Freedom of Expression Charter.

Thursday opened with the IPA’s Copyright Committee meeting hearing reports from around the world about local copyright developments. The Spotlight on Africa Seminar also started that morning celebrating the IPA’s 3 year partnership with Dubai Cares to drive the Africa Publishing Innovation Fund. Read the full write up here.

Many flocked to the Harmonie Hall to hear Ukrainian President address the fair as part of the annual FEP rendez-vous. You can watch his address here

Friday saw the return of the Open Educational Publishers Forum meeting to Frankfurt with three compelling presentations about the situations in the USA, India and Germany.

On the Saturday, the United Nations held two sessions in the Studio looking first at how young readers can support climate action, which linked to the SDG Book Club, and then on how publishers can combat climate change, which featured IPA EC member, Kathy Bail, and linked to the SDG Publishers Compact. 

 

Watch the highlights video here:

https://youtu.be/D_Naz5FEAyM