2010 Kids' Guernica - InSEA Europe

2010Kids’ Guernica

Kids’ Guernica 2010The ART&DESIGN for Social Justice Symposium focuses on howthe tools and inherent abilities within the areas of art and designcan be utilized in addressing issues confronting less advantagedgroups within our local communities, states, regions or world. Theevent is designed to generate synergy, spawn collaborative projectsamong participants, create new scholarly initiatives, and allowexamination of the role that art and design plays in the telling ofa broader social narrative. The 2010 Symposium will be held inassociation with the 15th anniversary of the Kids’ Guernica Internationalpeace mural project, and will involve workshops, exhibitsand events preceding the actual Symposium.The ART&DESIGN for Social Justice Symposium is sponsored bythe Department of Interior Design and the Department of Art Educationat Florida State University. The main symposium events willbe held January 18, 2010 (Martin Luther King Holiday) on the FSUcampus. Symposium events and details can be found on its website:http://interiordesign.fsu.edu/symposium.This program is sponsored in part by:The City of Tallahassee State Partners Grant Initiative and the LeonCounty Cultural Development Grant Program, both administered bythe Council on Culture and Art.KIDS’ GUERNICA International Committeec/o Dr. Takuya KanedaDepartment of Child Studies, Otsuma Women’s University12 Sanbancho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 102-8357 JAPANTel/Fax: 81-(0) 280-22-1269E-mail: Kguernica@aol.comKIDS’ GUERNICA International Committee MembersRepresentativeTakuya Kaneda (Japan), Otsuma Women’s UniversityHonorary MemberTadashi Yasuda (Japan), Art Japan NetworkMembersTom Anderson (USA), Florida State UniversityBaikuntha Shrestha (Nepal), Sirjana Art GalleryAnn Cheng Shiang Kuo (Taiwan), National Changhua University ofEducationIan Brown (Australia), University of WollongongBoris Tissot (France), Artist, ParisGabriel Felder (Italy), RainbowBanibrata Poddar (India), Rotary Club, MumbaiAsit Poddar (India), Artist, CalcuttaKae Matsuura (Japan)Alexandris Evangelos (Greece)Bernd Gockel (Germany)Pio d’ Emilia (Italy)Marco Braghero (Italy), Peace WavesHatto Fischer (Greece), Poiein Kai PratteinWebsite: kids-guernica.org/Keiko Hoshino, webmasterTakao Nagahara, website photographerFlorida State UniversityT.K. Wetherell, PresidentLawrence G. Abele, Provost & VP for Academic AffairsSally McRorie, Dean, College of Visual Arts, Theatre & DanceAdvisory CouncilJack Freiberg, Assoc. Dean, CVAT&DDavid Gussak, Art EducationLynn Hogan, Assoc. Dean, CVAT&DCameron Jackson, School of TheatreAdam Jolles, Art HistoryAllys Palladino-Craig, Museum of Fine ArtsPatty Phillips, School of DanceFrancis Salancy, Foundation, Asst. Dean, CVAT&DRussell Sandifer, School of DanceEric Wiedegreen, Interior DesignMuseum of Fine Arts StaffAllys Palladino-Craig, DirectorViki D. Thompson Wylder, Curator of EducationJean D. Young, Registrar / Fiscal OfficerTeri R. Yoo, Communications & Museum Studies CoordinatorWayne T. Vonada Jr., Senior PreparatorCat Silvers & Katherine Reinhardt / EventsDeirdre Carter, Graduate Editorial AssistantJustine McCullough & Greer Dauphin, Graduate AssistantsKids’ Guernica Project: Interns Hannah Dahm (2008-09), AlisonSchaeffler-Murphy (2009-10) and volunteers* belowVolunteer Coordinator: Jenna Mulberry* (2008-09); Joohee Kang*(2009-10)Assistant Coordinators: Casey Fisch, Joohee KangVolunteers and InternsGuest Curator / Author:Tom Anderson holds the Jessie Lovano-Kerr Chair in the GraduateInstitute for Art Education at Florida State University and is afounding member of The Kids’ Guernica Peace Mural Project. Hecan be reached at tanderson@fsu.edu.Design:Julienne Mason, JJKLM DesignPrinter:Durra-Print, Tallahassee, Florida©2009Florida State UniversityMuseum of Fine ArtsCollege of Visual Arts, Theatre & DanceAll Rights ReservedElizabeth Beu • Clay Brand • Bethany Bussell • Erin Crosby* •Hannah Dahm* • Emmalee David* • Michele Frederick* • LaurenHigbee • Katey Ianacone* • Morgan Jones •Hsin-Ying (Cosette) Lin* • Ali Madalinski*Bridget McNamara • Gina Menduni • Brittany RegisAlison Schaeffler-Murphy* • Elizabeth Shanks*Support and OrganizationThe exhibition of the murals of the 2010 Kids’ Guernica wasorganized by the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts,Guest Curator Tom Anderson. Project Staff: Allys Palladino-Craig,Grantwriter / Editor; Jean Young, Fiscal Officer; Teri Yoo,Communications Officer; Viki D. Thompson Wylder, EducationalProgramming; Wayne Vonada, Chief Preparator.

Kids’ Guernica 2010Fifteen Years of Kids’ GuernicaThis year, 2010, makes fifteen years of international cooperation by artists,arts administrators, art teachers, community activists, and most importantly,the children of the world, toward the goal of constructing world peace througha locally specific, globally envisioned peace project called The Kids’ GuernicaPeace Mural Project. It might strike one as grandiloquent to say we areconstructing world peace through community art making except for the factthat the entire project is circumscribed by local specificity. Every mural islocally conceived and locally constructed in relation to local conditions andconcerns. And every mural is a peacemaking process in its very constructionthat proceeds, sometimes through stops and starts as each group learnsthe lessons of cooperative activity and respect and tolerance for our fellowhuman beings. Then the mural serves as an ambassador to others in otherplaces and other cultures in expressing what it means to be Greek or Japaneseor American, and more specifically to be a kid from Athens or Nagasakior Tallahassee. That’s what we mean by global vision for constructing peacethrough local specificity.In the BeginningFifteen years ago, the small group who initiated this project could scarcelyhave imagined what it would become today: a venture encompassing hundredsof murals from more than 40 countries, all painted by children of theworld. I became involved in organizing the first mural workshop, in 1995,when I was approached by Toshifumi Abe, an art education professor fromOsaka, Japan, with the idea of a children’s mural exchange to commemoratethe fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Abe was representingtwo other co-founders, Tadashi Yasuda of the cultural organization ArtsJapan, and Professor Kaoru Mizuguchi. Abe had read some of my work oncommunity mural making and wanted to utilize that paradigm for an internationalchildren’s peace project. He had seen the movie Schindler’s List andrecognized in this movie that Schindler, a German national and Nazi affiliate,recognized that his community was larger than those who were just like him,and he risked everything to save Jewish lives. Said Abe, “We all belong to ourimmediate community and to go beyond it is not easy. So this project can belikened to building a bridge between communities, a bridge of peace.”Abe called me in June of 1995 and asked that I coordinate the Tallahasseechildren’s mural and have it ready for presentation two months later,before the August 5th anniversary of the nuclear weapon being dropped onHiroshima. He requested that it be the exact same size as Picasso’s famousanti-war painting, Guernica: 3.5x7.76 meters: approximately 11 feet tall by26 feet wide. This then was the paradigm set by the first mural painted inTallahassee: that is, a peace painting by children, the size of a mural buton canvas so it could move from one place to another to stimulate a similarpeace workshop in Japan.Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Guernica, Paris, June 4, 1937, oil on canvas, 349.3 x 776.6 cm, Museo Nacional, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain.Image © ARS, NY. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.Takuya Kaneda I am of the same opinion that we need tobe free in our imagination to develop empathy for otherpeople, as this is a precondition for peace.—Hatto Fischer[Above] Drawing from a school workshop in Greece with a white dove and the legend “peace.” [Below] The first mural created in the United States,painted in 1995 in Tallahassee, Florida.To execute the Tallahassee mural, I recruited an adult mural team consistingof artistic director Linda Hall, an established community-oriented muralist,and four undergraduate Florida State University art education majors. Thechildren’s team consisted primarily of fifteen mural painting veterans recruitedfrom the Fourth Avenue Cultural Enrichment (FACE) program directed by JillHarper. These children, between the ages of nine and fifteen, had executedseveral inner city murals already. Completing the core team were five childrenrepresenting socio-economically privileged lifestyles. With the cooperation ofDirector Gay Drennon, we were also able to tie into the weeklong Very SpecialArts Florida festival at the 621 Gallery, where the mural was painted. Thus,about 75 to 100 Very Special Arts participants also contributed to the mural.In this sense, the Tallahassee workshop was consciously inclusive, community-based,locally specific in its design, and directed to socially instrumentalpurposes. We wanted to provide empowerment and validation to as many

Kids’ Guernica 2010types of children as possible through this project. As emphasized by ToshifumiAbe, our philosophy was to think globally and act locally.In this first workshop, the concept of peace was explored, not only in abstractuniversal terms, but also in concrete and specific terms. The workshopbegan with a presentation to the core mural team about World War II andparticularly about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Beyondthe obvious point of wanting the children to know what we were doing andwhy it was important, the secondary point was to let them know who else wasparticipating, to whom they were sending the mural, and for what reasons.Toward that end, Maruyama Yasushi, a native of Hiroshima, told the childrenabout the effects of the atomic bomb and about Hiroshima then and now. IdeKumiko, a native of Tokyo, told the children about what it is like to be a childin Japan, and particularly what the children to whom we’d be sending themural are like. There was discussion about war and peace and their causes,what Japanese children like to do, how they spend their time, and so on,which led to an impromptu lesson in which most of the children learned tofold an origami crane.[Above] Toshifumi Abe with the Tallahassee Mural. [Right] AFourth Avenue Cultural Enrichment program participant mentors ayounger Very Special Arts child on a section of the mural. [Below]Performers from the Florida State University Department of Danceat the Museum of Fine Arts celebration.At that point, through cooperative interaction, the theme of the Tallahasseemural began to crystallize. What could we do to help the children of Japanunderstand who we are and what we like to do? We decided we could symbolicallysend gifts to the children in Japan that would help them understandwhat we value and care about. We decided to paint self-portraits holding thethings we cared about most. These would be our gifts of peace. A Gift ofPeace became our theme and title. Another discussion generated a list ofpossible gifts that describe the American character, particularly through objectsand activities valued by the children. Further discussion centered onhow we would get these gifts to Japan. One adult team member suggestedthat the children could fly, as in the book Tar Beach (Ringgold, 1991). Many ofthe children knew this story and agreed, enthusiastically. Children then renderedthemselves on paper, taking off and flying, carrying gifts that included,among other things, peace signs, fried chicken and French fries, a chocolatemilk shake, skateboards, a rap CD, kittens, American flags, sports equipment,Nike tennis shoes, and a Sweet Valley Twins novel.The execution of the mural itself took place over the course of about a week,during which time children with special needs visited the 621 Gallery workspace, engaging in mural making and in other activities. Inspired again byFaith Ringgold, the adult mural team decided to use her quilting device as acompositional structure to give everyone equal access to expressing themselvesin the mural and to still execute a product, overall, of high aestheticquality. The solution was to give each special arts student a square of his orher own which together formed the border around the primary composition.Many of the exceptional needs children executed symbolic gifts to send to Japanincluding peace signs, a steel drum CD, kittens, American flags, a lizard,flowers, and so on. Many others were not able either to integrate the conceptor to execute it, but painted freely in their designated square nonetheless.The American mural process, then, was one in which an adult mural team providedthe content and broad theme of peace, as well as the conceptual foundationand compositional structure. Children, in cooperation with the adults,developed the specific theme and title, A Gift of Peace, and specific contentand imagery fitting the theme. West African drumming and dancing, celebratingthe FACE team’s African-American roots accompanied the opening exhibition.All in all, the American mural workshop was a process celebrating themultiple identities, abilities, and subcultures of America, and the empowermentof each in the pursuit of the universal theme of world peace.Professor Abe came from Japan to videotape almost the entire Tallahasseeworkshop for his research. In addition, Art Japan hired a professional videocrew from Florida-based Seminole Productions to provide raw footage for

Kids’ Guernica 2010what was to become a documentary on this project. At the invitation of ArtJapan, I took the American children’s mural to Japan, where I was privilegedto be a small part of and observe the Japanese children’s peace mural workshop.The workshop was held at the Tokushima Museum of Modern Art. Thefacilities and resources mustered by the Japanese for this project made mefeel like the Tallahassee mural was executed in spartan conditions, or at leastby the seat of our pants. The working spaces in Florida, a classroom at FSUand the non-air conditioned space at the 621 Gallery in Tallahassee’s RailroadSquare art district paled in comparison to workshop and display spacein the gleaming, almost new Tokushima Museum of Modern Art, in which anair conditioned, 40 by 80 foot workspace was provided. Three museum staffmembers, a full time curator and two assistants, were assigned to the project.The entire floor in the Tokushima Museum workshop space was coveredwith blue plastic tarp, the cost of which no doubt exceeded the entire budgetof the Tallahassee mural. The museum supplied a canvas that was cut andprofessionally sewn to the right dimensions at the factory, and state of theart brushes and supplies. Sakura Corporation supplied paint for the entireproject. This, compared to the Tallahassee experience, which many Americanart educators will recognize as typical, of scrambling for everything and workingon a shoestring budget.The process of the Tokushima workshop also was different from the Tallahasseeworkshop in interesting ways. The relative time spent in consultationand achieving consensus among mural team members was an obvious differenceas was the manner in which decisions were made. In Tallahassee,Linda Hall and I met a couple of times before the children’s workshop to talkabout format, theme, and strategy. We discussed the mural a couple moretimes on the phone. We assigned the rest of the adult mural team, consistingof the Japanese presenters and four art education students, their tasks.Working from a bare-bones conceptual foundation, we made many decisionsabout content, form, and strategy spontaneously and “on the fly” during thecourse of the weeklong workshop. The fact that choices were made in a spontaneous,open-ended manner meant that the final form and content of theAmerican mural were not finally known until the mural was done. The processalso was open-ended and somewhat divergent in terms of participants’roles. Certain members of the adult mural team were more interested andinvolved than others and took more central roles as a matter of course. Likewise,children became more central or more peripheral depending on theirlevel of participation and interest. This fluid definition of who would do whatand how much also affected the outcome. For example, the borders that wehad saved for the exclusive use of Very Special Arts students were partiallypainted by core mural team members who wanted to do more, and the primarycomposition was partially painted by special students who had the skillsand the desire. This open-ended and divergent process at times resulted ina rather chaotic method, but we believe that it also gave everyone an equalopportunity to contribute, to take ownership to the extent they wanted to andwere capable of.In 2009, the Tallahassee Mural is built of quilt-like blocks of painting from area schools. Picasso’s Cubist legacy has been incorporated into the facesof the children’s portraits.In Tokushima, the process was more formalized and deliberate. Overall, itseemed, too, that both adults’ and children’s roles were rather more fixedthan in Tallahassee. Everyone seemed to know what his or her role was comingin, and there didn’t seem to be much flux on the issue. The process ofconsultation was almost ritualistic. The mural team met frequently, and atsome length, every day before the children came and after they left, allowingeveryone to speak, and reaching consensus on all significant aspects ofthe project before any action was taken. The children were also integratedinto the consensus-building and decision-making process in a much moreformalized manner than in the American workshop. Unlike the workshop inTallahassee, there were formal sessions that began and ended each studioexperience in which the children were asked to express their opinions aboutwhat the content of the mural should be and how that content should be expressed.In short there was an attempt to gain consensus from the workers at

Kids’ Guernica 2010each stage of the process. Only later would I understand just how importantthese meetings and everyone’s attendance and consensus are in Japanesesociety. Innovation during the mural making process seemed to require groupconsensus. The Japanese children and adults seemed to be more consciousthan the Americans of how one change affects the whole.It also became apparent that the Japanese children had a much more cooperativetendency than the American children. They had much more inclinationto work in groups than the American children, who tended to work singly, or atmost in pairs. The American sense of individual ownership was expressed byone child when she said to another child about her self portrait, “This is mypicture, don’t touch it.” Again, my language skills limited my ability to know forsure, but I did not detect this attitude at all in the Japanese children, throughtheir postures or interactions, or through my interpreters. Although individualJapanese children did initiate images and ideas, it was the norm during theactual painting process for kids to be working on components of the muraltogether. The only time this happened in the American process was in paintingthe background, a task it seemed that the American children recognizedas a sort of bothersome necessity to be dispensed with before they got tothe “real stuff”—their own individual expressions of self. Toshifumi recentlycommented that these two murals were the first brother and sister of Kids’Guernica and first expressed how we are all alike and all different.The Philosophy of Kids’ Guernica[Above] Painting at the Tokushima workshop in 1995. [Below] The Tokushima Mural.Children in the first workshops were asked to envision how they could promotepeace as citizens of their country and the world, in a locally and culturallyspecific manner, and that became the project paradigm. As articulated in theinitial project statement, we believed that in spite of the fact that the childrenand sponsors of this project are of different cultural backgrounds, certainhuman drives and concerns are universal, such as the desire to live safely inpeace, free from war or the threat of war. We also believe that since art is atroot an instrument of culture, the children of different countries participatingin this study will express these universal concerns differently, each accordingto their own locally specific needs and criteria. Finally, we believe that thepower and potential of the project lies in this idea of unity of purpose anddiversity of approach. Through seeing the multiple paths we all take to reachcommon goals, it is our hope that understanding, tolerance, and respect onefor another will grow. This, indeed, may be a path to world peace.From an educational perspective, according to Toshifumi Abe, a primary benefitfor children in addressing the issue of peace through art is that it fostersboth independence of mind and (individual and collective) identity. Workingtogether establishes concern in children for each other and eventually asense of belonging to a community. Says Abe, “This means every mural andevery mural process is very precious for us. In this way each mural is a nail ora board in the collective bridge of peace.”With current developments and an organic evolution in leadership, otherideas have come to the fore. Especially of note are the efforts and ideas ofHatto Fischer, currently a prime mover and coordinator of the project in Europe,the Middle East, and Africa. International coordinator, Takuya Kaneda,in a recent email, told Fischer “without your tremendous efforts, the currentexpansion of this project could not be achieved.” Indeed, Fischer reaches outtirelessly through the Web and travels throughout the world to achieve theends of the project. Hatto denies being a leader, or the leader, saying of hisleadership role, “Kids’ Guernica is highly flexible and dynamic and resides onindividual initiatives as much as on collaborative work. Like Maya, my daughterwould say, modern society challenges all of us to work together free ofany hierarchy if we are to live the dream of equality and peace.” But throughFischer’s influence, the abuse or potential abuse of children has become aspotlight issue for Kids’ Guernica, in addition to our long-time focus on chil-

Kids’ Guernica 2010peace murals from different countries were framed with bamboo. TakuyaKaneda reports that, “It was really spectacular that all colorful murals werefilled with wind against the blue sky and the white Himalayan Mountains.Gabriel, Banibrata, and Ann brought some children from Italy, Taiwan, andIndia for this exhibition. The children had a good time in Kathmandu, stayingtogether in one hotel and discussing with Nepalese children what theycould do for world peace. Baikunthaman Sresstha of Nepal coordinated thecelebration. Kathmandu was chosen for both practical reasons (it was inexpensive)and spiritual reasons described above. The King and Queen ofNepal inaugurated the exhibition in Kathmandu. In front of the children theyreleased two white doves. Unfortunately, the King and Queen were killed sixmonths later, in 2001. After this tragedy, the political conflict between thegovernment and the underground Maoist group became more serious andtook on the character of a civil war, Eventually, peace ensued and in 2007 theMaoist group participated in the interim government of Nepal. The Maoistsbecame a leading party after the general election in 2008 and the governmentdecided to legally abolish the monarchy. Last year Nepal changed fromthe kingdom to the republic. For the last decade, Kids’ Guernica has greatlyexpanded while Nepal politically changed. A video of the Kathmandu experienceand several other Kids’ Guernica events can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUEzEEqT92k.The International Steering Committee Comes to BeTadashi Yasuda, from Art Japan, thought of Kathmandu as the final eventand the end of this project, but the participant children and adults wished tocontinue it. So in the year 2000, the Kids’ Guernica International (Steering)Committee was formed with Takuya Kaneda being selected by the membersof the committee as coordinator. This made a formal structure for communicationand leadership in what continued to be an informal organization,and especially was helpful in establishing a Web presence on the Internet,and a way to respond to people who wanted to participate, as well as a wayto share resources with those who wanted to but couldn’t afford to participate.The committee was formed by those who participated in the fifth anniversarycelebration of Kids’ Guernica in Kathmandu, Nepal, including BaikunthaShrestha, Ann Cheng Shiang Kuo, Gabriel Felder, as well as Asit andBanibrata Poddar from India and others not in attendance such as Ian Brown,and, myself, Tom Anderson. On this occasion, Mr. Yasuda handed over allhis management related to Kids’ Guernica to the international committee.In this meeting, also, Gabriel proposed his idea to hold another Kids’ GuernicaInternational Exhibition in the Italian Alps in the following year. “Kids’Guernica from the Himalayas to the Alps” seemed a wonderful idea, and aplan was made to make it so. The international steering committee has beenexpanded in a democratic manner over the years to include many other activeparticipants in the project.[Above] Among the participants in Nepal in 2000 are BanibrataPoddar from India (at the left) and Juliette Tissot-Vidal (wearingred at center). [Right] The King and Queen of Nepal. [Below] Thefirst Nepalese mural in 1996.The Second Five Years A Response to 9/11A major exhibition was to be held in Italy beginning on September 15, 2001,but with the suicide plane bombing and destruction of New York’s Twin Towerswe were unable to come together on that date, since air traffic almosteverywhere was completely grounded. We postponed the gathering, then,until the middle of December. This gave us more than two months to regroup,during which time the European organizers and Takuya Kaneda emailed meand wondered if we could do an American post-9/11 mural. I knew it wasthe right thing to do, so I suggested to my graduate students in Panama City,Florida, that we stand up for peace in the midst of the turmoil, rather thandescending to the desire for revenge. Two doctoral students, Michelle Creeland Jerry Pilcher, stepped forward to lead the workshop and several othersalso contributed. Elementary students from Oakland Terrace, Northside,Patronis, and St. Andrews Elementary Schools, and students from MowatMiddle School painted the mural, assisted by students from A.D. Harris and

Kids’ Guernica 2010Arnold High Schools, Gulf Coast College students, Florida State Universitystudents and local art teachers. The main theme was What Peace Meansto Me. A large angel figure centers the mural, representing those who died.She is holding a World Trade Center tower in each hand. She stands in frontof an all-seeing eye, red from crying, that is looking for peace with childrenof all ethnicities and religions, including Muslim and Christian reaching outto each other. Michelle Creel held writing workshops to diffuse the children’sfear and to search for ways to express hope for the future. Some of these writingsoccupy the space in the upper right around the rainbow, which signifieshope. The finished mural was exhibited at the Visual Arts Center of NorthwestFlorida before being sent to Italy. One participating family was so taken withthe peace process engaged in this mural that they followed it to Italy for thecelebration of peace in the Alps.The Post-9/11 Gathering in Italy[Above] Mural completed in Panama City, Florida, in 2001 following the 9-11 bombing in New York and Washington. [Below] Murals installed at Kron-/platz, Italy in 2001.The December gathering was held at a ski resort in Kronplatz near Brunico(Bruneck, in German), in the Dolomites, in a part of northern Italy that hasbeen contested by Italian and German cultures for centuries. At Kronplatz,more than fifty murals were installed all along the ski slopes on billboard-typeframes that were funded by an EU grant secured by coordinator GabrielleFelder and his colleagues. At the top of the hill were at least 20 of the muralslined up in a bank behind a platform. I brought the American mural with meand it was installed in the last remaining space. We were all very excited thatmorning, too excited to remember we were cold, because the Dalai Llamawas on his way and would be there at noon. Hundreds of children and morethan a hundred adults had ridden the chair lifts up the hill to hear His Holinesstalk with us about peace. Then Pio, one of the organizers got a phonecall. “The Dalai Llama isn’t coming,” he said to a couple of us around him.“What!?” I said. “An engine on his plane caught fire and he had to put downin Lisbon,” said Pio. “Thank god he’s safe,” said another committee member,“but what are we going to do?” “Carry on,” said Takuya. And we did. TheBurgermeister of the south Tyrol District stepped up as our main speaker.International Coordinator Takuya Kaneda also gave an inspired speech inwhich he said, in part:“When we started this Kids’ Guernica project, it was a really tiny seed butnow it has grown up to become a big tree with many beautiful flowers. Sincethis project started, I have been able to meet so many people from differentplaces of the world, and they became good friends of mine. Friendship is essentialfor world peace. If you have friends, you will love their countries, theircultures, and their religions.“Please look at these peace paintings created by your friends in differentplaces of our planet. You will find differences as well as similarities. Eachpainting shows a different image of peace, as each child’s face is not thesame. This diversity is the richness of our planet. It is my wish that this exhibitionwill give you a wonderful opportunity to appreciate the diversity of theparticipating children’s cultural background as well as their strong wish forpeace. To understand and accept differences is the first step to creating [a]peaceful world. If you have friends, you will appreciate their differences.“At last, I would like to emphasize that these beautiful peace paintings are notindividual works but collaborative works. Without working together we couldnot achieve the success we have enjoyed in such a wonderful project. Kids’Guernica is a symbol of working together toward the peaceful world. I believethat if we have a hope for peace and work together, it will surely come true. Iwish all of you to share this dream and to support its realization.”One of the great accomplishments of the Kronplatz gathering was that it provideda stage for Israeli and Palestinian children to get to know each otherand personally explore the possibilities of peace between them. Prof. Don Bar10

Kids’ Guernica 2010On at the Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva and Prof. Sami Adwan at theBethlehem University supervised this special project. They were founders of anon-governmental Israeli-Palestinian organization. “Peace Research Institutein the Middle East “(PRIME) in Beit Jala, in Palestine. This organization hasbeen very active in working for a peaceful coexistence of Israeli and Palestinianpeople (kidsguernica.org). They had been trying to find a way to get Palestinianand Israeli children together but had been blocked by red tape andgovernmental borders and cultural boundaries in their home territory. Again,made possible by an EU grant, they were both able to bring their children toItaly to work together. In 2001, they were awarded the International Prize bythe Alexander Langer Foundation in Italy.TunisiaAgain, it’s beyond the scope of this document to describe all the many workshopsthat took place the second five years, but I can describe a few just togive the reader a sense of what was going on. For one example, a workshopin Tunisia, in 2003, was coordinated by Alberto Filippone and Mourad Ennarwith 30 Tunisian children and youths and five adults from Morocco, tenfrom Italy and five from France. The theme was peaceful migration. In themural, four roads run by many people of various cultures, meet in the centreof the painting linking two societies represented on the two sides. This unionproduces a peace whirl making a new paradigm where the various culturesinteract without creating conflicts. The message is explicit: legal migrationssupported by different juridical processes, migration based on healthy rulesof justice and cohabitation can produce a peace process. . . . For everybodythe migration is a bilateral exchange, which enriches both the parts.The Second Nepal MuralAs another example, the second workshop in Nepal was organized in 2005.Baikutha also led this workshop. It was a collaborative work between childrenin the capital city, Kathmandu, and a remote village, Sirubari near theHimalayan foothill. An anti-government Maoist group was very active near thevillage. The village children painted the first part of the mural. The mural wassent to Kathmandu and finished by children there. This workshop gave a goodopportunity to both the children in the village and the city to know each other.After being exhibited in Nepal the completed mural eventually was sent to thetenth anniversary peace event in Bali.As reported by Takuya Kaneda, “A boy who had participated in the first workshopin Nepal in 1996 grew up and worked hard to coordinate the secondworkshop in 2005. It is remarkable that the Kids’ Guernica project continuesthrough the years through grass roots effort. It’s a longitudinal projectthat cannot be easily evaluated in the short term. But in the long term,” saidTakuya, “I believe that the real result will be found in students’ minds afterthey grow up. If art education can make an impact upon students, their experiencethrough art will be crystallized and it will change their behaviors whenthey grow up. In this regard, the Nepalese boy who actively got involved withthe second workshop after many years is a good example.”[Above] More than fifty murals were installed atKronplatz in 2001. [Left] Tom Anderson and TakuyaKaneda. [Below] Mural from Tunisia in 2003.He is only one of many who have experienced deep, long-term effects fromthis project. Kids’ Guernica is a rich tapestry of interwoven human experiences.As Hatto Fischer put it, “There are countless peace murals all of whichhave their own unique story. It becomes [useful therefore] to link it with thechildren and [adults] who participated in it and therefore can tell their ownstories.” So let me share a few of those stories, in the teller’s own words.Boris Tissot“I discovered the Kids’ Guernica Project at an artist residency at Villa Kujoyamain Kyoto in the fall of 1997. I saw a group of children painting a big canvas11

Kids’ Guernica 2010in the street; they were participating in the Kids’ Guernica Project with greatenthusiasm. It was then that I met the generous Yasuda Tadashi who headedArt Japan network and the first stage of the Kids’ Guernica Project 1995-2000. He told me how he had asked children around the world, by Internet,to paint their image of peace on a canvas measuring 3.5 x 7.8 meters (11.5x 25.5 feet)—the same size as Picasso’s Guernica. I thought it was a beautifulway for children to speak through art about the violence in our societiesand through meeting other young people their own age and discovering othercountries and cultures.“When I returned to France, I decided to bring the project to Paris, in April1998, in the Atelier des Enfants at Pompidou Center at the École Vitruvewhere my daughter Juliette was a student. It was at that time that I met upwith an old friend, Michel Cibot. We spoke about the Kids’ Guernica Projectand of our own responsibility as citizens to speak out for peace in our dailylives. We must never forget what happened in the twentieth century! MichelCibot was working for the city of Malakoff, near Paris, and has been involvedin the 2001-2010 UNESCO Program for Peace. The city of Malakoff is also amember of the Mundial Conference of Mayors for Peace initiated in 1985 bythe mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so we did [a] Kids’ Guernica muralin Malakoff in 1999.“But first, in 1998, we introduced the students from the École Vitruve gradeschool in Paris to the city of Guernica, as well as [to] Picasso’s great workGuernica, painted in the context of the Spanish Civil War. We asked themto talk about violence, war and peace. They explained what happened whenthey got into fights at school during recess and why they got into fights. Wetalked about the positive and negative feelings we hold inside, and how wemust learn to control our anger and the dark side in each of us. We spoke ofthe respect we must have toward others. One boy talked about his parents’fighting and their divorce. Others talked about the wars between countriesand the violence people were subjected to. One of them spoke of how hisgrandfather came home crazy at the end of the last war with Germany. Anotherspoke of how his father was in Kosovo working for peace.[Above left] Young artists working in Israel. [Other photographsabove] Children in Crete with their mural and the mural being installed.[Below] Mural from France painted in 1998 at the ÉcoleVitruve in Paris.“We did a lot of painting exercises with the painter Marie-Claude Beck, teachingthe children how to use colors, invent patterns. After much discussion,the kids voted on the color yellow for peace, and both red and black for War.Each of them made a little sketch for the large painting, and together theclass chose to paint the one that represented the idea of the collective group,that ‘Peace is fragmented and War stretches in all four directions: east, west,north, south.’ They spent a week painting the canvas. Their symbol for peacewas clasped hands and for war knives and forks. They made stencil drawingsof the various elements on the red. [Image for Malakoff, France, at http://www.kids-guernica.org/MuralPage/No16.html]“For the painting with the school children at the Henri Barbusse grade schoolin Malakoff in 1999, we showed them pictures of Picasso’s Guernica, as wellas photographs from Robert Capa (Bilbao, Mai 1937), Laurent Van Der Stockt(Afghanistan December 1994; Grosny, August 1996). We asked them wherethey saw images of war and violence. They spoke of TV and newspapers.We asked them to bring newspapers to the class. While we were discussingthem, one of the kids in the group thought it would be nice to invent theirown newspaper. We decided to do exactly that and discussed the newspaperlayout (columns, text, spaces for photos) which they drew on a canvas withgrey paint that they applied with sponges, sticks, spatulas… They wrote in redphrases like: Stop the war! Respect people! No mines! A picture can be seenat http://www.kids-guernica.org/WorkshopPage/No23France.html.“I later went to Kathmandu, Nepal with my daughter Juliette to participatein the inauguration of the Kid’s Guernica 2000 exhibition in the presence ofhis Majesty King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah. We watched as a pair of white pi-12

Kids’ Guernica 2010geons were let free in the air. The pigeons symbolically carried the children’smessage of peace around the world. Three months later, the king was killedby a member of his own family. The reality of violence was quick to return. Inthe exhibition some 53 huge paintings made by children from 19 countriesaround the world over a period of five years were on display on the Tundhikhelparade ground.“Seven of the paintings were by Nepali children, made between Novemberand December. How wonderful to witness those powerful images of peace inNepal, which was in the midst of a civil war. It was fascinating to discover thecountry, to walk the old cities Kathmandu, Bakhtapur, Pokhara and experienceits ancient culture.“I also initiated a Kids’ Guernica exhibition in the city of Oradour in the HauteVienne (France) from April 7 to September 30, 2003. The village of Oradour,which is on the outskirts of Limoges and about three hours from Paris and19 km from Brigueuil, the village of my grandparents that was completelydestroyed and its people massacred by the Nazis during World War II. To keepthis crucial piece of history alive, a part of the village was never rebuilt. Createdafter World War II, the mission of the Centre de la Mémoire (Center ofRemembrance) in Oradour is to keep the memory of the tragedy of Oradoursur-Glanealive for future generations, and to carry out actions that deliver amessage of human dignity, reconciliation and peace. On April 7, 2003, about200 participants gathered at the Centre de la Mémoire in Oradour for thegrand unveiling ceremony of a Kids’ Guernica exhibit. Dominique Barrère,director of the Center of Remembrance, organized the event. Five paintingsdrawn by children, from France (Oradour), Spain (Guernica), Czech Republic(Lidice), Belarus (Khatyn) and Greece (Kalavrita) were displayed inside thehall, while eight paintings from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, India/Bengal,Bosnia, Algeria, Ethiopia and Japan (Hiroshima) were displayed outside. Theselected paintings were all from countries that had been affected by war,regional conflicts, ethnic violence, or destroyed by the Nazis. Hiroshima, ofcourse, was where the first atomic bomb was dropped. The children fromGuernica, Lidice, Khatyn, Kalavrita and Oradour attended the opening ceremony.The 13 paintings spoke to the message of a peaceful future for generationsto come, and the hope that the past will never again be repeated.”[Above] Picasso’s atelier, selected for a 2009 mural location by Boris Tissot. [Below] In the town of Guernica, in Spain, a mosaic pays tribute to Picasso’spainting.At the time of this writing Boris is organizing a new Kids’ Guernica project inParis, Quai des Grands Augustins, in the workshop where Picasso paintedGuernica in 1937, for display in the 15-year anniversary exhibition.Juliette Tissot-Vidal“In April 1998, at age nine, when I was a pupil at the École Vitruve in the twentietharrondissement of Paris, I took part in a class project which consistedin making a painting on canvas. A team from the Pompidou Centre came towork with my class, to guide us in painting techniques and reflections on howthrough painting we could promote peace. My first experience with the Kids’Guernica Project was for me very empowering. It made me feel strong as ifthis project could eradicate evil, sadness and war in the entire world. Here Iwas, just one human being among so many others and yet the project mademe feel like I could save the world. As Parisian kids, my class focused ondaily violence in the school playground, in our neighborhood, and in the world.Making this painting opened our minds to other children and other cultures.“While painting on the École Vitruve canvas, we had discussions with ourteachers and the team of painters. It made us realize how huge this strugglewas to attain peace and that we could use art to fight injustice. With ourpainting, we were committing ourselves to a project with high expectations, asense of commitment and confidence driven by the creative process.“As I look back, I tell myself that it was probably utopian, and yet at the time13

Kids’ Guernica 2010and for many years, during other events with Kids’ Guernica, I really thoughtthat we would defeat war and win the peace. The fact of bringing together differentpeoples I thought could only lead to more peace, and on further reflectionI think that painting on this canvas in the École Vitruve was a project thathas become one of the most meaningful experiences in my life.“Later when I was 12 years old, I joined the exhibition of Katmandu in Nepalin December 2000, to celebrate the millennium and the beginning of thetwenty-first century. This adventure was really fantastic, as I visited a countrythat I knew nothing about. The long flight was necessary for me to understandwhat an incredible adventure I was about to embark on. Meeting childrenfrom the entire world (Japan, India, Italy, Russia, the United States, and Nepal)was magical. I was overwhelmed with joy, and I felt so proud to be amongall these children, who had also made collective paintings, and who weresharing this feeling of being able to end war and violence. They too had beenhelped by adults to undertake their quest for peace. The power I had felt twoyears before was confirmed once again! There I was, standing in front of allthe canvases, giving a speech in front of the King of Nepal, representing myschool and discovering the works of other kids and the culture of anothercountry. Most of all, I was facing new images which have remained forever inmy heart and mind.“Shortly after, the King of Nepal was assassinated in a coup d’état. Overnight,everything changed! After the celebrations, the discovery of extraordinarylandscapes, we could no longer go out, and had to hide for fear of being spotted.We did not understand what was happening outside, but protests andviolence had broken out! We could hear gunshots, screams and were told ofconflicts, and rumors of war. This experience was very trying; I could feel thedanger, witness the riots without understanding the reasons behind them.We were forced to realize that our utopian dream could not last and that thisart exhibition did not solve everything! This seemed paradoxical but we werekeeping this event in mind as a strength and it made us continue to carry onbelieving that peace can still triumph; our combined energies and minds werean undeniable force that still made us feel strong.[Top] The mural that was a collaboration of Sirubari (Himalayan village) and Kathmandu children in 2005. [Above left] The War Is Over, Athens, Greece,2005. [Above right and below] Cultural entertainment in Greece in 2007 with the exhibition of murals there.“Overall, my stay in Nepal represented a true human experience which hasremained imprinted in my mind and heart forever. Today, I am an adult andI realize that my commitment to Kids’ Guernica is much more than a collectiveschool painting, which can be linked to other canvases and childrenworldwide. A simple action on Earth may be seen as a mere grain of sand ina desert of hope, but it also represents one grain among many other grainsof sand that make up our planet. In fact, I have still kept in touch with someof the children through letters, and when we do meet each other again, as wedid in Italy in 2002 for another Kids’ Guernica exhibition, the energy remainsintact, just as it was at the École Vitruve or during the Nepal exhibition.“Now I am older, and am more aware of the difficulty behind the Kids’ Guernicamission. Yet, I continue to believe that this human adventure was essential.This project is magnificent because it bridges all differences. The notionof otherness revealed itself to me; then rich and complex, this notion is nowwith me and makes me humble and has led me to reflect on the humancondition, and has led me to change my perception on life and on the world.Thanks to Kids’ Guernica, I think that I now know how much political significanceart can have; the kind that joins human beings together, with difficultyindeed, but the kind that is necessary to fight for cultural diversity and humandignity, for the respect of differences, and above all, for human kindness.“I do not believe that this project was done in vain; conveying peace throughart and creation is necessary. The road ahead of us is long and difficult, but Istill continue my commitment in the Kids’ Guernica Project as an adult, as theProject continues in Florida, USA, with the 2010 exhibition.”14

Kids’ Guernica 2010Sachi Kaneda“I participated in Kids’ Guernica project for the first time in 2000 when I wastwelve years old. In that time, the Kids’ Guernica international exhibition washeld in Kathmandu, the capital of my mother’s country, Nepal. Since then, Iparticipated in several projects including the international exhibition in Kronplatz,Italy (2001), the peace event in Tokyo (2003) and the peace event inCrete (2006) and Chios (2007), Greece. At the peace event in Crete, I gave aspeech at the opening of the event, which referred to my experience in Nepal.I said: ‘My mother always told me Nepal was a very peaceful country but todayit has become a country of conflict. The government and an anti-governmentgroup have been fighting each other for many years. I heard there are manyyoung soldiers, the same teenagers as we are.’“A few years ago, when I went to Nepal to attend my cousin’s marriage ceremony,I faced a very terrible thing. On the way from my auntie’s house toKathmandu, our car was suddenly stopped by the army soldiers because ananti-government group attacked a village near the mountain road. I couldhear many gunshots between the army and the anti-government group. Wehad to stop in the darkness for nearly five hours. I felt the hours were verylong like days. Luckily, we reached Kathmandu and returned to Japan. I willnever forget this terrible experience. I realize that I could escape from Nepalto Japan but most of Nepalese people cannot leave their motherland.“Why has peaceful Nepal changed? There must be some reasons to fightsuch as poverty and social injustice. However, violence will never be a solutionbut will only worsen the situation. Such social disorder makes poorpeople much poorer, as I saw recently in Nepal.“To create a peaceful society, I believe imagination is very important. Imaginationin this way means to imagine others’ suffering and happiness. Imagineyourself as a little boy, who has to face bombing every day, the boy who isforced to have a rifle, and imagine what he really wants to do, and how hecould be happy. That is the imagination of Kids’ Guernica. For me, Kids’ Guernicais not a mere art project. I learned many things through the process ofpreparing the peace events. Especially, participating in Kids’ Guernica givesme precious opportunities to meet wonderful people, children and adults,from different countries. In this sense, one of the good aspects of this projectis connecting people from different places of the world through art. Personallyknowing each other is the first step to understanding, tolerance and friendship.”A World of Murals15Similar experiences were shared by thousands of children and hundreds ofadults all over the world in the second five years. A mural workshop was heldin Shanghai, China, in 2004, at Xiang Shan Elementary School. One mural resultingfrom an integrated curriculum unit at Mukaigaoka Junior High Schoolin Kawasaki, Japan, depicts a fetus holding the earth, entitled KakegaenonaiInochi (Precious Life). It means the importance of the birth of life and all thelives are precious so they should be equally treated. Another mural featuringa giant dove of peace was done at Ghanshyamdas Saraf Girls’ Collegein Mumbai, India, in April 2002. Other celebrations and mural exhibitionswere held in Vorarlbrg, Austria and Oradour, France, in 2003. In 2001 a muralwas developed in Carlsbad, California, depicting the American flag’s stars andstripes as children of all ethnicities, and another was painted in Terra Mirim,Brazil, depicting nature as the source of peace. These and many, many othermurals can be seen at http://www.kids-guernica.org/.[Top] Spanish mural painted in 2003. [Above] Ubud,Bali, football field exhibition in 2005 with the Australianand Tennessee murals in the foreground. [Left] Organizersat the Bali gathering: Takuya Kaneda, Keiko Hoshino,and Baikuntha Shrestha.

Kids’ Guernica 2010BaliThe tenth anniversary exhibition and workshop was held in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia,on the week of August 17, 2005. The date coincided with the sixtiethanniversary of Indonesia’s independence from Japan and many people fromJapan attended the event. The festivities were tied to Indonesia’s independenceday. A giant feast was prepared for the Kids’ Guernica family on thefirst night, and we participated in speeches and entertainment the secondnight on the city’s municipal soccer field. Entertainment included a children’sgamelan orchestra and Balinese Legong dancing followed by traditional Japanesemusic and dance.Some of us from the Guernica Project were asked to give short speeches andwe did that surrounded by the 30 or more murals that were hung on bambooframes all around the football field, for all the celebrants to see. The Rajah’sfamily supported the Guernica celebration, and several of the Rajah’s grandsons,including Tjokorda Krishna Sudharsana, took part in the festivities. Theorganizers presented a symposium and workshops dealing with children andpeace. For example, Mary Beth McBride explained energy centers in the bodyand how peace is to be found within, and Gabriel Felder talked about thePeace Waves initiative in Europe and an upcoming harmony in diversity conferenceto coincide with the European para-Olympics.The richest experience in Bali was the children’s mural painting workshopitself. Some third-grade children from the elementary school, coincidentally,had been working with a UNESCO initiative centered on peace and theybecame eager participants in the mural painting process. Two murals weremade: one printed, and one painted. The theme of the painted mural was AGift of Peace, revisited, taking its direction from the first mural painted in Tallahassee.Toshifumi Abe, a founder of Kids’ Guernica, was down on his kneesat child level, working with the children all day.[Top] The Japanese mural Precious Lifeon exhibition in 2005 in Ubud, Bali.[Above left] Balinese dancers performingat the Kids’ Guernica tenth anniversarygathering in Ubud, Bali. [Above right andnear right] Talented participants whodemonstrated native dance forms at theKastelli exhibition in Crete in 2006.Other international committee members took turns working with the children.One of the adult participants, Miwa Kogetsu from Japan, told me that, in hermind, Kids’ Guernica is holistic education driven by internal motivations, unlikethe facts-based, head-based teaching and learning that happens in mostschools in Japan. I agreed that was also the case in the United States. Shedeclared that she intended to teach in the holistic way modeled by this projectwhen she returned and culminate a curriculum unit with a new Kids’ Guernicamural. This is an example of the sort of human connection that is madethrough the project, where people of different cultures can come togetherand discuss ideas that really count. What really mattered in that gatheringwas not the murals (some really good and some not so good), but the factthat 150 people from Japan and 50 others from all parts of the world cametogether with the people of Bali for a common cause bigger than a personalor narrow cultural agenda.When the exhibition was over, I presented the first mural, done in Tallahassee,to the Museum Puri Lukisan, which became its permanent home. I alsopresented the Tennessee mural, coordinated by Debra Sickler-Voigt, to thecurator, who is also a grandson of the Rajah. Finally, significant for this currentexhibition, was the international committee’s last supper. At that eventwe figured out between us that the project had grown to more than 150 murals.Also at that supper, Takuya suggested that maybe we should have the15-year celebration in Florida. I agreed on the spot to try to arrange that.The Third Five Years New BloodAsit Poddar recounts that, in Ubud, “I met a young girl, Maya, from Greece,with Mr. Thomas Economacos.” The young girl was Hatto Fischer’s daughterand that was Kids’ Guernica’s introduction to Hatto. A prime mover for Kids’Guernica in recent years, Hatto first became involved in January 2005, when16

Kids’ Guernica 2010his organization, Poiein Kai Prattein, joined Peace Waves in Torino, Italy, in aYouth Peace Camp to help prepare for the Winter Olympics in 2006. The aimwas to ensure the Olympic truce in conjunction with upholding human rights.Hatto had organized poets and the Olympic Truce under the theme PoetryConnections for the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. “Part of that,” hesays, “reflected my collaboration with Poets Against the War and Sam Hamillin Seattle, Washington, USA. It was a response to 9/11, the Middle East andthe war that had started in Iraq. When I was in Torino,” he continued, “therewas a group of youth painting a peace mural. Peace Waves was then in contactwith [International Committee Member] Gabriele Felder. They had invitedyouth from all over the world. Among them were two from Afghanistan andJad Salman from Palestine who I have now adopted, symbolically, and who isnow studying art in Paris.”Hatto continued, “Once I got interested in Kids’ Guernica after the Torino experience,I learned that the International Committee with Takuya Kaneda ascoordinator was planning to organize an international festival in Ubud, Bali. Idecided then to make a contribution. Together with Thomas Economacos, weundertook the task of finding the right materials and paints along with a placewhere the children could paint a peace mural. The outcome was the peacemural of Poiein Kai Prattein called The War Is Over. When Thomas Economacosand my daughter Maya came back, they conveyed the strong messagethat everyone would love to see some Kids’ Guernica activity in Greece.”The rest is history: Kastelli, Crete, around Greek Easter time in 2006, theChios event in 2007, and the current exhibition, which Hatto has helped tocurate, among many other Kids’ Guernica activities. Meanwhile, elsewhere,the project was still expanding, from mouth to mouth, person to person.HaifaFor example, when three students, Christina, Joe, and Thayer, did a peaceproject in a summer camp in Haifa, Israel, during summer 2008, the projectbrought everyone together and allowed especially the youth to expressthemselves in a most critical but creative way. The target group there werePalestinian children whose Arabic parents hold Israeli citizenship. Naturally,overcoming the notion of enemy was most challenging aspect of the project.The students are linked to Iman Mourad’s daughter Maysa who studiedwith the three in the United States and who suggested as a peace projectthey should take into consideration Kids’ Guernica. Maysa could not go alongsince she had no visa to enter Israel. Reports Christina Goosman, “As it canbe seen on the four last pictures that show the end product, there are twopeace doves on the upper left corner with a sun that says peace. Under it, onecan see the Wall, which is built around Palestine by the Israeli government.In front of the Wall stands Handala, a cartoon figure by Palestinian cartoonistNaji Al-Ali who created cartoons that depict the complexities of the plight ofPalestinian refugees from approximately 1975 through 1987, when he wasassassinated as he walked towards the offices of Al-Qabas newspaper. Hedied in the hospital on August 29th.Baltimore, Maryland, USA, Coordinated by Bikrant Man ShresthaOn Saturday, November 8, 2008, students at the Shady Grove Middle School,Baltimore, Maryland, USA, participated in the Kids’ Guernica exhibition heldat the seventeenth annual meeting of Nepa Pasa Pucha Amerikaye (NPPA)and Sirjana Contemporary Art Gallery. This celebration corresponded withNepal’s Sambat (Bhintuna), Nepal’s New Year.The main co-coordinator of the Kids’ Guernica exhibition was Bikrant ManShrestha. He was assisted by Bishal Man Shrestha, Sushan Manandhar, andMeenu Shrestha. The theme for Kids’ Guernica was created by Nadim Maharjan:“Let’s begin the peace of art and an art of peace will begin with you.”[Top] Toshifumi Abe in discussion with children in Bali. [Left andabove right] A detail of the Haifa mural in 2008 and some of thechildren artists from Israel.17

Kids’ Guernica 2010Twenty-one children from Shady Grove Middle School and other schools demonstratedtheir outstanding talents on the 3.5m x 7.8m canvas. The creationof the Kids’ Guernica artwork began at 2:00 pm and ended at approximately10:00 pm. In creating this artwork, the students drew individual pictures thatdepicted the theme, “peace,” which was then collated into one work that wasdisplayed.The description of the project states that in developing the first draft of theartwork, the children, ages 4 to 17 years, were allowed to draw their interpretationof “peace” on smaller sheets of paper using contemporary colorsand adding their individual creativity. Each child expressed his or her artisticpassion by either crunching or spraying paint all over a canvas. Some of theseartistic expressions were representative of Nepalese culture, which was impressive,since these children, though outside of Nepal, through their artisticexpression showed their connection with their mother country. At the end ofthe day, it turned out to be a successful exhibition and the children were verypleased to see their artwork on display.The Current Exhibition The Second Tallahassee MuralThe second Tallahassee peace mural was designed and executed by teachersand children in the school system of Leon County, coordinated by Florida StateUniversity Museum of Fine Arts Education Curator, Viki Thompson Wylder.Fourteen teachers in 14 schools signed up for participation. Their studentscollaboratively designed and painted their own sections of the mural-sizedcanvas. Managed by Education Program interns and volunteers (overseenfirst by Hannah Dahm and then by Alison Schaeffler-Murphy), the canvas traveledfrom school to school. Sections were blocked in a quilt-like fashion. Aquilt-like composition for this mural served several functions. It facilitated theinvolvement of various schools, teachers, and children, and the quilt is a distinctlyAmerican form, an appropriate structural configuration within which toportray American children’s thoughts on the encouragement of peace withinthe world.The quilt mural includes a center section of 14 large blocks and two outerborder sections. Each of the central sections was designed by each school/teacher/class using Edward Hicks’ Peaceable Kingdom as a basis for thepainted design. These sections reflect the North Florida environment, its flora,fauna, and people. Of the two outer border sections, one shows children holdinghands. Leon County students painted these children as a reflection of thediversity of students within their schools. The second outer border repeats aseries of traditional American quilt block designs. These block patterns wereselected by teachers as a visual communication of events in America’s past.For example, the Slave Chain block pattern was selected because this patternwas utilized on quilts that were hung along the Underground Railroad priorto the Civil War. The pattern indicated that this was a place where escapedslaves could remove their broken manacles. Seminole piecing patterns wereincluded as a communication about Florida’s history.18[Pages 18 and 19] Images from the creationof the 2009 Tallahassee mural, including universitystudent volunteers who instructed participantsin the American quilt as an art formwith the Underground Railroad (Civil War era)Slave Chain pattern and indigenous Floridapatterns like the piecework of the SeminoleIndians.At this writing, it is expected that this Tallahassee mural will serve as stimulationfor further activities. For example, other Leon County elementary schoolswill be invited to create artwork based on the concept of peace to show in aparallel Student Display. All media, style, and form will be encouraged. Individualand group projects will be accepted. The participation of additionalteachers and approximately 300 to 400 students is expected. A teacher workshopwill be offered on the Friday evening before the Saturday reception forthe Kids’ Guernica exhibition. An educator from outside the United States willtalk about the Kids’ Guernica project as it has unfolded in Europe and otherlocations around the globe. Suggestions for classroom activities based on theconcept of peace will be provided. During the Saturday reception, a workshop

Kids’ Guernica 201019will be held to give visitors to the Museum the opportunity to work on a new2010 peace mural. This workshop will be coordinated by Wafa Elsaka, artteacher at Hartsfield Elementary School. Ms. Elsaka, an immigrant and recentcitizen, carries a special interest in this project and its aims. It is hopedthat a city location can be found for the mural’s presentation. On the day ofthe reception, visiting families will find a series of “make and take” tablesthroughout the museum. These tables will be stocked with art supplies andstaffed by volunteers who will assist children with the making of art pieces totake home. Finally, elementary students will perform at the reception. Theseperformances, emphasizing peace, may include music—vocal and instrumental—aswell as potential poetry recitations, dance, dramatic skits, and so on.A teachers’ exhibition packet, which includes information on the project aswell as lesson plans, was completed and distributed before the exhibition.Every art teacher in the county, and some art teachers outside the county,received one.The Higashikurume, Japan, Mural: Life Is asSweet and Short as the Cherry BlossomsIn 1997, Kazuko Hosoda, an art teacher of elementary school in WhiggishChrome, Tokyo, told her fifth grade students about Kids’ Guernica project andthey started making wood cut prints to express their wish for peace. Evenafter they finished elementary school, some of them gathered on Sundaysto continue under the art teacher’s guidance and a Guernica-sized wood cutprint of peace image was finally completed in 1999, called Life is as Sweetand Short as the Cherry Blossoms. The peace image was printed on a hugerice paper and the unique artwork was exhibited in the Kids’ Guernica internationalexhibition in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 2000. The students kept theirkeen interests in world peace even after they became high school students.In 2003, the student group organized a peace event with their wood cut workat Whiggish Chrome City Community Center. During the exhibition, they alsoorganized a workshop to create a new Kids’ Guernica with 200 visitors to thevenue. From a three-year old child to an eighty-six year old person, variouspeople participated in this workshop. Each participant used a stencil techniqueto print an image of a flower on huge rice paper. The whole imagesymbolizes that each flower is singing a song of peace in chorus.The Chios/Izmir Greece, Mural: Bridges for InterculturalUnderstanding/The War is OverWhen Poiein Kai Prattein and the local mayor organised an exhibition in Kastelli,in 2006, in Crete, 45 persons came from abroad and 18 peace muralswere involved. The celebration included poet Katerina Anghelaki Rooke,Marcus from Chios, Socrates Kabouropoulos from EKEVI, the National BookCentre of Greece, Fatema Nawaz from Afghanistan, poet Dostana Lavergefrom Strasbourg and many others. The Kaneda family came from Japan alongwith Keiko. The poetic atmosphere and celebrations linked to Greek Easterwere a highlight of the celebration. The workshops contained peace gamesfor children, pantomime, and dance, while a special poetry reading of fourfamous poets on the theme of war took place both near the exhibition and ina neighbouring community centre. Since it coincided with Greek Easter, localtraditions were shown to the participants and on the recommendation of thepriest every one of the community went to see the exhibition as a guided tourafter church service was over. Public funding was secured in Kastelli, with themayor and local community providing food, accommodation and exhibitionspace in a school along with the materials needed for the exhibition while allKids’ Guernica participants from abroad paid for their own transportation.The same model was repeated in 2007, when Poiein Kai Prattein organized aKids’ Guernica exhibition on the Greek island of Chios. Asit took a blind boys’peace mural from Calcutta and Iman Nouri brought one from Lebanon. From

Kids’ Guernica 2010Bombay Banibrata Poddar also sent one Kids’ Guernica peace mural andProfessor Mizuguchi joined the group to photographically capture the events.Hatto commented that: “The inherent dynamic of Kids’ Guernica is that itsurprises everyone. Out of a simple action, created by one art teacher or coordinatorand a few children, a public square can suddenly come alive andmore and more people create a community of understanding. Unforgettablefor me was the time we spent in Chios when Takuya came with 30 Japanesepeople, including ten of his students who were all skilled in interacting withchildren. They brought food from Japan and we cooked out on the platia.Those who benefited the most were the outcasts of Greek society on Chios:the immigrants and the foreign workers. In Europe we call that social inclusion.Everyone should have the right to have access to community. Thus theart of networking and organizing has to be perceived as letting things unfoldand take on a more complex shape. The involvement of many different layersof society is what gives to every one of these actions its varied meanings.”The rice paper, woodcut, and stencil print mural from Higashikurume, Japan, completed in 2003 and entitled Life is as Sweet and Short as the CherryBlossoms.“Asit Poddar with his blind boys mural created much discussion in Chios,”stated Hatto. “He did it again at the ECCM Symposium with his video. BeforeChios, he and I went around in Kastelli, he with a pencil, I with my pen andtogether drawings and texts created a way to see that local environment. Itmeans artists become indicators for what goes on in a community. That is life.It is bursting at the seams especially when we know in art there is nothing outof control but seemingly we need to be modest in our assumptions as to whatwe can do alone and more so together.”Hatto continued, “When we did the peace mural in Izmir, we were already preparingthe ECCM Symposium Productivity of Culture and in conjunction withthat another Kids’ Guernica exhibition at the Zappeion, Athens. For this manymurals were prepared: Dubai, Martinique, Izmir-Chios, Australia, Georgia, andAthens 108 Elementary School. The connection to the ECCM, the Network ofEuropean Capitals of Culture, came about due to my long-standing collaborationwith Spyros Mercouris, the brother of Melina Mercouri, the legendarycultural figure and Minister of Culture of Greece during the reign of the PASOKparty under Andreas Papandreou.”The Chios/Izmir Mural completed in 2007 as a cooperativemural project of Greek and Turkish schoolchildren.The following description of the Chios / Izmir project appears on the Kids’Guernica website: The Chios, Greece, and Izmir, Turkey, events took placein 2007, coordinated by Deniz Hasirci, Thomas Economacos, Hatto Fischer,Effi Lipari. The original conception of the Chios project was Takuya Kaneda’sidea to model the mural after the famous painting, The Slaughter of Chios byEugène Delacroix. Kaneda hoped that a painting by children of Turkey andGreece, which have been in conflict over Cyprus, would show that interculturaldialogue is possible, and he donated the canvas toward that end. The muralwas painted as a result of a partnership between Poiein Kai Prattein and abuddy program established between The Izmir University of Economics andTAKEV Özel –lkö-retim Okulu. The workshop was originally organized by PoieinKai Prattein to take place in May, but it was not possible to get the Turkishchildren to Chios at that time due to lack of funding and a tight schedule. InChios, Thomas Economacos started with Greek children to make sketchesand then, thanks to Irini Pitsaki, Hatto Fisher made contact with Deniz Hasirci(Izmir University of Economics, IEU) and Gulistan Banu Cel Sevgi (TAKEVSchool) and they started to communicate about doing a joint peace mural.One aspect of this collaboration came about from a buddy program establishedby Deniz Hasirci, in Turkey, during the 2007-2008 academic year. Olderand younger students were paired and worked on specific projects designedto increase their creativity, self-confidence, and responsibility. Using this model,a joint action was established between children from Chios and Izmir topaint the peace mural under the auspices of Kids’ Guernica. In September, asa guest of IEU and TAKEV, 18 people—Greek youths and their parents—alongwith Thomas Economacos and Hatto Fischer came over to join Hasirci, Sevgi,and the Turkish participants. The mural workshop was held on September 27through September 29, 2007.20

Kids’ Guernica 2010Three age groups were involved in the peace mural, The War Is Over: 2 and3 year-old children as well as those from 7 to 9, and a third group from 15 to16 years of age. While the youngest children painted around the edges, the7-9 year-old children painted dancing figures. The oldest painted a sad figurein the corner. The other children were startled and did not know what to doat first with such a sad figure. Then, they found the solution. They painted afigure floating down to that sad figure. In one hand that floating figure held amessage that read, “the war is over.” “This suggests,” said Hatto, “that thechildren in this process not only have to attend to the war between countries,but they also must find solutions to their own potential conflicts through discussionand cooperative action in painting and action in a temporal context,because each day brings new revelations. Children learn to trust the process:they can let go and continue to paint without really knowing how in the endthe whole painting will look. The gratifying thing is that everyone collectivelyknows when a solution is found.”The mural was first exhibited in Athens in conjunction with a symposiumcalled Productivity of Culture, on October 18 and 19, 2007. The Symposiumwas organized by the Network of European Cultural Capital Cities with SpyrosMercouris as its honorary president. The place of the exhibition was theZappion—Megaron. The relationship established through this joint action betweenthe participants is only a first step in fostering further research onsocial relations between youth of different age and nationalities. This partnershiphas already proven very fruitful for all participants. As part of thefifteen-year celebration of Kids’ Guernica at the Florida State University Museumof Fine Arts and in conjunction with a new partner, Wafa Elsaka andHartsfield Elementary School, in Tallahassee, the next step is to transformtwo-dimensional (painted) notions into the third dimension. That is, the participants,coordinated by Deniz Hasirci, will construct a Peace Village througha workshop with elementary school children, in which they will explore theirnotions of peace.The Tripoli, Lebanon Mural: Enough! We Want to LiveThis mural, entitled, Enough! We Want to Live, was painted for initial displayin Tripoli, Lebanon, in April 2007, and in Chios, Greece, in May 2007. ImanMourad coordinated the mural painting workshop in Tripoli, Lebanon. SaysIman, “the time pressure was great…and we had to overcome many obstaclesto persevere, but at the core of my heart were the words of Gandhi [inspiringme] when he said, ‘real education consists in drawing the best out ofyourself.’” She continued, “During the horrible June wars of 2006, my twodaughters and I couldn’t go out, so we started painting our feelings and expressionsof being trapped at home on our bedroom walls. Beyond our wallsI realized all Lebanese children and youth are the survivors of a horrible war;in their hearts and minds are the memories of all people who suffered andare still suffering until now from war in the world. After the war, I was a busymother who worked in Beirut. That meant commuting five hours a day due tobroken bridges and other obstacles resulting from the war. It was at this timeI was asked to coordinate a peace mural by Poiein Kai Prattein, representedby Hatto Fischer, on canvas supplied by Takuya Kaneda of Japan, and I feltthe urge to connect.”[Above] Murals on exhibition in Crete in 2006. [Below] The Chios/Izmir Mural completed in 2007 as a cooperative mural project of Greek and Turkishschoolchildren.“I was well supported,” continued Iman, “by Mrs. Houda Namle and Dr. RamiFinge, president and member of the Rotary Club Tripoli EL-Maarad. At theboard meeting of Rotari Maarad the decision was taken immediately to instructMrs. May Mounla Chmaytaly to provide us with all the tools, paints,videotapes, and to help with regard to all the publicity needed. The decisionas to which schools and children were to be included was difficult due totime pressure, but in the end students from the Universal School of Lebanon(USL Koura), Antonin Int’l school (El mina), Rawdat EL Fayhaa school (Tripoli),French Lycee (Koura), Lebanese University (Kobbe) and the Children CareAssociation (Tripoli Municipality) participated.” Four art educators gave their21

Kids’ Guernica 2010time to help with a preliminary workshop. Following the advice of Mr. ThomasEconomacos the children tried to feel peace within themselves. They imaginedpeace and afterwards sketched their first draft on paper.”“Later on we all gathered to assess themes, colors and measurement of thescripts,” said Iman. “Windy weather conditions forced us to move from thebook fair exhibition where the painting took birth to Antonin InternationalSchool’s playground with permission from Priest Gabi Assaf. The calmer,cleaner and more peaceful surroundings of the school made it easier for thechildren to work with their creative insights. The peaceful atmosphere in contrastto the difficulties in working outside made all of us all the more awarewhat are some of the obstacles to peace, which was expressed in the muralpainting. The resolution to conflicts as painted onto the canvas was mucheasier than the politicians’ process of flying off to Qatar for talks. The simplereason is that children are truthful and innocent. They are blessed with aninnate human quality: dignity. We adults should preserve this attribute andnourish it to provide an ideal community. [We need to make] peace withinourselves first, but as well we need peace in our country, peace with ourneighbors, and more so, a peaceful healthy environment and a peaceful societyin which our kids can grow up by integrating themselves in a responsibleway to secure their lives…. It is a matter of retaining an open dialogue withothers in order to bring about progressive changes towards a better, indeedjust society.”“The entire painting was conceived by the eyes and hands of our children.The expressive symbol at the middle with the divided girl (Dead and Alivegirl) drawn by my daughter, Miriam, and her friend Ryan Moukaddem (USLstudents) naturally divided the painting into two themes: peace and war. Onone full long day called by Mrs. Therese Le Cid ‘The harmony day’ the childrenpainted and sang for 10 consecutive hours. They felt a responsibility to thepeace mural despite final exams being close at hand,” said Iman.[Clockwise from top right] Asit Poddar; Takuya Kaneda and Thomas Economacos; Asit Poddar and Fatema Nawas; Deniz Hasirci. [Below] The 2007mural from Tripoli, Lebanon, entitled Enough! We want to Live.The first appearance of Enough! We Want to Live was at a book fair exhibitionin Tripoli on April 29, 2007. For 72 hours the children kept a peace vigil andread their poems as inspired by the “divided girl.” In Chios, people listenedto Lebanese songs sung by children while Iman Mourad spoke to the publicgathered in the square where the Kids’ Guernica exhibition of 18 peacemurals was held. Iman’s daughter, Miriam, read her poems and engagedin discussion with representatives from Japan, Greece and the USA. Chiosmeant as well, visits to schools and writing together with others all kinds ofpeace messages, including the Arabic word for peace done on a wall and ona banner. Ongoing efforts include the start of a new peace mural for summerin 2009. That will take place during the implementation of a peace projectin Tripoli under the title: Empowerment through Integration. It will be initiatedby Maysa Mourad and her visually-impaired friend Sara Minkara. Both arestudents at Wellesley College in the USA. The mural is to be called Together!Let’s See and Live in Peace!The Nagasaki, Japan Mural: Rebuilding the City After the BombYoung people at Seihi Junior High School executed the Nagasaki mural. Themain image is taken from the Nagasaki Peace Memorial. The right hand ispointing to the bomb in the sky, which was dropped on Nagasaki 62 yearsbefore this mural was painted. More than 70,000 people died in that attack,and some still feel the pain now. Many people gather in this square, still toprotest nuclear armaments and testing.“We drew 2 churches,” said coordinator Toshifumi Abe, “and the Holy Mother.”This references the fact that 400 years ago, most of the people of Nagasakiwere Christian. But Christianity was forbidden at the time of the Shimabaracivil war. Although most people converted to Buddhism, some Christians heldout against the persecution. Today there are many monuments to Christian22

Kids’ Guernica 2010martyrdom in Nagasaki; there are 26 so-called saints among the martyrs.The church rendered on the right is called the O-ura church that memorializesthem. On the left side is the Urakami church that was destroyed by the atomicbomb but later reconstructed. Behind the statue of Buddha, there are somesecret Christian symbols.The dragon dance depicted in the mural, was introduced from China andis performed during the famous Nagasaki Okunchi festival. The trade boatconveying clover represents the age of national isolation. Also there is kiteplay called Hataage in Nagasaki in which origami cranes are folded to prayfor peace. Nagasaki’s port is just like the form of the crane. So sometimesit is called the crane port. “Finally we rendered the Sakura,” said Abe, “as asymbol of Japan.”The Chicago Mural: People of One WorldReports coordinator Stacy Koumbis, “The second Chicago Kid’s Guernica mural(2006) brought together students from two suburban Greek-America elementaryschools, the Plato Academy and the Hellenic American Academy. Wemet at the Hellenic American Academy and produced one canvas collaboratively.A curriculum was developed by teachers and administrators from bothschools to complement the mural production. Before the painting of the muralactually began, we had an informal dialogue with the participating studentsabout what they learned. This mural was developed at the Chicago Children’sMuseum. To start off the painting action, educators were asked to engagetheir students in dialogue about the subject of International Borders, so thatthey become more aware of world events, and how borders impacts our dailylives. The culmination of this lesson brought together students from differentschools throughout the Chicagoland area. They all participated in making ofan oversized mural at the Chicago Children’s Museum on April 24, 2006.Step 1 – For the dialogue students were asked the following questions: Whyare borders important? What do you know about borders? What would happento the world if countries didn’t have borders? What happens to borderswhen there is a war? What happens to people who need to leave their homesbecause of war? What is a refugee? Which countries border the UnitedStates? Why do people who live in these countries leave their homes to cometo a new country? What are the obstacles they need to overcome?Step 2 – Students were asked to make a journal in one of the following voices:someone hosting a family who has left their home because of war, a borderguard, a refugee who needs to find a new place to live.Step 3 – Students visualized and created pictures related to borders.Step 4 – They painted together at the Chicago Children’s Museum. The paintingwas first exhibited in Chios, Greece, in May 2006. Facilitators included:Marianthi Koritsaris, Principal, Plato Academy; Angie Maglaris, Principal, HellenicAmerican Academy; and Katie Svaicer, Art Instructor.[Above and right] Detail of the mural from Tripoli and placard fromLebanon. [Below] The Nagasaki peace mural completed by the studentsof Seihi Junior High School as a memorial of the fiftieth anniversaryof the detonation of the atomic bomb in their city.The Martinique Mural: Breaking the ChainsSavina Tarsitano’s Story“Creativity in Motion was the theme for the Martinique workshop and mural,which took place in 2006 and 2007 with adolescents and children of Saint-Jacques Area,” reports coordinator Savina Tarsitano. “The activities were supportedby the Odyssey program and the Caribbean Art and Culture CentreDomaine de Fonds Saint-Jacques.”She continues, “Creativity in Motion began in 2005 in Southern Italy, inthe village Soveria Mannelli where the community painted a wall mural. In2006, during my artistic residency at the Caribbean art centre, Domaine deFonds Saint-Jacques, funded by the Odyssey program set up by the ACCRand financed by the French Ministry for Culture and Communication, I workedwith adolescents and children of the Saint-Jacques area called Martinique.23

Kids’ Guernica 2010Thanks to the support of director Yvette Galot, I could use the art centre asa workspace. The aim was to integrate this part of the population into thecommunity through giving them the opportunity to use their imaginations toexpress their own ideas.”“I worked with 25 adolescents and children between the ages 6 and 22; alocal artist assisted me. These children used to play football in a space givento them by Fonds Saint-Jacques but they never participated actively in thecenter’s activities. These children and adolescents live in a poor area close tothis wonderful architecture where the art centre is. It is an old rum distillerywhere slaves used to work. Around it can still be found the cemetery and thehouses for the slaves. This place is rich in history but contains equally hardand unforgettable memory in which elements of identity and freedom wereand are still very strong.“One part of this district is considered unfortunately bad and dangerous dueto the presence of a gang of young people called Baghdad. Violence is a wayfor them to communicate when no other language is known. A majority ofthem drink, smoke cannabis and sell it. The family structure is almost completelyabsent. At the age of 10, or even younger, many are already left ontheir own to get to know the luck of love, hopes, and the cruelty of the world.The gang has replaced young people’s absent family. It gives them strengthand identity. They feel protected, especially the young girls. The adolescentswho are not members are afraid of the gang, even when they share the samespace, playing football.“In the beginning it was difficult for me to communicate with them. As I wasan artist-in-residence working on an exhibition, I continued to work while waitingfor a signal from them. They spent more than two weeks in observing mebefore they accepted to work with me. I was considered a white woman, ina way an enemy, but also because I was a foreign artist, they did not know ifthey could trust me.Images of the mural developed at the Chicago Children’sMuseum in 2006.“We organized two ateliers for them: sculpture and painting. A few of thegroup attended the ateliers and day-by-day the number increased. At the beginningsilence was our common language. They observed me and listened tomy advice. Because a local artist assisted me, it became easier to communicateand to understand them. In the end they worked very hard, staying withme all the time. They made some very impressive paintings and sculpturesfull of creativity and fantasy. I observed them during three weeks until I wasaccepted into their culture as a white friend. I decided to involve them in myexhibition. I organized different spaces each separated from the other so asto respect the unique creativity of every one. I showed them how to use spaceand how to install an exhibition. They were very happy and proud to have theirown space. It meant a lot to them to have a role in the community and to beappreciated for their work rather than be judged negatively. They felt legitimacyto be there. They were so enthusiastic about the cultural event sincebefore that [time], they had never worked together with an artist or had beeninvolved in an exhibition.“This story is important for understanding my work with them this year whenwe realized the canvas for Kids’ Guernica. Again thanks to the director of thecentre, we started organizing in order to continue the project in 2007. I wasagain in residency thanks to the Odyssey Programme during that summer.The children and adolescents were surprised and happy at the same timeto see me back again. I had kept my promise to come back and to work withthem again. I had to learn to control my emotions and fears, as a fact, in orderto be able to work with them. At the same time, it gave me the opportunity tolearn a lot. It was an equal exchange. That is the secret of any alliance.“When I proposed to them to participate in the exhibition Kids’ Guernica byrealizing together a big canvas, they became afraid due to the importance of24

Kids’ Guernica 2010the event. They felt it was too big for them. Yet they accepted and we started.At the beginning I worked only with 4 young boys. After one week my atelierwas full with 20 people, and the big surprise: the so-called bad boys of theBaghdad gang were also there. They provoked and joked, if only as a wayto test me, as they told me later, when they said: ‘We have chosen you, youdidn’t choose us.’ I was really surprised and asked them to tell me why theychose me. Their answer was simple: ‘You treat us as normal persons, youwere curious about our stories, above all let us express our ideas withoutjudging or influencing us. You believe in us and in our capacities. You gave usa possibility to be a part of a project and to show our abilities and imaginationto others. You were tolerant but at the same time firm when it came to observingrules and to show respect for the work, the space. You have understoodus. We did make some stupid jokes, maybe, but you know as well that we areresponsible and when necessary we work hard.’“The boys worked at home for some days, and then one of them came withan idea of representing peace with two hands shaking each other. One whitearm, the other a black one to show the tolerance between people, the endof injustice. The arms should be at the centre of the canvas. Long chainswere around the wrists and had to be broken as a sign of freedom and hopefor a better world. Around the arms would be the universe with all the fivecontinents to mean peace, friendship and tolerance throughout the world.Outside of the universe is joy and friendship represented by different colorsto match different civilizations. They are illustrated with four small squaresall, inside the hands: white and black, to recall the main drawing, the messageof peace.“There is the exception of three squares. They are different. One of themsignifies their own area called Baghdad City. The drawings are full of symbolismfrom the culture of their ancestors; at the same time, it underlines theirown identity and needs to be understood and not judged only because theywere born and live there. As they told me: ‘We want to live in peace and wantto be left alone. We are always guilty even if we are innocent.’ The most interestingaspect of the painting for me was that they wanted to tell as well thestory of their community and of the art centre. One of the final two squaresrepresents the river, the sea, the skin and the birds, while the other is a tombof Père Labate who came to Martinique, at Fonds Saint-Jacques to educatethe people and convert them to Christianity, try to give them freedom fromslavery.Two views of the mural fromMartinique.“The oldest youth said to me: ‘This is our earth and where we live with ourpast. Those seeing our paintings can then have a better idea about us. Moreoverslaves lived and died here, and they represent peace and injustice.’ Hewas so happy that I let him paint all of this, in trusting him, even when hewrote ‘Baghdad City.’ It is a way, in my opinion, for them to denounce theirconditions as a message of change of their situations.Everything in the mural has been justified by their vision of life. Some examplesare1. They selected the color ‘chocolate’, not black, to paint one hand. Iasked why? They replied: ‘we are not African, Savina. Look at our skin,we are different.’2. The position of the five continents with Europe close to the chains andAfrica far away from them. They told me that Africa had suffered a lotunder slavery. Give it a new position. A way to freedom and hope.3. The color of the chain is red. The color of their suffering is the color ofblood but also victory when fighting against injustices.4. The hands in the circle and around the universe symbolize the need forjustice and peace.5. The colors white and black of the hands underline the fact that the fighthas always been between white and black people. I tried to tell themto use different colors to denote their cultures. Their answer was clear:25

Kids’ Guernica 2010impossible due to the injustices between white and black, with Africansthe slaves.6. The importance of illustrating an old construction on the river and thesea meant all these symbols are important in Martinique for they arealso a window to the world.7. They decided to put as a frame their ‘local tissue madras.’ I asked themwhy. The answer was again very simple: ‘We want the others to get toknow our traditions.’ In fact, they chose the traditional colors and notthose that reflect new influences. Everything has to be original when itcomes to respecting reality. This was really important to them.[Above] The 2002 Indian mural from Ghanshyamdas Saraf Girls’ College in Mumbai. [Below] American mural from the state of Tennessee.Difficulties were:1. The presence of the ‘bad boys’ was important but also excluded otheradolescents who didn’t want to work with them.2. Fairness: less discipline than last year, more chaotic this time around.3. The difficulties, almost, at the beginning, were how to talk with younggirls. They needed lots of time before they could trust me. But afterthat they were always close to me, working hard and telling me theirstories.4. To leave them, with the feeling that you can go back to your own home,while they continue leading a hard life.5. In their eyes you could read the question, but what is going to happenin future? Will there be another possibility to work together?Social Impact included:1. To relate to adults and to involve them as well in the project.2. To demonstrate the force of art as a tool of communication.3. To underline the importance of creativity when it comes to expressemotions, feelings.4. To link an art centre with the community.5. To emphasize the role of the artist in society.6. To create a bridge between art and local communities.7. To educate by sharing experiences and knowledge.“In the end, art cannot be separated from the community. Culture, heritage,and history feed into the memory and imagination of people. Art comes fromour reality and experiences. Communication is imperative to spread this kindof project. Cooperation is essential for an art centre: it is a way to open thedoors to a different public, to spread its vision and message. An art centre isa place of meeting, a link between the community and the artists. It is crucial,nowadays, to have these two dimensions always in mind.“I truly believe in the importance of this artistic project for different reasons.Thanks to the artistic language we are able to open hearts, to enter differentworlds. To be part of a project means to work together, to help each other,to be tolerant, to cooperate, to exchange. We exchanged our opinions, ideaswithout the one or the other being superior but persons with the same aim:to complete the canvas.“We have to give more space to young people like them to express themselves.I needed to push them to express their opinions in front of a public.That was very hard since they were not used to talk and be listened to. Theyneed us, as artists to help them develop the capacity to see what the othersare unable to see. They, we, all need therefore more cultural associations,networks, managers and so on, all with the aim to express oneself and tobe listened to. We cannot change the world or their lives or destinies, butwe can try to do our best to help them. We are only at the beginning of a bigproject.”Belfast, Northern Ireland: Bernard L. Conlan’s Story“The Belfast Kids’ Guernica painting originates in a city where wall murals are26

Kids’ Guernica 2010the city’s calling card,” reports Bernard Conlan. “The Belfast Kids’ Guernicadiffers from immovable murals in that, like all Kids’ Guernica paintings, it isportable and promotes peace. Nonetheless, it is obviously influenced by, andhopefully, will influence the mural tradition of its native city.”“The painting came about when Kids’ Guernica organizer, Hatto Fischer ofPoiein Kai Prattein suggested that a painting from Belfast, with its turbulenthistory and wall mural tradition, would be a valuable addition to the Kids’Guernica collection. So began a saga with traits of odyssey, which saw mefrantically canvass and consult community, arts and other organizations. Aninvitation to Athens in October 2007 proved crucial to this project. The peopleand the paintings in Athens inspired me to get a Belfast Kids’ Guernica inthe can.“After Athens, a short-term contract brought me into contact with localschools. I met a seasoned art teacher, a Picasso fan. So began a creativeand convoluted dialogue with Cathal Cauldwell, who, as well as teaching, isan artist in his own right. Contact with various schools from all over Belfastwas established, to ensure that every section of Belfast’s divided communitywould be represented and have an equal opportunity to participate. A tensemeeting was held with teachers. Meeting Cathal for a few pints after thisstressful conclave ensured the triumph of creativity. He proclaimed that hisschool would, if his principal, Mary Collins agreed, run with the project. Afteralmost a year of intense campaigning and consultation, one teacher in oneschool saw the big picture and took action.“The next time I spoke to Cathal, he had a class of 14 year-old girls fromthe Little Flower Secondary School in North Belfast primed to paint. The canvasswas sent to Belfast from Kyoto in Japan, via Athens. I talked to the girlsabout Kids’ Guernica and discussed war, peace, identity, solidarity and otherthemes with them. Thomas Economacos of Poiein Kai Prattein visited Belfastto provide facilitation support. He ensured that Cathal and his young artistsfelt part of an organic, worldwide movement. From there the painting happenedas if by magic.“At the end of June 2008, I was summoned to the school assembly hall andthere covering a huge section of floor was a spectacular painting. I instinctivelycharacterized it as the Color of Optimism. It radiated immense energy and awholly positive message. Cathal and his colleague Noreen Friel explained thatthe artists discussed their experience of peace and conflict in a Belfast contextand a wide range of concerns, which affect young people today such asdrugs, knife culture, racism and their hopes for the future. They then createdindividual images that described and/or symbolized the issues they identifiedbefore a group session finally decided on the painting’s composition.“As to the painting’s symbolism, it was explained that the eye is a symbol of‘how we see the world in our own individual ways and the fish expresses howChristians take different paths of belief.’ A ‘rising sun of hope and a Picassodove of peace’ are also included. Crucially, the painting through the use offlags and other tangible symbols represents Belfast’s two main identitiesequally: Britishness and Irishness. Recent emigrant groups from Eastern Europeand elsewhere are also represented with ideas supplied from the LittleFlower School Year 10 art class as a whole. In Belfast seven girls had thecourage to paint a peace mural. It inspired me to write the following poem:[Above top] One of three murals created by Japanesejunior high school students. [Above] Murals on displayand the cultural event in Yamanashi Prefecture in Japan.[Right and below] Bernard Conlan and the muralfrom Belfast, Ireland.Color of OptimismA blank canvass came from Japan via Athens,As if by magic odyssey,Blankness converted into the color of optimism -And power of Herculean possibility,Derived from random children afterI canvassed widely, in Belfast,27

Kids’ Guernica 2010A solitary, seasoned teacher led a group of girlsWith novice minds and aspiration, to see“The big picture” - to weave a tangible uniquenessThat will outlive us, mortally.Athens, Greece, Mural: Peace through AbstractionIn 2007, Thomas Economacos and Takuya Kaneda coordinated a muralworkshop with 40 children from Elementary School 108 in Athens, Greece, inconjunction with the Productivity of Culture conference. A first design of thepeace mural was produced after children had made sketches on their own, athome or while in class, as to what made up their world. They were then askedto “clean up” their sketches. This prompted a movement toward abstractionof which this single ball eventually became a symbol. Thomas said “Abstractionmeans exactly to explain the unknown by something rational. It lets theimagination become a torch in the dark world. Putting light to things is likemaking discoveries. What it requires is a frame, some reference. There hasto exist above all a trust to go forward even when there is no greater certaintythan the trust to let the pencil speak by itself. The latter requires letting go. Inthis process of abstraction a single ball became the symbol of such abstraction.From there the children returned with a new concept of the complexworld they face daily, but now with something calm and peaceful in mind.”The Kabul, Afghanistan Mural: Never Again WarViews of preliminary studies and the mural Peace through Abstractionpainted in Athens in 2007.Fatema Nawaz coordinated the Kabul mural workshop in 2006. Pupils of aschool in Kabul, Afghanistan, created the painting. Many girls and boys betweenthe ages of 8 and 14 participated in the collaborative process of makingthe mural. Fatema Nawaz said she started the painting at first with a verysmall group outside of ordinary teaching hours. But every time when they metother new children joined. Because eventually there were so many childrenwho wanted to participate, they had to stand in line to paint, Fatema did notsend them away, and these children waited patiently until it was their turn. Inthe end there were so many children interested that she had to close the artroom from inside, so that work on the painting could continue.This wish to paint is closely linked with the recent history of the country. Dueto war many children did not attend any school. Neither has art a part of theirdaily lives. Fatema reports that only slowly does art find now its place in theeveryday life of the children and of the inhabitants of the people of Afghanistan.In that context the children who painted Never Again War very much appreciatedworking on such a huge surface. Not only the form of the painting,but also the theme was very stimulating to the children who had all experiencedboth war and peace despite their young ages. Their visions of war andpeace are therefore concrete, the result of lived through experiences, pastand present. Their abstract paintings were translations of real experience.According to Hatto Fischer, the mural, Never Again War, is divided into twoparts. On the left side the sky is grey, houses are destroyed, [and] one seestanks and airplanes, that are death machines but there are no human beings.Danger looms over everyone, in the air and on the ground. On the otherside of the painting, peace means by contrast, that one can go to school,that in nature everything blooms, that one sees human beings and they treateach other in peace and with respect. That part of the painting with weaponsbeing destroyed by a meat grinder reminds Hatto of Janusz Korczak whowrote about a weapon factory being transformed by children into a chocolateproducing plant. He stated, “Such a utopian wish can also be detected inthe Kabul painting with weapons being put into a meat grinder with thingschildren need at school coming out at the other end. It is a simple message:don’t spend money on weapons but on education. Instruments of peace arepencils, books and paper to write on. To deprive children of a proper educationis like robbing them of chances not only to survive, but also to make any28

Kids’ Guernica 2010positive contribution to society. [The only thing] children can do when war destroystheir homes is become onlookers. They can see the difference as well:a peaceful landscape compared to what is happening at home. That createsstrong wishes for another world.”Unfortunately at the time of this writing, “the actuality of the motif has notchanged,” according to Hatto. “There are military confrontations still happeningin Afghanistan and suicide bombers threaten the lives of people. Nevertheless,the situation of the children in Kabul can no longer be compared withthe times of civil war. Despite all difficulties at least children can visit schoolsand the children live no longer in exile.”The Dubai Mural: Life Hangs in a Balance“Our message of peace,” reports coordinator, Sara Lowndes, of the DubaiBritish School comes from our students’ words as well as the mural. The childrenreported: “The whole experience has so far been a great team effort andwe have, as a group worked together and discussed our ideas before we startedthe painting. It has been a chance to learn about the devastating effects ofwar on the human race, particularity the innocent children that always seemto be the victims of war. The experience has opened our eyes to the numberof conflicts that are being fought around the world today.” The mural was theeffort of a number of students and teacher Wendy Harris.The Kolkata, India Mural: Blind Boys’ GuernicaReports coordinator Asit Poddar, “From the very beginning, that is since 1995I have been involved in the Kids’ Guernica Project. Since then many Kids’Guernica peace murals have been painted across the world. All of them expressunique views of peace about the future of the world and in particularwhat are the chances of peace. Many of them are even done by children withspecial needs in Japan, India, and other countries. In 2007 we celebrated inmy country the centenary of the great blind artist Binod Bihari Mukherjee.He was not blind at birth but had poor vision and became only later in his lifeblind. Even though blind he continued with his work and painted many bigmurals with his inner eye.”[Above] Mural from Afghanistan. [Right] Dubaischoolchildren with their mural. [Below] themural from Shanghai, China.“That gives me the conviction that blind children could also make a Kids’Guernica mural. I went to the Blind Boys’ Academy, Rama Krishna Mission inNarendrapur. It is located at the outskirts of the city. I spoke with the principalof the school and with the blind children. The children agreed to do a peacemural. During the three-day workshop in the hot summer towards the endof April 2007, they enjoyed doing the painting a lot. Naturally this workshopwas different as the children who participated were blind. With the help ofthread and gum they made it possible. I was a little hesitant but the boys werecharged up and confident that they could do it. After discussion and planning,they took 4 days to finish the huge size painting in the middle of the hot summerof kolkata in a beautiful location under the tree. They decided what theywould paint but the medium had to be different than normal children; theyused colored thread, glue, pastels and paper. The media are used in such away that one blind person can understand what the other had drawn.Asit Poddar was assisted by Sumita Samanta, Associate Coordinator; SamikSaha, Documentation; and Sujit Naskar, Instructor, with 19 students, ages10-14.According to Hatto Fischer, Asit Poddar is still working with blind children whoare already doing their next mural based on the question of why there is somuch brutality in the world. They wish to touch the other side by going throughwalls with their hands. This work has already altered the epistemological basisof knowledge and thus as a point of reference shall alter in future theperception of the world.29

Kids’ Guernica 2010The Unfinished MuralsMural events planned or in progress at the time of this writing include a muralworkshop coordinated by Boris Tissot and Jad Salman in the very same atelierwhere Picasso painted the original Guernica, called Faces of Peace, andanother, which will also be included in this exhibition. Then, there is the exhibitioncoordinated by Gerald Schumann under the auspices of Théâtre de laVallée in Ecouen, also in Paris, entitled Breaking the Chains of Slavery. Finallywe expect a mural from Wollongong, Australia, coordinated by Ian Brown.ConclusionThe blind boys of India and their mural in2007.In the end, I believe art should address things that count in the personaland social lives of children and adults. The art experience should be aboutmaking and critically receiving art that says something of significance thatcontributes to the human story. By extension, community art and art educationshould be authentic and theme-based, recognizing works of art as boththe windows and mirrors of our lives. Ultimately, it should serve as a bridge ofrespect and understanding between people toward the goal of a global senseof community. This is no easy thing. It will require sensitive analysis of socialrealities and hard work.It is easy to draw platitudes, across cultures, such as the one that goes, “weare all alike under the skin.” But a close examination reveals we aren’t. Becausewe have human culture and that varies, so do we. However, we areall people. And we do have, it appears, some universal impulses, like loyaltyto the group and honesty and integrity, and the drive to make art. But theseimpulses take different forms in different circumstances and in different cultures,and that’s the rub. It’s the form that counts, after all. We take on theability to engage in and understand symbolic communication by being embeddedin a particular culture. Beyond substance, it is the manner in whichsomething is presented that allows us access to the inner life of the other.Or keeps us out. Making and studying art as meaningful communication in acultural context can help us understand this.This, then, was the approach we used to develop and implement the internationalKids’ Guernica peace mural project. The content and the strategies arereal, are life-based, have real interest to, and have a real impact on the childrenand adults who participate. The vehicle—not the end, but the vehicle—isart. The goal is to build a bridge of peace and understanding, ultimately tosave the world from further devastating warfare. Is it too grand to claim thatthe world can be saved through community action in art? Probably so. Butlet me reverse the question and ask if not through art, then what? Certainlybiology and physics and agriculture and chemistry give us wonderful practicaltools, but it is the arts that provide the holistic quality of understandingnecessary for social wholeness and cultural health, through the arts that wedevelop the sensibility, the unifying sense, the direction, in short the abilityto use our tools. Let me repeat then, if the world cannot be saved throughart, then through what? Through the Kids’ Guernica Peace Mural Project andinitiatives like it, we want nothing less than to save the world through interculturaltolerance and understanding. One bridge at a time.—T.A.Tom Anderson, guest curator and author of the essay, is also co-organizer of the accompanyingInternational Art and Design for Social Justice Conference. He holds the Jessie Lovano-KerrProfessor chair in of Art Education at Florida State University. He joined joinedthe faculty in 1983 and was named Art Educator of the Year in 2004 by the United StatesSociety for Education through Art and Higher Education Art Educator of the Year by theNational Art Education Association in 2006. In 1995, he became a co-founder and latera member of the International Advisory Committee of the Kids’ Guernica Peace MuralProject. Building upon his dissertation and interest in community murals, the project hasbeen responsible for perhaps as many as 250 murals, with international exhibitions, andpeace workshops across the globe.30

Kids’ Guernica 2010References and LinksIn this account I have borrowed freely from my colleagues’ words. The sourceof my borrowings is exclusively from personal conversations or from emailconversations unless otherwise noted.http://productivityofculture.org/symposium/discussions/http://poieinkaiprattein.org/kids-guernica/http://tr.truveo.com/Kids-Guernicamov/id/36028836282407879http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUEzEEqT92khttp://www.artforpeace.peacewaves.org/it/partners.htmhttp://www.kids-guernica.org/.[Above left] The study for Breaking theChains of Slavery, a mural in process inParis in 2009. [Above right] Japaneseteachers and students with one of theirmurals in Bali. [Below] Mural from Australia,2005.Cover: Detail of the Tallahassee2009 Mural, a project of the childrenartists from fourteen areaschools.31

Florida State UniversityMuseum of Fine Arts