Malta joins creative writing workshops
To mark World Press Freedom Day yesterday, Malta joined 28 countries across Europe in holding one of the simultaneous creative writing workshops. The final result will be a book in which all the writings from the activities held across the world will...
To mark World Press Freedom Day yesterday, Malta joined 28 countries across Europe in holding one of the simultaneous creative writing workshops. The final result will be a book in which all the writings from the activities held across the world will be collected.
This was the second time Malta participated in the so-called 'Book in 1 Day' project, which is now in its third year. The event was a success and Olga Bogdanova, who helped out in the event in Malta, said that "people were impressed and wanted to write".
The theme this year was 'How many of us belong to the same culture?' The overall topic was freedom of expression, which includes freedom of speech, press freedom, opinion forming and making. Freedom of Expression is a fundamental human right as stated in Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
This is especially worth recalling as the 60th anniversary of that declaration is marked this year.
In Malta the activity took the form of a creative writing and photography workshop.
Held at the University of Malta, participants were encouraged to write, and were given specific techniques in order to provoke their creativity.
Many activities and workshops, including music, video, photography, theatre, creative writing, street art and painting, graphical and digital design and dance, took place in different countries across the world.
In Berlin, home to the Loesje International office, project leader Fleur Van der Bij explained how participants went to the Oberbaum Bridge and asked people whether they still believed there to be a divide between East and West Germany in an attempt to encourage people to express themselves and to promote freedom of speech. The 'Book in 1 Day' event in Malta was organised by the Malta UNESCO Youth Association in collaboration with Loesje International. With this particular project, Loesje aims to promote intercultural learning, communication and co-operation. Next to that Loesje wants to promote freedom of expression and free speech as essential human rights and to empower people to make use of it, by giving creative writing workshops, writing and publishing on the topic.