Fenwick stepped up into his new one-year role, which is the equivalent to chair position, last Tuesday (2 July) and succeeds David Allan, who now becomes Immediate Past Master.
Since becoming a liveryman in 2008, Fenwick has sat on the Stationers’ Industry and Wine committees, chaired the Membership Development Committee, is a trustee of the Stationers’ Foundation and has been a governor of the Stationers’ Crown Woods Academy, as well as serving on Court.
He was invited into the livery by colleagues in publishing who recognised the need for the Stationers’ Company to engage with the rapidly evolving world of digital publishing as well as for his experience and knowledge on the subject of copyright and intellectual property.
Through his role at online international marketing research data and analytics company Euromonitor, Fenwick saw digital content publishing emerge and develop from the world of ink on paper.
Passionate about the role of education achieving social mobility, he will continue to encourage the work of the Stationers’ Foundation in bringing bursaries to enable young people to attain academic and vocational qualifications and experience that will help them to enter the content and communications trades represented by the livery.
He will also continue the quest to make the Stationers’ Company more diverse and to attract younger entrepreneurs and notable players in the design, digital marketing, print, publishing, paper and educational sectors.
“Livery companies have repurposed themselves on charity and education. I get this – I used to do paste-up when I worked for my dad who was a trade lithographer [at Litho Plates in Clerkenwell]. He was an apprentice who went to London College of Printing,” Fenwick told PrintWeek.
“I want to make sure that we put something back on that, not just on formal academic education, which is fantastic, but also about learning how to run events and put business plans together.”
He added: “We want to make Stationers’ more diverse in every sense. People who tend to join are those in the latter stages of their career who are successful, but we would also like to find a way to engage with some of the successful digital publishing businesses.”
Fenwick’s major focus during his term of office though will be on the circa-£7m redevelopment of Stationers’ Hall, and the associated fundraising activity.
“We’ve come up with a plan to put a lift shaft in, which in an ancient Grade I listed building that was built in 1692 is complicated and costs a lot because we’ve got to preserve the fabric of the building,” he said.
“The whole plan is to make it more accessible for the public benefit, because it’s a beautiful place and its history is important, and to create a more sustainable business model. In doing this we can create more events space and space for offices that we can let out.”
On his plans for fundraising the redevelopment, Fenwick added: “We need to be looking for foundations and people like that who would like to be associated with the company.
“We’re talking to a number of people and luckily we’ve got a broad base of print, packaging, publishing and newspapers, and a number of those extremely high net worth individuals are an obvious place to go.”
