February 21, 12

NEWS / UN advocate Michael Douglas urges young artists to draw for peace

21 February 2012 –
The United Nations Messenger of Peace and two-time Academy Award winner Michael Douglas today appealed to children from around the world to bring to life their artistic impressions of what a world without nuclear weapons would look like.

Mr. Douglas, who has served as a UN Messenger of Peace since 1998, released a video message in which he called upon young artists from the age of five through 17 to use their creative talents and draw, paint or sketch their visions of a world without nuclear weapons, bombs or wars for an international art contest.

“Art is the universal language; art speaks to our hearts and minds; art can make a difference and so can you,” Mr. Douglas said in a video message already airing on UNTV and made available to broadcasters around the globe. In addition, it is available for viewing online.

The contestants are allowed to utilise a wide array of tools – including pens, pencils, crayons, charcoal, oil, acrylic paint or water colours – and are then encouraged to upload their artwork to the initiative’s website, www.unartforpeace.org.

In an effort to make the contest truly global, the flyer campaign promoting the initiative to children and teens has already been translated into 22 languages – Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

More language versions of the flyer are expected to be added since a call went out encouraging UN staff to help translate the promotional material into as many languages as possible.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41305&Cr=Nuclear&Cr1=