Through this journal, we are inviting you into a new way of thinking and doing, one which begins with questioning everything we take for granted.
In particular, how we contribute – or think we contribute – to a better world. We will not have all the answers, but we want to ask better questions.
Can music have the power to rebuild? A Couple'O Friends seems to think so. The group is organising a concert in Prague to raise funds for the earthquake survivors of Turkey and Syria. The Rights Studio talked to Roksan Mandel, a Turkish singer and songwriter who will be featured in the event.
Think of the words that belong in a playground. Some terms come to mind: fun, creativity, challenges, laughter, games. Are these words part of your life and your work? More importantly, would you like them to be?
“If war has an opposite, gardens might sometimes be it, and people have found a particular kind of peace in forests, meadows, parks and gardens.” — Rebecca Solnit
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu
“Sometimes I think that the artist is like a child who when he blows out a candle creates a hurricane, who when he cries causes a flood or who when he laughs illuminates this apparently incomprehensible world that adults agree to hide.” — Jaume Plensa
“From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, … but nothing I did before the age of 70 was worthy of attention. At 73, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am 86, so that by 90 I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At 100, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at 130, 140, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive.”— Katsushika Hokusai, also known as Gakyō Rōjin Manji (The Old Man Mad About Art)