Children's own stories

Shoes left by children before stepping on the canvas

Search for beautiful spots

Adorno would say beautiful spots in music and in the arts can be found where the so called main theme is suddenly blended out by an original side tune. It is when children begin to take matters into their own hands and follow their wishes and natural inclination, that real things start taking shape.

How to communicate?

If different cultures allow people to communicate about these conditions, we need no sophisticated language to understand each other. As the Polish journalist narrates in his story 'my travel with Herodot', it was sufficient for his chauffeur who spoke no English to say 'no problem' compared to 'problem' to know through what kind of territory they were traveling at the moment. Children know immediately when there are problems!

Avoid developments leading to war or upholding war over peace

Hence it is no problem for culture if people wish to live differently, but it does become a 'problem' when conflicts about differences are used by one culture to impose its order, especially if this leads to war.

So the tasks to create conditions for peace are cut out for Kids' Guernica and we all know this is no easy task.

What children do best

'Afterthoughts

matched

by streaks of light

hushed

by the smile

of a child

Kids' Guernica stands really for the freeing of the imagination, for a bottom-up diplomatic process with the aim to avoid the usual pitfalls of misunderstandings which begin when some diplomat speaks about 'our people' or about the Germans in contrast to the French or Muslims. While collective names may shape our perception of the world, they should not lead to the kind of stigmatization or profiling we are all too familiar with especially when we think about how much blame was put upon the Jews in Germany and which ended in the Holocaust due to a totalitarian end vision as if the solution for everything.

We need to be more humble and perceive where we stand with regards to the cultural truths in need to be questioned all the time. It is like children growing up in the world of the adults and realizing their short comings and problems that they have to develop solutions on the basis of lived through experiences as that is the best guidance for any action and reflection thereof.

It is the hope of Kids' Guernica that empathy can deepen our understanding of each other, so as to recognize each others' wishes and fears, and it should mean that everyone can become creative and productive in his or her special way, adults in a different way compared to what children can do quite naturally but are at risk to loose these creative potentials when entering the adult world.

We have to regain human solidarity if we are to restore human dignity. There was this solidarity with the people of Viet Nam but where is it today with regards to the people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and even with the Palestinians in the Middle East?

Most crucial is to realize that when children paint these murals, and hopefully free of interferences by adults, then they are making an amazing analysis of reality in which they live in.

Thus the deeper philosophy behind Kids' Guernica is a wish to contribute to peace by bringing people together so that they talk with each other rather than hit each other over the head.

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Children's own stories