Cosmopolitan Village: crowdfunding campaign

Following the partnership agreement signed with Fondazione Berengo,  the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) / Global Campus of Human Rights is organising a fundraising project called Cosmopolitan Village: a platform for Human Rights that will take place at the same time of the next 58th International Art Exhibition (Biennale di Venezia) from May until November 2019. Visiting this Village, the public could appreciate the artworks of well-known artists activists selected by the curator Koen Vanmechelen, and addressing the important relation between Arts and Human Rights. The project is now getting general public support through a crowdfunding campaign where everyone around the world could make a financial contribution to support this idea and help with the logistics.  

 

You can see the crowdfunding campaign and share it through your network and Social Media by this link:  https://igg.me/at/human-rights-pavilion 

 

Donations will help to cover specifically all the remaining costs of the Cosmopolitan Village (such as artwork installation/security/insurances, personnel, etc.). Art can only flourish in an atmosphere of freedom from fear, violence and repression. The language of art is the most powerful and joyful medium to promote the universal values of human rights. While many of the existing national and thematic pavilions established as parts of the Biennale are at least partly exhibiting the works of artists who are themselves human rights activists or who aim at engaging with current social issues through their art, what is lacking so far is a coordinated effort to draw on the full potential that art has in this regard. In order to do so, and to amplify the human rights messages that art can send, the proposedCosmopolitan Village will present a unique and supranational platform giving more space for:

 

•  exhibiting carefully curated pieces of art that provoke a debate on current challenges to human rights;
•  engaging actively with human rights issues through the lens of the arts, in different media, with the aim of promoting synergies between the two;
•  fostering a new human rights culture that is coined by dialogue, tolerance and innovation;
• connecting artists, members of civil society, NGOs, IOs, politicians and academia through the involvement of our vast academic network and the creation of content such as seminars, workshops, conferences, etc.

The overall aim is to create a narrative around the featured artworks by underpinning the exhibition with academic expertise and educational activities. Acting as a convener space, bringing together the know-how, experience and network of both organizing institutions - EIUC and Fondazione Berengo - and linking the arts with education and research, the Cosmopolitan Village will constitute an essential and unique contribution to the theme of the Biennale Arte 2019 entitled May You Live in Interesting Times, a phrase of English invention that has long been mistakenly cited as an ancient Chinese curse that invokes periods of uncertainty, crisis and turmoil; "interesting times", exactly as the ones we live in today.

 

By participating in the crowdfunding campaign, everybody could not only help artists and the dialogue on the current human rights crisis but also receive different visibility and event packages. 

 

To help promoting the crowdfunding campaign, please share it using the hashtags:

#TogetherForArt #Art4HumanRights #HumanRightsDefenders

For more information, you could contact the Fundraising, PR and Communication Department at  fundraising@eiuc.org