TPRF Real Stories

Roberta Ragonese, a student at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Palermo presented her doctoral thesis on May 25^th to the faculty members of the university. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled ”Peace-Box/Tool for Peace: New Spaces for Social Integration,” is based on a project she created for a student competition held during the “Week of Peace” in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, in May 2011. Roberta is grateful to her thesis director, Professor Architect Giuseppe De Giovanni, who enthusiastically believed in her project.

The dissertation earned Roberta a mark of 110 points out of a possible 110, and honorable mention from the faculty, as well as a Doctor of Architecture Degree.

During the 2011 “Week of Peace,” Roberta’s Peace Box project earned second prize in the First Prize for Peace competition sponsored by the city of Mazara Del Vallo and TPRF.

The Peace Box concept proposes open booths positioned along the streets of Mazara del Vallo at the borders of specific sites that are like “cultural borders” between the various ethnic groups residing in different parts of the City.

The Peace Boxes are designed to link different ethnic groups in the name of peace. Inside the boxes, people of diverse languages and ethnic groups work together to offer visitors a chance to “reflect on peace.” The boxes provide a place of contact to improve social relationships by promoting activities that bring people together to share ideas and resources to create a more peaceful world. The boxes also provide a distribution point for promotional items like shopping bags and T-shirts imprinted with themes of peace, in addition to brochures on the subject of peace.

Roberta’s doctoral thesis includes the preamble of the Constitution of UNESCO, quotes from Prem Rawat’s public speaking events, and beautiful pictures of the Week of Peace 2011.

The newly graduated student publicly thanked The Prem Rawat Foundation and the Mayor of Mazara del Vallo, Nicola Cristaldi, for having promoted the First Prize for Peace competition and for being a stimulus for the development of Prem Rawat’s work in Sicily. The mayor said he wants the Peace Box project to become a reality along the streets of Mazara del Vallo.

Professor Angelo Ditta, Consultant on Peace Matters for the City of Mazara del Vallo, interviewed Roberta after the ceremony. When asked about her thoughts on peace, she replied, ”Peace has to become a practical thing, not something that remains in the realm of abstract ideas. Peace has to unite different cultures.”

When asked about the Week of Peace 2011, Roberta answered, ”It was an important occasion for Mazara and its citizens to reflect on peace, but also it was an opportunity for the city to rediscover its connection to peace, one that has been there for centuries. TPRF deserves our gratitude because it inspired that process and the Foundation is also the bearer of a concrete message of peace.”

Professor Ditta’s last question to Roberta inquired about her future as an architect in relation to her commitment to peace.   She answered,“Cities have to become a place where more of an emphasis is placed on human life through the design of living spaces that bring us closer to happiness rather than chaos. It is important to reevaluate the design of collective spaces in cities keeping this idea in mind.”

Editor’s Note: Giuseppe M. Buffa, TPRF’s “Reporter for Peace in Sicily,” promises to keep us up-to-date with the ongoing project in Mazara.

Prem Rawat With Peace Contest Winners

Giustino Caposciutti’s unique “Participatory Art” form brought together artists and local residents to celebrate peace through painting during the Week of Peace and Solidarity in Mazarra del Vallo, Sicily. 

This week’s post continues ”Weaving for Peace Part One” in which Giustino described the process of 100 people painting squares with a theme of peace. The individual paintings were then mounted onto long strips of paper and later woven into a huge peace mosaic. Before being woven together in a “Living Loom,” performers in costume paraded the strips through the town to the accompaniment of folk music.

Hundreds of people were touched either by the music, the live performance or by being a “painter of a small textile tile for a day.”

The parade moved along to reach the main town square. There, a young girl introduced and described the strips of paintings one by one in front of more than three hundred curious and attentive people.

Next, the time came to assemble the strips with the “Living Weaving Loom,” a group of people portraying the various components of a mechanical weaving loom. The actors moved at the direction of the master weaver who used colored sticks like an orchestra conductor to synchronize the operation of each part of the imaginary loom. A local folk group played music and danced to complete the performance.

After few minutes, the performers wove the one hundred paintings into a giant mosaic. In a climactic moment, they raised the “masterpiece” for all to see.

I sensed a deep, emotional response from the audience. The “Performance Art” and beautifully painted mosaic left the public speechless for a few moments. Slowly at first, the audience broke out with warm applause, which continued enthusiastically for a long time. All of the people in costume (figuranti) came to the front of the stage to allow the audience to snap pictures and record videos.

When the music began playing again, many people from the audience started dancing with the performers and the whole square was full of joy, peace, and celebration.

The next day, Prem Rawat came to inaugurate the Peace Monolith and to give the closing and most important address. His address completed an incredible Week of Peace and Solidarity in the city. The discourse touched all the citizens of Mazara del Vallo and all the many guests from Sicily, Italy and Europe.

I want to thank all the people who participated in this event, including the students and friends who helped me. And I want to especially thank TPRF for sponsoring a marvelous event that brought joy and many moments of deep reflection on peace to Sicily.

Photos Courtesy of Giustino Caposciutti

Peace Themed Paintings

This week’s guest-blogger, Giustino Caposciutti, is an artist and teacher. Born in Arezzo, Tuscany (Italy) in 1946, he now lives in Turin.

Since 1969, Giustino has displayed his work in solo and group exhibitions, and his paintings are now part of public and private collections owned by individuals, museums, municipalities, and foundations.

In 1993, Giustino invented a unique art form he calls “Participatory Art.” The process involves a number of people working together to create a group expression based on a theme. The individual artwork is integrated into a giant mosaic in a public performance called “The Living Loom.”

This is Giustino’s account of how he adapted his “Participatory Art” form as part of the inaugural Week of Peace and Solidarity in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily.

I want to share with all of you my experience in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, during the Week of Peace and Solidarity organized by TPRF and the Municipality.

The Organizers asked me to create an event of Participatory Art, something I have done for many years as a well-known artist in Italy.

We named the event “Tessere per la Pace” which in Italian means “Weaving for Peace,” or “Tiles for Peace.”  The purpose of the exhibition was to prompt people to reflect on the theme of peace, not as an absence of war but as an individual need, an inner necessity, as Prem Rawat simply explains and helps people to discover.

The goal is to create an enormous mosaic painted by one hundred people together in a public exhibition.  We call this process a “Living Weaving Loom.”

To create the mosaic, I began by preparing twenty long “strips” made of cotton canvas.  Each strip carries five paintings created by individual artists.  In this sense, each “tile” of the mosaic is a unique painting.

Teens from schools, people from the Arab community, local artists, and many others showed up to freely take part.  Many brought their own brushes! Everyone tried to express, in a unique way, their feeling about the theme of the week in Mazara del Vallo: Peace and Solidarity.

Each artist found his or her own way to be part of the grand mosaic. Somebody painted a beautiful sunrise, someone else a bird or a fish, while others painted flowers or trees. An entire classroom from the local art high school, which won an award in the Contest for Peace held during the week, came to help people paint their tiles.

Costumed performers paraded the strips with the paintings affixed through the streets of the city for the townspeople to see, accompanied by a group of traditional Sicilian musicians and dancers.

People came out from their homes and shops to watch, interrupting their normal activities, and many of them joined joyfully in the parade.

(Continued next week)

ARTISTS CO-CREATE FOR PEACE

Helen Caton travelled from her home in the United Kingdom to join the celebration of the Week of Peace and Solidarity (May 23 to 28) in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily.  This is Helen’s story.

We arrived in the City of Mazara del Vallo on a calm evening, with the sunset reflecting off of a still sea and the moon climbing into the clear heavens. Walking down the shoreline to one of the many welcoming restaurants felt so relaxing.  The local eateries specialize in seafood, pizza, strong Sicilian wines, and the best coffee in the world—all delivered with crisp white linen and old-fashioned courtesy.

This pleasant setting belied the tragedy that occurred just a few miles offshore not long before Prem Rawat’s arrival. Around 240 lives were lost as  desperate refugees overfilled  a boat taking them away from the conflicts in Northern Africa. This tragedy colored the Round Table debate at the Town Hall on Wednesday night, attended by Linda Pascotto, President of TPRF. We heard eminent academics and politicians discussing the many causes of conflict as well as  political, social, and educational solutions. We also heard how welcoming the people of Mazara have been to those refugees lucky enough to reach the city’s safe harbor. I was moved by the simplicity of Linda’s response to the discussion—how the very feeling of personal peace is, in itself, a solution. Hearing her explaining Prem Rawat’s message of peace in the context of the recent conflict was powerful by contrast.

On Friday morning, we met again in the Town Hall. Prem Rawat attended the gathering to present prizes to the winners of an essay competition. Prem Rawat’s public addresses delivered to audiences around the world inspired the competition’s theme of peace.  I was deeply touched by each of the winning entries. The first group to be honored, from a local school, donated their third-place prize of a computer to a local charity, another example of that generous Mazara spirit shining through. The first-place winner proposed a multimedia presentation for messages of peace.

Despite the celebration among these winners, the mood of the gathering was tempered once again by the political speeches, especially one by a member of parliament who told us how hard it was for her to even speak about peace. Her face had the look of someone driven by the suffering of others and a hunger for peace. As Prem Rawat spoke, it seemed that he too had been touched by her words. He made peace seem very near, very possible, even in the midst of the conflict and suffering.

Our next stop that morning was to attend the unveiling of a “stile”—a beautiful piece of rose-colored marble taller than me, inscribed with a quote from Prem Rawat, “Peace begins in the heart of all human beings,” in Italian, French, English, and Esperanto. The unveiling occurred in a town square near the remains of a medieval castle that once looked out over the harbor and across the sea.  The event attracted the press, a police motorcade, and an enthusiastic crowd.

Late that afternoon, we enjoyed the treat of watching the final event in the Week of Peace and Solidarity: music, dancing, and speeches in the main square in front of the newly unveiled  stile. Young and old turned out to watch and listen. There were people looking down from their balconies and children playing in the park.  Prem Rawat’s talk started with a story and a joke, yet I felt like he was issuing me a challenge: to make peace a reality in my own life, to see the humanity in everyone—everyone—to use my brain, and to live with integrity.

His words made peace feel so possible, despite the conflict just 80 miles away across the sea. I hope I always remember his encouraging words: “If you want to be rich, be generous. The quickest way to be powerful? Be gentle. The quickest way of finding peace? Look within.”

*Photos Courtesy of Helen Caton

Concluding Events of the Week of Peace and Solidarity

Today is Friday, May 27, the high point of the Week of Peace in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily. As the day began, a beautiful breeze blew gently in from the Sicilian Canal of the Mediterranean Sea and a warm sun shone upon the blue bay.

Over the centuries, history has been made along these coasts, an area that was also the birthplace of great philosophers and scientists like Empedocles and Archimedes. But, as I see it, history will be also be written today in the hearts of the people who listen to one of the greatest Ambassadors of Peace ever known.

Morning. In the Town Hall, students and guests gather for the awarding of the prizes for the winner and runners up of the Contest of Peace for which high school and university students of the area submitted essays on making peace a reality.

The enthusiasm and passion for peace reflected in the students’ questions after Prem Rawat’s talk was very touching. The profoundness of Mr. Rawat’s words moved many inside this beautiful old building. Mayor Nicolò Cristaldi and several other guests, including Mrs. Souad Sbai, a member of the Italian parliament, were captivated by his freshness and humor. Everyone was amazed by the simplicity and intelligence of Mr. Rawat’s answers to the very deep questions the students posed about peace.

After the awards ceremony, everyone walked to Piazza Mokarta, a large town square overlooking the sea. The occasion was the unveiling of a huge pink marble stone that had been hand carved by a Mazara sculptor with a simple thought by Prem Rawat: “Peace begins in the hearts of all human beings.” The sentence is carved in four languages, including Esperanto, with Arabic to be added later on.

All these events and experiences built up to the main event that evening where over 1200 people gathered to hear Prem Rawat speak. (See the news article covering the event on the home page of the TPRF website.)

I do not know why, but speaking about peace and working for peace during this whole week has multiplied the feeling of peace and joy inside of me. But I was not the only one. The people I had lunch with that day had also been moved by the morning program. We all shared the same feeling. Only a few people were here for the Week of Peace compared to the world population but, as both Mayor Cristaldi and Mr. Rawat expressed in their talks, the biggest transformations start from small things, like the tiny seeds from which a forest may arise. Being there, I felt that I was witnessing something historic in the making.

Mazara del Vallo Celebrates Week of Peace

Here is guest-blogger Giuseppe Buffa’s follow up report on the Week of Peace celebration in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily. His first report, “Witnessing Wonders,” appears below this one.

Thirty languages are spoken in Mazara. Thirty distinct cultural communities live within the city due to its geographical location and its history of integration, which Mayor Cristaldi explained goes back to the eighth century.  The Arabic community is the largest of these cultures. We wanted to make sure that representatives of the Arabic community attended the Week of Peace. So late on a sunny morning during the Week of Peace, we decided to walk through the Kasbah, which is in the Arab quarter of the city. Kasbah means “hearth” or “center of a city” in Arabic.

A friend who speaks Arabic and I took a supply of leaflets to use as invitations to the most special event of the Week of Peace: Prem Rawat’s public address on the 27th of May. First, we went into an Arabic food shop, where five people listened to our invitation to the peace conference. Then we moved on along the narrow lanes of the Kasbah. They are narrow to keep the hot sun away and allow fresh air to breeze through to cool your face.

Soon we chanced upon another group of young people. They were amazed that we came to invite them to a conference on peace, or salaam, as it is called in Arabic. Lastly, we went to a small restaurant where we invited the owner and his whole family to come. Again, they were very happy and appreciated so much our enthusiasm and joy to have them with us at the Friday conference.

The day after the conference on peace, we went on a tour of the Kasbah with Mayor Cristaldi, and to our surprise, we saw three of our leaflets that somebody had put up on a shop door as a means of advertising the conference. More than thirty Arabs came to hear Prem Rawat speak on Friday.

A Friendly Invitation to the Peace Conference

In 2009, TPRF Founder Prem Rawat visited the small town of Mazara del Vallo in Scicily. He came to speak to the town government, citizens, and students on the subject of peace.  His address and subsequent question and answer session with students of Mazara has inspired a “Week of Peace and Solidarity” celebration (May 23-28) to promote understanding, tolerance, and a culture of peace around the world. The Mazara Town Council made Prem Rawat an Honorary Citizen of the city. Here is a preliminary report on the first annual Week of Peace and Solidarity from on-the-scene guest blogger Giuseppe Buffa.

Poster Announcing the Week of Peace

Preparations for the Week of Peace and Solidarity are underway in Mazara del Vallo, Sicily. Mazara is an incredibly peaceful city overlooking the Canal of Sicily, the channel in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and Africa. It is a short distance from the ongoing scenes of war and revolution that have been going on for several months in North Africa. From time to time in the early morning, you can hear the sound of fighter jets on their way to Libya, and you wonder how war can rage so near such a beautiful little city that is so peaceful and well integrated with Arab culture.

Here in Mazara you can comfortably be a Christian, Jew, or Muslim. These three cultures have lived peacefully together here for almost eight centuries.  When you look at the Mediterranean, you cannot help feeling the peace coming from it. A friend of mine commented to me yesterday, “Look Giuseppe, even the sea seems to be in synch with Mazara’s Week of Peace!”

On Monday, we were all amazed by the words of Mazara Mayor Cristaldi at the press conference for the official opening of the Week of Peace. He said words put in motion bring changes and the recent revolution in Tunisia may have actually begun long ago.

He commented that the words “tolerance” and “integration” imply one group or person is “higher and has to tolerate somebody else who is lower.”  On the contrary, the Mayor pointed out, that the more powerful group has a social responsibility to integrate with the less powerful group. He thinks it is better to have a dialogue between different but equal multicultural and multiethnic groups.

The Mayor expressed the hope that by the end of the Week of Peace in Mazara, there would be a solution for the problem of divisions in the Arab world, including the conflict between thePalestinians and the State of Israel. He suggested that what will happen here may be small but could change the destiny of humanity.

“Peace is a universal value,” he said. “We need to find happiness, and to find happiness we need to be alive.”

I felt so happy to hear these words! The Week of Peace is opening with such a deep feeling of clarity! I will continue to write about a few more wonders from Mazara as the week unfolds.