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The holy Days for Greek - orthodox Easter will be this year unusual days for people of Kastelli, since together with the Kids’ Guernica International movement, they will pay tribute to all those work for the peace in world.
The kids of Kastelli shall create the Kastelli - Guernica mural (7,8 x 3,5 m as the original Picasso Guernica painting) and in doing so make their contribution to the Kids’ Guernica peace movement.
The Development Agency of Kastelli, the Municipality of Kastelli, in collaboration with POIEIN KAI PRATTEIN (“to create and to do” - a non profit Urban Society in Athens) with link to Takuya Kaneda, Coordinator of the Kids’ Guernica movement in Japan, are organising this first KIDS GUERNICA event to be held in Kastelli April 20-23 2006.
The local community embraces this movement as ‘lived through experience’ with children entering a peace process at an early age. The meeting in Kastelli aims to bring people together during the 3-days coinciding with Greek Easter. It will include interpretations of the Guernica paintings created by children all over the world. Departure point for these interpretations shall be a discussion about Picasso’s Guernica painting by Hatto Fischer, philosopher and coordinator of POIEIN KAI PRATTEIN.
There will be poetry reading by Katerina Anghelaki Rooke, Dostena Laverge, Hatto Fischer and Socrates Kabouropoulos with link to the ‘Poets against the War’ headed by Sam Hamill in the USA.
All activities - painting action, discussions, peace workshops, tours to monasteries, archaeological museum in Heraklion - will seek to link local Cretan practices in terms of conflict resolvement with what children and people coming from abroad can convey in terms of their own cultures and understanding of peace in the world. Of importance shall be to link the Cretan tradition dating back to the Minoan culture so well known to Picasso (see his paintings about Minotaurus) with the worldwide peace movement. Given the many wars, in particular in Iraq leading to violent conflicts and violation of Human Rights throughout the world, there is a need for people to enter a peace process as initiated already by children with their Kids’ Guernica paintings.
Spyros Mercouris from the Melina Merkouri Foundation, Takuya Kaneda, Coordinator of the Kids Guernica International Movement, Prof. Tadashi Nishihira and Keiko Hoshino from Japan, Asit Poddar from India, Fatema Nawaz from Afghanistan, Stacy Koumbis from Chicago, USA, Jan Brueggemeier from Weimar, Germany, Markos Kavouras from Chios, Alexandra Gaul from Germany, Marie Briand from Paris, France, Ariela Meier-Goldmann from Tel Aviv, Israel along with other known writers, artists, poets, teachers, experts such as Anna Arvanitaki, Thomas Economacos, Maria Capari, Elpida Papavassiliou will together with Rita Charalambaki (Women Association of Kastelli) and Vaggelis Fragoulidaki and the local people of Kastelli contribute to making this event possible.
12 paintings from all over the world (Kids Guernica paintings) and 12 peace posters from London, UK will be exhibited on the Kastelli school premise. Visitors are invited to join in this ongoing work for peace throughout our times and to link through the Kids’ Guernica to an important cultural development departing from the creative impulses of Picasso and his initial response to the atrocities committed in Guernica 1937.
As to Kastelli it is a historical community known for its resistance during Second World War against German occupation. It is situated in the mainland of Crete near Heraklion (40 km) and close to a mountainous region marked by beautiful valleys full of olive trees.
Nikos Spetsidis, Director of the Development Agency of Kastelli
(9.4.2006)
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