Toespraak van Prinses Laurentien tijdens het Amsterdam UNESCO Wereldboekenstad 2008 Slotmanifestatie, 22 april 2009

Toespraak | 22-04-2009

Excellencies, Lord Mayor, dear friends of Amsterdam World Book City,

Every ending heralds a new beginning... an old wisdom that also applies to Amsterdam World Book City. From the outset, this UNESCO initiative has wanted to be a means to an end; a platform to achieve something meaningful for society. The initiative not only wanted to promote books, but also foster reading throughout society, involving all relevant players in the book chain - from publishers to libraries, from bookshops to authors and citizens...

It has been a pleasure to be Patron of this wonderful initiative, working with a dedicated team, committed to make this is a success. It has been a positive challenge to do so, having to answer to different needs and demands in a city as diverse as Amsterdam. I've also enjoyed our conversations about how to marry different sides of that very same coin of "promoting books and fostering reading throughout society": to appeal to the highly educated and literate, but also to the children and to those who do not necessarily 'connect' with books and reading.

Equally important, its success lies in how we manage to pass on the spirit behind the initiative - of how we make the ending tonight a beginning for others. Mr Ambassador, we are delighted that you are with us tonight, representing Beirut as the next UNESCO World Book City. The closing of Amsterdam World Book City means a new beginning for you. We wish you all the best and will gladly share our lessons learnt with you! And the past year will hopefully inspire other countries - several represented here tonight - to bid for this prestigious title.

Indeed, World Book City has allowed us to revisit some of the very basics about what books mean to us, to society at large. And that's precisely what needs to be passed on to future cities.

It starts with the very basics of books. Books can rise above cultural differences and they survive different generations. They represent different voices that ultimately bind us together and feed our continuously developing culture. They carry knowledge and inspire; they enrich our language and enable reflection. Science tells us that our brain work in such a way that it constantly looks for ways to be fed, to be triggered. Our brains has a huge potential... so reading is - quite literally - food for the brain. Reading, then, is not about passing our eyes over a page... it is about interpreting. Science also tells us that the more conscious we become of reading, the more we can do with it. And the better we become at it, the more pleasurable it is. This positive upward spiral is vital for creating a literate environment - Amsterdam World Book City aimed at contributing to this dynamics. I very much hope that the effects will not stop after tonight, but that the book-related initiatives will continue.

For children, books are a bare necessity, as they develop their language skills and feed their imagination. No imagination, no dreams. No dreams, no future. It is our responsibility to guide our children to discover both the traditional masterpieces and more recent literary works. And let us learn from the new generations, and not be afraid of what the new world is offering - both this... and this!

This leads me to the past year's theme of "open mind", which captured the core characteristics of the initiative. It gave us a chance to celebrate freedom of expression, freedom of publishing and distribution of information. The writings of the icons - Spinoza, Anne Frank and Annie M.G. Schmidt - represent different aspects of 'an open mind'. An open mind is an open door for meaningful thoughts. It is a starting point for any society that claims to be open within and across its borders. By its very nature, an open mind demands the ability to look at ourselves critically and allow other thoughts, experiences and opinions to shape our thinking. This demands engagement and dialogue.

And we can only be truly open if we take the time to listen to others and reflect, to throw some of our fixed notions out of the window from time to time. How many times a day do we allow thoughts of others to mix with our own, and then consciously form our opinions?

And thirdly, we cannot take for granted that books are accessible to all. Across the globe, 776 million people are illiterate. In developed nations, about 5 to 20 percent of our populations lack the literacy and numeracy skills to function fully independently. To this day, literacy remains a taboo precisely because we've taken it for granted for far too long. In developing nations, access to education is still not a given. On an individual level, literacy is about self-esteem and empowerment. It's about making a living and living healthily.

Literacy goes to the heart of democracy, our economy and social cohesion. Why - because democracy places a high value on the quality and equality of individuals. Being able to read and write makes us active citizens - it enables us to know the law, understand our rights and obligations as citizens. In knowledge and information-driven societies such as the ones we live in, we are to a large extent defined by our ability to absorb, grasp and actively use information independently and engage in and be part of society. So literacy is a precondition for truly participating in democracy and making full use of its benefits. We should not, and unfortunately cannot, take democracy for granted. Equally, we cannot take literacy for granted.

The basic value of books, an open mind and no taking literacy for granted... these are three aspects that Amsterdam World Books City wants to pass on to future book cities. "Thought cannot be divorced from action", as Jean Monnet, founding father of what we now call the European Union, used to say. So the good news is, there's a tangible tool to support this "relay race", put together at the initiative of Stichting Lezen & Schrijven, the Global Campaign for Education and Amsterdam World Book City.

This tangible tool is the "Book of Importance" (Boek van Belang), available in Dutch and English. Over the past months, some 50 fascinating and prominent people from a wide range of backgrounds have written about what language and reading mean to them - from authors to politicians, cartoonists, businesspeople, sports heroes and artists. Their very personal contributions are hand-written to underline the importance of writing. This is all the more unusual, when much of our interaction today is determined by technology and speed. To quote a few lines from the book: "Reading means living", "I live for and by the grace of reading", "I've remained hungry for the written word since that day" and "Reading enlarges your world and diminishes the distance between you and the other." To my mind, both content and form make this Book of Importance a unique account that will hopefully not gather dust and disappear in a drawer, but be a source of inspiration and dialogue to young and old, now and in the future.

This Book of Importance is about how being able to read can enrich our minds, stimulate our imagination and enable us to understand each other. It is about the power of the written word to make ourselves heard, and is thus a modest ode to freedom of expression.

These words clearly need to travel as much and as far as they can reach. It is therefore my great pleasure to put this valuable tool into the hands of someone who personifies much of what I talked about here, and who is in a position to pass on the spirit of Amsterdam World Book City. He thinks and acts across cultures, borders and boundaries. Mr Timmermans, perhaps you can take this Book of Importance with you on all your trips abroad and remind your colleagues that there's no democracy without literacy, and that an open mind is of great value to both individuals and society at large.

Every ending heralds a new beginning... I salute the achievements of the past year and wish Beirut every success and enjoyment during the year to come as the next UNESCO World Book City.

Thank you.