Mandela Day: You are The Power of Change
Mandela Day is an international day in honour of Nelson Mandela,
celebrated annually on the 18th of July – Mandela’s Birthday.
It is a call to action for individuals – for people everywhere –
to take responsibility for changing the world into a better place,
one small step at a time, just as Mr Mandela did.
Following the success of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday celebrations in London’s Hyde Park in June 2008 and the 4664 concerts, it was decided that there could be nothing more fitting than to celebrate Mr Mandela’s birthday each year with a day dedicated to his life’s work and that of his charitable organisations, and to ensure his legacy continues forever.
The day was officially declared by the United Nations in November 2009. Mandela Day is not meant as a public holiday but is a global call to action that celebrates the idea that each individual has the ability to make an impact and the power to transform the world.
The Mandela Day campaign message is simple: Mr Mandela gave 67 years of his life fighting for the rights of humanity. All we are asking is that everyone gives 67 minutes of their time, whether it’s supporting your chosen charity or serving your local community.
Long Road to Freedom
On August 5th, 1962, an ordinary piece of road along the R103 about 3 kilometres outside Howick in KwaZulu-Natal took on extraordinary significance when armed apartheid police flagged down a car.
The man pretending to be the chauffeur had earned the nickname of the “Black Pimpernel” having evaded capture by the apartheid regime for 17 months. It was in this dramatic manner at this unassuming place that Nelson Mandela was finally captured and was to disappear from public view for the next 27 years.
Mandela had just paid a clandestine visit to ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli to report on his African Odyssey. His meeting was also to request support for an armed struggle, after having spent most of his adult life trying to find peaceful ways in which to end the injustice and suffering caused by the system of Apartheid in South Africa, without success.
50 years later on August 4th 2012, to mark the anniversary of the start of Nelson Mandela’s “long walk to freedom” a quietly powerful new sculpture was inaugurated and unveiled at this spot.
The sculpture is comprised of 50 steel column constructions, each between 6.5 and 9.5 meters tall, set into the landscape of the Natal Midlands. The posts are staggered and the portrait of Nelson Mandela only comes into correct focus when the posts line up at a position 35 meters from the sculpture (a reference to the fact that Mandela proved notoriously difficult for the authorities to find).
From this perspective the sculpture reads as a familiar photograph of Mandela, suggestive of his incarceration as one is aware it is comprised essentially of a series of steel bars, but seen from other angles the design splinters into a dynamic moment of fracture and release.
The artist Marco Cianfanelli comments on the deliberate structural paradox, that, “this represents the momentum gained in the struggle through the symbolic of Mandela’s capture. The 50 columns represent the 50 years since his capture, but they also suggest the idea of many making the whole; of solidarity. It points to an irony as the political act of Mandela’s incarceration cemented his status as an icon of struggle, which helped ferment the groundswell of resistance, solidarity and uprising, bringing about political change and democracy”.
http://www.mandela-children.org.uk/
Read MoreFiddle Oak: Welcome to my World
The profoundest thought or passion
sleeps as in a mine,
until an equal mind and heart
finds and publishes it.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson —
Have you ever looked at a beautiful lichen covered rock with wild-flowers dropping pollen on it, and wished you could find a landscape as lovely to step into?
Autumn
With a bit of imagination you can, as
Fiddle Oak demonstrates in his photograph: “The Melody”
The Melody
Inspiration may come on a calm evening spent sharing
Summer Tales with a friend:
Summer Tales
.. Or even arrive with tomorrow’s dinner.
Visiting
Fiddle Oak: Travels with Betsy and Diana
This magical journey is brought to you by a 14 year old photographer who lives in a suburb of Boston and is home-schooled by his mother who is a sculptor.
Zev Hoover was eight when he started taking photos on his mobile phone for fun. His mother saw the potential he was showing and bought a point and shoot camera for him on eBay. It wasn’t long before she bought him a better one. And then an even better one.
He now has two cameras, both which he has named. He calls his still camera “Betsy” and his video camera is “Diana”.
“I like naming things,” he says. “My bike is named Patrick.”
The youngest in a family, with four siblings ,he gives his older sister Nell credit for helping with some of the ideas for the images he creates. She suggested the idea of images of little folk and he came up with the name of Fiddle Oak as his Flickr name, a play on the words.
Fiddle Oak on Flickr: Flight of the Imagination
“My sister is more of a writer, but she is sort of my partner in crime,” he says. “I do the actual work with the camera and edit the picture, but she helps with a lot of the concepts.”
He describes the process of creating the images:
“I shoot what I call the background — the scene, without props, first. Often it’s a collage of multiple pictures. Then I try to match the lighting of that picture and take pictures of people in the right position to be in the pictures, then I shrink them in Photoshop and change the colors so they match the background a little bit better, then I do overall color editing to make them match. It takes a long time.”
Thanks to Sail for sharing this story .
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Love Thy Nature: A Film About Who We Are
What we fall in love with, we protect.
When we fall in love, we transform.
Through loving and protecting nature,
we can heal ourselves and ensure
a future for our children. ”
— Sylvie Rokab —
A film in the making by award-winning documentary film maker Sylvie Rokab
who says of it “this is the film I was born to make,”
“As far as we know, only our planet gives birth to life
and among all species on earth ours is the most gifted
But have our gifts taken us too far away from what sustains us?
Take a journey through the new era of human evolution
where our hearts and minds are inspired by the wonders of nature…”
The film is currently on Kickstarter and has 10 days to go to reach its required funding
Love Thy Nature demonstrates how communion with the natural world transforms us as individuals and communities.
And that transformation encourages us to not only restore our ecosystems, but also to embrace our role as a species of double-wisdom: as stewards of our planet, including our human family.
Read MoreGood Books Change Lives
Books can be entertaining, educational, escapist and sometimes life-changing.
There is even an online bookshop that will ensure that the next book you read (that is bought via their bookshop) will be life-changing – if it doesn’t change your life, it will definitely be helping to change someone else’s life.. for the better.
Good Books works together with Oxfam so all profits from their books go to funding Oxfam projects. It also gives its customers free international delivery
This charitable website is called UseGoodBooks.com and they explain the simple concept behind their project:
“The Good Books model is simple. Every time anyone buys a book through the Good Books website, 100% of the retail profit from every sale goes to support communities in need through Oxfam projects”
As a result, charitable donation is built into an everyday activity at no extra cost.
No one at Good Books is paid and we have zero operating costs. All time, professional services and resources are donated.
Good Books is about creating positive and enduring connections between commercial worlds and wider, less advantaged communities. Rather than fight a system that privileges a few over many, we wanted to transform it from within to constructive effect. Now, each time you buy a book through us you challenge traditional barriers that prevent commercial involvement in reducing poverty.”
Good Books “Metamorphosis” from Antfood on Vimeo.
This video by creative Agency Antfood uses two main sources of inspiration – the wonderfully evocative imagery that well crafted words on a page can conjour up in our minds, (in this case stepping into Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”) and the paradigm shift that people like those at Good Books are working to promote – that commercial activity need not be exclusively about maximising profits to benefit a few, but can have a direct role in ending poverty and creating a better life for all.
“We dug through the darkest recesses of our minds and studio to create original music and sound design for this Buck masterpiece. Working with squirming, analog-tape leeches, moaning coeds, screaming guitar goats, and brain-exploding psychedelia, we were certainly in our element. Plus, it’s always fun to rock out and get a little weird for a good cause!”
Read MoreArt Visible from Space
Have you ever wondered if any artworks are visible from space, or thought of going on a journey of “extra terrestrial” discovery using Google Earth?.
Artist Merrill Kazanjian explores art visible from space from Google Earth Gallery
This video was created by an artist looking at that perspective – Merrill Kazanjian is an artist who creates a lot of art tutorials and shares them on YouTube.
He gives his reasons for choosing this medium for sharing:
“I am dyslexic and I always struggled with text.
Video gives visual learners a great alternative to text, and I want to supply a textual alternative for artists.
I also taught as an art teacher for eight years. My job was eliminated three times in eight years due to budgets. My first step by step videos were created with the purpose of keeping misbehaving students occupied.”
Merrill uses mixed media of all kinds, digital manipulation and traditional art methods. In this video he uses mixed media and a photocopier.
“My friend Al Alvir has a very popular Boxing/Mixed Martial Arts blog- http://shootafairone.com/ and I decided to create a character for one of the writers he has on staff (O’Toole). Allen is a big fan of Mike Tyson (heavyweight champion) and his legendary trainer Cus D’Amato who also trained managed Floyd Patterson (olympic and heavyweight champion) and Jose Torres (light heavyweight champion) so I made this character with D’Amato in mind.
I used D’Amato reference photos for my initial drawing but also had fictional “Rocky” trainer Mickey Goldmill in mind (portrayed by Burgess Meredith). Using these two icons; one from pop culture one from reality, gave me an interesting image to illustrate. In this video, I documented my process. ”
Merrill calls his YouTube channel “Kazanjian – the Unspellable Art Channel.”
http://www.youtube.com/user/kazanjianm
http://www.merrillk.com/
If you know of other artwork visible from space and would like to share it or discuss it – post it on the rainbowzebra forums. www.rainbowzebra.com/forums
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