SNAPSHOT

The manager: Tony Buckby
The job: Director of the British Council
In brief: Tony Buckby arrived in Bulgaria in December 2007 on a post likely to last three or four years. He’s been a manager with the British Council for 17 years. Before 1990 he was school director at the British Institute of Florence. He has also taught English at an Italian university and at schools in the UK.

In 1990, the British Council asked him to open a new office in Bologna. He stayed there six years. He then went to Rome as the British Council’s director of language services at a time when there were five centres in Italy. His last posting in Italy was as the British Council’s deputy director.

He returned to the British Council’s central London office (off Trafalgar Square) in 2004, as the deputy English language director. This portfolio involved overseeing aspects of wider English programmes, working closely with the ministry of education, with a particular focus on China, East Asia and Western Europe.

Tony Buckby now lives in Sofia’s Doctors’ Garden area with his Italian wife.

Tony Buckby, director of the British Council, praises Bulgarians for their “warmth” and “generosity”. Yet he wastes little time in addressing areas where he believes there’s room for improvement.

“I read an interesting economic study about inter-cultural dialogue in Europe. Bulgaria came very low down – indeed at the bottom – in terms of what could be described as its cosmopolitan mindset, its attitude to inter-cultural dialogue and its willingness to engage with other cultures. I believe that Bulgaria has a lot of catching up to do in the field of public administration and in terms of its openness to cultural diversity,” he says in an interview with The Sofia Echo.

“Diversity” is a word that peppers Buckby’s conversation, repeated like a positive motif. It also features predominantly on the British Council’s website, accompanied with a quote from French writer and humanist Rene Dubos that “human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival”.

The notion that “diversity” is purely beneficial per se has infiltrated the entire British establishment. Sometimes I worry that it could come at the cost of eroding authentic cultures. The implication would seem to be that those countries refusing to embrace “diversity” (which I take to be a euphemism for migration and multiculturalism) are backward. And when I ask Buckby if he thinks Bulgaria is “isolationist” he does not demur. “I’m sure that things will change gradually, particularly now that we’re in the EU,” he says.

Does he see the British Council’s role as creating or exporting cultural diversity? “One of our principal areas of work involves cross-cultural understanding, the importance of social change, facilitating dialogue and examining the treatment of diversity in the Bulgarian press,” he says. “Our goal is to spread the importance of education, the scope and benefits of IT in schools and encourage people to study science. ... For example, we’ve been running a project called Fame Lab over the last couple of years, giving young people a few minutes to give a presentation on a scientific project and handing out prizes to the winners.”

The British Council’s Open Cities project, a scheme to open up cities to the presumed advantages of population flows by linking Sofia to other cities like Yemen, Bilbao and Madrid, is another example of the presumed benefits of diversity. The council also promotes multilingualism by working with partners in Bulgaria and also in Brussels and Strasbourg.

It’s no secret that the British Council lobbied hard for Bulgaria’s entry into the EU and on that level, at least, Buckby is very optimistic. “I’m sure that Bulgaria as a country will contribute a great deal to Europe.” He reveals that he’s impressed by the overall level of Bulgarian education, if less enamoured by the state of its pavements. “I tripped and broke one of my ribs a few weeks ago!” he says.

One of the British Council’s mission statements is to promote the advantages and achievements of British culture, or, to quote its website, “to showcase British excellence, innovation and creativity”. In reality, Buckby sees it as a two-way process. “We want to build mutually beneficial relationships. That’s our aim. Just promoting British culture sounds rather one-way. Mutuality is at the heart of our mission, as well as sharing solutions and opportunities in an increasingly inter-dependent world,” he says.

Buckby speaks glowingly of the 50 staff who work under him. “Most are Bulgarians but all have excellent English-language skills. We have a dozen full-time teachers – all native English-language speakers – employed exclusively by the British Council, as well as other part-time teaching staff.”

Tuition takes place in groups but also involves some one-to-one instruction. Each year the British Council attracts about 3000 students to its language courses. Students come from a wide range of backgrounds but many are young professionals, funded at least in part by their employers. “The service we offer is extremely good. Our teachers are highly qualified and experienced and all our classrooms have interactive white boards, overhead projector, CD player, TV and DVD. Our emphasis is on promoting quality in language education. We also helped set up Optima, the Bulgarian association of quality language services, which enables us to support the quality private sector.”

Buckby says his working activities varied. “Three weeks ago I was in Rousse for [the council’s participation in] the city’s March Music Days. We’re running a project called Let’s Play Music. Young musicians from six different countries in the region – Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Romania and Turkey as well as Bulgaria – all played together. That really epitomises our wish to bring together creative young people. I travel a lot throughout Bulgaria but also have periods in the office. Last week was a planning period for us, involving time in front of the computer and discussions among the management team about ideas for the coming year. Soon I’m going to Romania to discuss with colleagues ways to enhance co-operation.”

The British Council is partially funded by Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. “We have budgets and obviously we have to stick to them. We have to distinguish between activities that are run as autonomous businesses, such as our teaching sector, and other services such as our library information services and IT and media diversity projects, for example, that are partially funded from grants ”

The Varna office closed down the year before last but Buckby quickly points out that this pre-dated his arrival. “We decided to concentrate our physical presence here in Sofia, rather than be spread around,” he says. Controversy has surrounded the British Council’s expansion into Asia and the Middle East, a development that has, perhaps inevitably, squeezed the European operation.

“It’s part of a five-year strategic review of our services,” Buckby says. “Clearly, international priorities are shifting. We feel there’s a lot to achieve in the Middle East and South Asia, improving levels of dialogue and understanding with developing nations. Now we have a smaller, inter-connected world but also a more fractious one. I hope we have a role to play in bringing people together in positive exchanges. We can’t improve our activities in some parts of the world without changing how we work in others. This led to a decision to operate less as a set of cultural institutions and more in partnership with organisations in Europe. We no longer regard the physical presence as so crucial.”

Listening to Buckby’s carefully worded explanations I was starting to get apprehensive about the British Council shutting in Sofia. Is the office safe? “We have no plans to close here, although we will have more large-scale projects, working with other offices in the region,” says Buckby. “The emphasis will be on regional co-operation, not just bilateral ties. We shut a number of offices in Europe because we think we can work more successfully in other ways.”

The British Council is avowedly non-political, hence Buckby’s dismay at Russia’s decision to shut two British Council branches outside Moscow. The move came after Britain expelled four Russian diplomats over Moscow’s refusal to extradite a key suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. “It’s a pity that a cultural organisation has been affected by a situation that’s purely political. Particularly when the services we provide are truly appreciated by the Russian people,” he says.

In terms of management style, Buckby operates what he describes as a “democratic” approach. “It’s difficult to say what one does, much easier to say what one would like to do,” he says. “The importance of communication is paramount. This means involving staff as much as possible in decisions. Everyone must know where we’re going and why. Managing change is a long term approach but you also have to look at short-term wins. That’s how you get your colleagues to support it, giving staff plenty of training opportunities to help them develop.”