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Following the Path of Culture

An always inspiring visit to the Evagoras Lanitis Foundation as it proposes with it’s recently inaugurated exhibition, Degas: the complete sculptures collection to step into the creative world of a timeless work in bronze by the artist, Edgard Degas.

When gazing upon these extraordinary sculptures, it is hard to imagine that not a
single Degas bronze was ever cast during the artist’s lifetime. Every bronze in every
museum, and in every other public and private collection around the world, was cast
after the artist’s death.
Edgar Degas, who was born on July 19, 1834, began sculpting in the late
1850s.

While the original sculptures he made are commonly referred to as his
“waxes,” they were primarily made of a soft modeling clay known as plasteline
which Degas then often mixed with beeswax. These materials remained malleable
and gave him the flexibility he needed to rework his original waxes over long
periods of time. He took great pleasure in experimenting and continued to do so in
an attempt to capture the perfect form*.

Considered as very personal intimate objects, today that these can be admired and enjoyed at the Evagoras Lanitis Art Center in Limassol, until the 12th of February 2012.

* Partly reproduced from a text about the casting of Degas’s Sculpture written by Walter Maibaum, a leading authority in modern European art.

Emerging collaborative ideas to the Aid of Africa

In short, the emerging collaborative idea that we’re working round the clock on is called The 50/50 Project….and it’s really close to being ready for first release. There’s a sneak preview of the web platform supporting it in his post.

Over the last 10 days, and in particular over the weekend, a team of amazing people from all sorts of backgrounds have come together to work on it. We’ve had nearly 100 ideas submitted over at Good By Ideas, and people ‘claiming’ those ideas – to make them, support them and push them out into their networks already.

Some of you may have seen it the short clip on the BBC’s Click programme over the weekend – if not, take a quick peek (it’s at 22 minutes!).

We’re now keen to keep the momentum going with an open challenge/experiment to makers, creators, artists, musicians, brand owners, companies – anyone who can create, donate or push out big, interesting fundraising ideas – all with one collaborative purpose -> to rapidly accelerate donations by creatively bringing this issue up in people’s minds in a way that makes them want to give and get involved.

It’s a 50 day mission starting on August 27th and ending on World Food Day on October 16th to raise £1m-£50 through interesting fundraising projects. All money will be channelled into DEC who have the knowhow and capability to make the best use of it. All donations will be tracked in 1 place. We’ll share, amplify and measure everything – and especially the stories from East Africa and from the projects – so we can create impact and scale around the efforts.

It’s called 50/50 because it’s make or break

Life is quite literally in the balance over there

And frankly, it’s 50/50 that it will work. It’s a massive challenge, and one that requires an enormous dose of empathy, creativity and action from lots of people to have a chance of succeeding. The kind of empathy we’ve seen in the past week on a much smaller scale following the London riots.

The thing is we’ve got no idea how much we could possibly raise if we can tap into the global creative communities amazing talents. But given the number of people in danger of starving, we really want to have a go…and are optimistic that something amazing could happen.

The one simple thing we did calculate was that within our combined networks, if we can each get 1 in 20 of the people we know to give £10, we’ll get to over £1million. Assuming we all know c. 200 people each, that means you need to get 10 people to give £10 and we’ve hit the first target. And that’s before we get any of the amazing fundraising ideas kicking in that can spread further and faster….

So, keep watching this space for more news this week. Things are moving fast, so get your ideas or claim and idea and get your networks primed and ready. It’s important, it’s exciting and it’s happening so get involved and let’s see what happens.

Good for Nothing | 50/50: It’s make or break for people facing famine in East Africa

• Introducing the 50/50 project
• #famineAid Gigs (community)
• Idea Sharing platform for raising money #famineaid
• Flickr Visuals Love Riot for East Africa

A seafaring Limassol jumps ahead to make you smile with its Branding Project

Limassol Branding project crowd sources it’s research and opens it up to the citizens of Limassol

 

Limassol Branding Project makes it to your shelf

Soon to make it your shelf, the Limassol branding project, was unveiled yesteday at the Fourseasons hotel in the seafront of Limassol.

The team lead by Limassol Branding Project LTD, have made extensive their invitation to the residents of Limassol to express themselves and enrich the meaning about what Limassol represents to them.

The promoters of the initiative that counts with institutional support believes strongly that the single act of sharing may enable and activate the process of building up a common future to establish Limassol reference city of delight  in the Mediterranean.

Unlike other promotional initiatives linked to destination marketing, the Project who’s aim is to define the identity of Limassol for the 21st century, has embedded civic responsibility into the project.  Rightly so, it welcomes people to find in this exercise a valid means to project one’s desires and hopes to enrich the future design strategy that will craft and make tangible the identity of Limassol.

Limassol's bold start, is at sea

For an Inclusive territory

Your invitation to experience

A benefit for our social humanity

About the Limassol Branding Project:

A self-funded initiative as The Limassol Branding Project was initiated by Spyros Spyrou, joined by six other Limassol business leaders – Peter G. Economides, Costas Galatariotis, Michael Loizides, Christos Mouskis, Philippos Philis and Michael Virarti – under the umbrella of the Limassol Chamber of Commerce. It has the full support of the various municipalities and communities that make up the Greater Limassol area, as well as the Cyprus Tourism Organisation, the Cyprus Shipping Chamber, and the Limassol Tourism Development Company. www.limassolbranding.com | Limassol community page

At the heart of the disconnect in the union of the Mediterranean

A few days ago, we wrote about the excitement of being able to follow the Mediterraid Initiative in it’s 16 country tour exploring the influence of virtual communications and connecting locally with urban realities around the Mediterranean.

As a trip of cultural exploration around the Mediterranean basin, an obligated stop is Turkey, which was host to European Capital of Culture and a very intense effort to promote Civil Society Dialogue with the European   Union. Nevertheless, one has to have a regard for geopolitics and at this time avoiding unstable eastern Mediterranean political situation made it wise to aim for an alternative route – which made Cyprus very attractive, despite not being in the original plans of travel. And the reality is that if you travel by Car, current links to the mainland are most easy between Turkey and Cyprus.  Yes, traditional routes to Greece by Ferry have long been abandoned, and landing on the shores of Kyrenia is the most practical, but only on a map.

The Mediterraid team was to find out that not only could they not cross borders with their vehicle to the Greek part of the island, and even if they had wanted to – they could not have made it out to any other Mediterranean port for an onward journey to the Meditterranean, not even to Greece.

Conclusion: if you want to move across Mediterranean Europe in a web 2.0 style, aside from the challenge of finding an internet connection, you find out that there is a lot of speak about the Union in the Mediterranean, but these have yet to realize the living walls of connectivity and communication.

We live in urban realities that have been tolerated and imposed upon people for a long period of time and while we are at the doorstep of hosting ourselves European Capital of Culture, how do we explain and justify current cultural diplomacy efforts that reinforce our European isolation.  We no longer live on a map people.

About the Union
The Union for the Mediterranean is a multilateral partnership with a view to increasing the potential for regional integration and cohesion among Euro-Mediterranan partners. The Union for the Mediterranean is inspired by the shared political will to revitalize efforts to transform the Mediterranean into an area of peace, democracy, cooperation and prosperity.

Inverting energy destinies of cities

The construction and urban culture of the Mediterranean has at least two constants precious: the flat roofs of buildings and dense compactness of the city. The urban fabric of city centers, suburbs of speculation, the squatter settlements, often have these two qualities. The proposal to use these elements as assets for eco-sustainability is what Mediterranean Waterfront wishes to transform in mediterranean cities.

As Mediterranean Waterfront engages in its exploration phase in 2011, Mediterraid was chosen as partner. The Association has since 2006 performed regularly around the Mediterranean by land drive to promote good relations between the nations of the Mediterranean. The 16 city tour of the mediterranean will seek to engage with people in the squares, streets and courts in neighborhoods that were previously selected for their features for the regeneration project whose aims will be to echo the Cluster Cooperation Mediterranean Waterfront and research centers to local stakeholders, but above all to experience a first approach to the people, to know the reality of the local population and illustrate the possibilities of regeneration of their neighborhoods. The most important aspect of the initiative will be just the activation of a network of places and people continue to live during and after two months (June-July 2011) that lie ahead, becoming the center of a real project already glocal Web Design and began Aided Reverse Engineering of Urban, able to turn transform a street of Mediterranean eco-sustainability.

A vision that is to transform interferences between systems into synergies

Mediterranean Waterfront is an Eco Cluster Cooperation that offers a concrete vision to work for the future of Mediterranean cities and the regeneration of suburbs.MW started first than political changes ongoing, the new focus and hope of rebirth socio-cultural gave us an unexpected media interest, in synergy with many other urban emergencies. It proposes to challenge a new frontier where high population density becomes a resource. Starting from here a reverse engineering can open the covertibility of the existing. This vision transform interferences between systems into synergies.

Read more: BiodiversityAct Cyprus
Connect: Mediterraid 2011

Bufferzone of Nicosia acclaimed as Architecture Heritage at European Awards for Cultural Heritage (EuropaNostra)

Building a sense of cultural change through Architectural Heritage at the heart of the Buffer zone of Nicosia

Among the 27 winners of the 2011 European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards presented by Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth where the 6 ‘Grand Prix’ laureates where recognized of their outstanding heritage achievements. The ceremony was attended by an audience of some 1500 people including H.R.H. Princess Margriet of The Netherlands.

“These exemplary achievements are sending a strong message to everyone in Europe. The value of cultural heritage is essential for Europe- for the economy and for our social cohesion – but above all for our sense of belonging and our sense of pride and happiness,” added Europa Nostra’s President, Plácido Domingo.

In the Category of Research – the study of the Buffer Zone in the Walled City of Nicosia, was unanimously acclaimed by the jury as a fine and comprehensive study of all the buildings within the UN protected buffer zone of Nicosia, originally the heart of this walled city. The project is particularly important because of its potential to help alleviate the difficulties between the two sides, and is an excellent example of a conservation project in a sensitive area of Europe.

The study of the architectural heritage of the buffer zone in the walled city of Nicosia was implemented within the framework of the bi-communal Nicosia Master Plan Project (NMP). The NMP was launched in 1980 as a collaboration between the two major communities of Nicosia, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, for the development of Nicosia as a whole and the revitalisation of the walled city.

This study aims to enhance the rich architectural heritage within in this strip of land which divides the walled city, identified by the NMP as the most important area within the historic centre and crucial for the future unification and integration of the city. The overall result includes historical analyses, surveys of buildings and public spaces, studies for emergency support of buildings and restoration proposals, and an enormous digital record used as database for future projects. This project will now enable the conservation of the architectural heritage within the buffer zone and the revitalisation of the historic centre of Nicosia.

For More information: See Europa Nostra

  ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF THE BUFFER ZONE IN THE WALLED CITY OF NICOSIA