World Press Freedom Day ! Shaping a Future of Rights : resources & activities

 

credits: UNESCO

https://www.unesco.org/

2023 year marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day. Three decades have passed since it was proclaimed in 1993, in which we have seen substantial progress towards achieving a free press and freedom of expression around the world. 

The proliferation of independent media in many countries and the rise of digital technologies have enabled the free flow of information. 

However, media freedom, safety of journalists and freedom of expression are increasingly under attack, which impacts the fulfillment of other human rights.

https://www.unesco.org/

May 3 acts as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom. It is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics. It is an opportunity to:

• celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom;
• assess the state of press freedom throughout the world;
• defend the media from attacks on their independence;
• and pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

credits: UNESCO

https://www.unesco.org/

• Theme 2023:

“Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights”

Celebrated every 3rd of May, this year’s theme for the Day will be “Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights” (working title), signifying the enabling element of freedom of expression to enjoy and protect all other human rights.   

This year’s Special 30th anniversary celebration of World Press Freedom Day is, therefore, a call to recentre press freedom, as well as independent, pluralistic and diverse media, as key to the enjoyment of all other human rights.

Partners from the media, academia, and civil society as schools are invited to organize events around the world centered on this year’s theme. 

credits: Liza Donnelly/ The New Yorker

https://www.cartooningforpeace.org/en/

• Cartoons for Freedom Expression:

For the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, UNESCO and Cartooning for Peace launch a campaign that talks about the importance of freedom of expression in guaranteeing human rights. Because we cannot defend our rights to free expression, education, health, equal access to justice without a free press that exposes abuses and provides information to assert our rights.

credits: Liza Donnelly

@lizadonnelly

UNESCO and Cartooning for Peace are delighted to have the New Yorker as a special guest in this campaign. Liza Donnelly!

https://www.cartooningforpeace.org/en/

• Education 

To mark World Press Freedom Day, UNESCO and Cartooning for Peace, an international organization founded by Kofi Annan, 2001 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former United Nations Secretary-General selected press cartoons.

Designed by committed press cartoonists from around the world, thirteen cartoons combine "humor, satire and tragedy to express their views on the state of press freedom and the many challenges that media and journalists face for informing citizens and carrying out critical reporting on issues of public interest."

https://www.cartooningforpeace.org/en/

• Some activities:

"Cartooning for Peace sensitizes young audiences to major societal problems with humour and through the strong educational value of press cartoons."

• Ask your students to visit the website Cartooning for Peace (bilingual English & Français)  and Educational News page. Ask them they discuss the goals of cartooning for peace. 

• Invite them to explore the online gallery of Cartooning for Peace. They must choose a cartoon and discuss their choice. 
• Download the cartoons, in different languages, and share in social media networks!

• Students can be inspired and motivated to create their own cartoons. 

• Discussion on freedom of expression at school. 

• Finally celebrate their desire for Peace through different activities at school : press cartoons exhibition, theatre, choral singing, slam, song, dance and music. 

https://www.unesco.org/

For this #WorldPressFreedomDay,  UNESCO is encouraging everyone to publish a single message: 

"Everything is alright." 

Because if everything is alright in the news, then something is wrong with journalism. And when journalism is compromised, we cannot protect human rights. 

Download the print ads and messages for social media and post them on 3 May here.

https://www.unesco.org/

Curricula: Cross-curricular. 

Target: High-junior schools; Vocational schools.

G-Souto

02.05.2023

Copyright © 2023G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Schools : World Press Freedom Day : Shaping a future of Rights : resources & activities by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Sources: UNESCO/ United Nations/ Cartooning for Peace

Teaching Arts : How about Wassily Kandinsky & Abstract Art : Resources

Wassily Kandinsky

Detail of Serbian stamp commemorating 150 years 

since Wassily Kandinsky's birth

via the ArtStory

"Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential."

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky

https://www.theartstory.org/

One of the pioneers of abstract modern art, Wassily Kandinsky exploited the evocative interrelation between color and form to create an aesthetic experience that engaged the sight, sound, and emotions of the public. He believed that total abstraction offered the possibility for profound, transcendental expression and that copying from nature only interfered with this process.

Highly inspired to create art that communicated a universal sense of spirituality, he innovated a pictorial language that only loosely related to the outside world, but expressed volumes about the artist's inner experience. 

Google Doodle Wassily Kandinsky's 148th Birthday

https://www.google.com/doodles/

Google Doodle:

December 16th, Google celebrates the 148th birthday of the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. The doodle reflects his own distinct abstract style.

There she is, you are saying ! Writing about Art and Doodles, again. I know, I know. Being from Humanities, I love all the expressions of Visual Arts, Music, Literature, Linguistics.

Google Doodle Wassily Kandinsky's 148th Birthday

https://www.google.com/doodles/

Doodles! Well doodles are a awesome digital resource to introduce a new theme into curriculum and surprise the students as a motivation to awake their curiosity. Students love be surprised each lesson. Something rather new, unexpected is just the right tip.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

The Granger Collection, New York

https://www.britannica.com/

"To create a work of art is to create the world."

Wassily Kandinsky

Some information :

Born in Moscow in 1866, his career spanned five decades during which he was influenced by, among other artistic movements, Impressionism, Fauvism, Pointillism, Bauhaus architecture and Abstract expressionism.

Wassily Kandinsky, Nina Kandinsky, Georg Muche, Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, Dessau

Walter Obschonka, 1926

https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/

Kandinsky, who is credited with being the first painter to produce purely Abstract works, use colour as an expression of emotion, often likening the process of painting to composing music.

In Grey, 1919

Wassily Kandinsky

Paris, Musee National Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou

https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/

Born on December, 16th, 1866 in Moscow, in a well-to-do family of a businessman in a good cultural environment. In 1871 the family moved to Odessa where his father ran his tea factory. There, alongside with attending a classical gymnasium (grammar school), the boy learned to play the piano and the cello and took to drawing with a coach. 

"I remember that drawing and a little bit later painting lifted me out of the reality", he wrote later. 

In Kandinsky's works of his childhood period we can find rather specific color combinations, which he explained by the fact that "each color lives by its mysterious life". 

Bustling Aquarelle, 1923

Wassily Kandinsky

https://www.wassily-kandinsky.org/

Kandinsky only began his artistic career at the age of 30, having previously studied law and economics at university to satisfy his family’s wishes.

In 1896, he decided to give up a successful career (associate Professor at Law Faculty) to devote himself completely to painting. Later on Kandinsky recollected two events, which had affected this decision: his visiting an exhibition of the French impressionists in Moscow in 1895 and an emotional shock he experienced from K. Monet's, "Haystacks", and an impression of Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin" at the Bolshoi Theatre. 

Yellow-Red-Blue, 1925
Wassily Kandinsky

Paris, Musee National Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou

https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/

He left for Munich, at that time considered to be one of the centers of the European art, and entered Anton Azbe's (Yugoslavian artist) prestigious private painting school , where he received the first skills in image composition, in work with line and form. 

In 1900 after a failure of the previous year, Kandinsky entered the Munich Academy of Arts, and studied under Franz Stuck, "German graphic artist Number One". 

In Blue, 1925

Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/

Kandinsky returned to Moscow after the outbreak of World War I, but was not sympathetic to the official theories on art in communist Russia and went back to Germany in 1921, where he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933.

He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. 

He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine (France) in 1944. His influence on 20th-century art, often filtered through the work of more accessible painters, was profound.

Swinging, 1925
Wassily Kandinsky

https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/

Education:

"Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with "reality," next to the "real" world. Deeper down, it is subject to the common laws of the "cosmic world." And so a "new world of art" is juxtaposed to the "world of nature." This "world of art" is just as real, just as concrete. For this reason I prefer to call so-called "abstract art" "concrete art."

Kandinsky

All my usual readers know how I am a truly convinced defender of a complete education in school with Music and Art. STEM are crucial, Literature, Languages, Music and Arts are essential as well.

We can't develop our skills for life without a complete education. Art and Music are the first huge step towards a new future to gifted kids and all kinds students.

All over the years, you read my thoughts about the importance of Arts in School Education, no matter the art fields: Music, Dance, Theatre Literature, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture.

"Everything starts from a dot."

Wassily Kandinsky

Arts are absolutely necessary to a complete and better education of children and young adolescents. Throught primary to secondary education, some students discover their inner path on Arts and later they will choose Art colleges and Higher Schools of Arts to develop their aptitude by a real leaning.

Doodles! Love Google doodles! They can be include into any curriculum as I already wrote. Doodles combine creativity, curiosity, digital skills, culture and a motivation to a different start of an interesting lesson, You must think about it.

Teachers:

Here, a good digital resource to one or two lessons on Modernism. Of course each teacher must prepare and adapt the activities to the level they are teaching.

Ask your students to explore the websites Kandinsky and The Art Story/ Wassily Kandinsky to an interesting start on the subject.

IT and social media in the classroom are important tools to tackle the world's toughest problems creating bridges and establish a truly intercultural world, where diversity can be celebrated, a world where different cultures not only coexist but value each other for their contributions and potential.

Level: All levels including Vocational Education, Further Education.

Curricula: Arts; Cross-curricular (Literature, Arts, Music).

"Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?"

Wassily Kandinsky

G-Souto

16.12.2014

update 21.12.2022

Copyright © 2014G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Teaching Arts : How about Wassily Kandinsky & Abstract Art : Resources by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.