Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Messages of the peace murals

There exist by now about 250 such murals around the world. To create and to exhibit them countless workshops and exhibitions have taken place. Accompanying these painting actions whether now in Afghanistan, Nepal, Japan or France are various kinds of documentations. These include notes recording the thoughts of children about war and peace. There have been made as well numerous videos like the one Asit Poddar did about the mural of blind boys at the Academy in Kolkata. There are by now countless images and photos which can be shown to document what happens once these painting and therefore cultural actions transform themselves suddenly into community wide actions.

 

Nepal

Each of these murals has a unique story to tell. For instance, the one from Nepal was brought about by children leaving the city of Katmandu and who travelled over land. To reach the village at the foot of the Himmalyas, they had to cross front lines and even wait at times at gunpoint before they could move on.

A prime experience of war out of which these murals emerge, are exemplified by the Kabul, Afghanistan or the one from Tripoli, Lebanon. The latter has the appropiate title: "Enough! We want to live!"

However, over time and during the past fifteen years Kids’ Guernica has included as well children not immediately affected by war but who are still very receptive to the conditions of other children. Remarkable is, for instance, the mural from Dubai with the title: “Life is a delicate balance” as it was done by school children growing in awareness that not every child experiences a peaceful growing up as they do in Dubai.

Children upholding a part of their Dubai mural

Why these cultural actions become community wide ones, that can be explained very easily. Since children mean parents, friends, grandparents and other people who just drop by to see work in progress, and especially once the completed mural is shown to all, then these painting actions attract everyone in the community. Alone because of their size they are impressive. To that have to be added the joy for colours children have and what they brought to bear onto the canvas. Indeed all, children, parents, friends and coordinators can stand behind the kind of messages all these children are sending on such a huge canvas to the world. For instance, the mural of Poiein kai Prattein carries that significant title and message that "the war is over"!

Kids' Guernica is all about entering a collaborative learning process at the end of which the mural attests that not only a genius like Picasso can be creative, but equally little giants, as Spyros Mercouris, special advisor to Kids’ Guernica would put it.

Spyros Mercouris at Kids' Guernica exhibition in Athens Oct. 2007

Photo: Kostas Kartelias

As informal learning processes are so badly missed in our over formalised societies and abstract learning, the importance of these actions cannot be stressed enough. They give children, youth and even the adults who join in such a painting process a chance to perceive how they can work and live together peacefully in the community of man.

Boy from Athens 108 school at opening of exhibition in Athens 2007

Photo: Kostas Kartelias

Crucial is by touching with their souls the canvas, these murals can free adults to become again as imaginative as they were when themselves children and willing to learn from others on how things can be done best together. Children can do that since they are not fixed in their imagination as of yet to reality, but perceive through the imagination what difference it could make if that imagined something would really exist. Hence what they express is real in terms of human aspirations.

Pupils of Athens 1008 School in front of Izmir-Chios Mural at exhibition Athens 2007

Photo: Kostas Kartelias

Whether now Greek and Turkish children paint together and discover the paints they use as common language or else young girls in Belfast tackle questions of the peace process, these are important political investments in their own future. They create already today conditions for tomorrow's dialogues our world is so badly in need of. And they add a note of optimism so baldy missing as if a world can do without true happiness!

 

Girls who painted the Belfast mural          Belfast, Sept.21, 2009

Above all these murals can be perceived like big letters written by children to send messages into the world. It is the wish of the children that no war reigns, for then peace exists in nature and there exists trust in the future.

Sign at Kids' Guernica exhibition in Chios May 2007

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