What?
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, proclaimed in Nice on the 7th December 2000, is the log book in which principles are noted down that have guided the life of Europe from its birth until today. With the European project Manifesta!, founded in 2006, European and African comedians were invited to take part in a great challenge: to present, through the art of design and caricature, the rights laid out in the charter of fundamental rights of the European Union. The result? A training kit for the promotion of fundamental rights in schools composed of lots of illustrated images.
How?
The project is based on the use of cartoons and satirical illustrations, synthetic expressive forms particularly apt for the communication of a message in an effective way thus promoting the knowledge and awareness of fundamental rights among the European citizens, and in particular among the young people.
Manifesta! has been structured in two complementary directions: it has involved 27 European and non-European professionals (from Italy, France, Czech Republic, Senegal, Republic of Congo, Benin and Nigeria), in a way that guarantees a high artistic level and gives space to the views of the minorities and, simultaneously, it has promoted new faces and ideas in the artistic and cartoonist field, through a public competition open to amateur cartoonists from all over the world. 80 artists took part in the competition with more than 100 cartoons being entered.
An exhibition collected together the best cartoons produced by both the participants of this international competition and the professional artists from many different countries. The structure of the exhibition allows you to retrace the six Sections into which the Charter is divided, each one dedicated to a different fundamental human right.
The illustrations of greatest communicative impact have been reproduced on a postcard and poster, while a catalogue gathers together all the cartoons and the full text of the Charter of Rights in Italian, French, and Czech, and the other languages of the partner countries to the project. These materials have been put together to make a training kit designed for distribution among schools and through which the deepening of the knowledge of fundamental rights can be continued even after the project has ended.