[Festivals Stories] Graphic Stories Festival

The Graphic Stories Festival on Graphic Design and Visual communication, the 7th in a row, innovated once again, calling on all our fellow citizens to participate actively in its activities.

We created an interactive installation with the theme Break Down the Walls. The installation was a virtual wall that was been designed in such a way that people could leave their own message and express how they felt during the difficult period of confinement and the pandemic. With this project we wanted to encourage the citizens of Cyprus to break their inner walls in a creative way - to express and capture their thoughts and feelings. The inauguration of the installation took place on Saturday 22 May 2021.

During the opening, a video screening of the artworks of our 5th International Poster Exhibition was held, as well as a live performance by a contemporary dance group that expressed their emotions about the value of freedom and self-determination and to convey their determination to overcome the unprecedented and difficult situation of the pandemic.

The wall remained in place until the 17 June so that everyone could leave a message against everything that hurt us, scared us, trapped us! In the aftermath of the 6th conference in 2020, immediately afterwards, we all embarked on an adventure of confinement and self-restraint. Now a year later we broke the walls with the first live event that we hope will mark the beginning of the end for this adventure. We believe that the success of this action will be a guide for our next events so that we can provoke the active involvement of a wider audience.

For this year’s event we also, for the first time, arranged a live streaming broadcast so that more people could attend the event and actively participate in it. This blended (live and online) event gave us the opportunity to invite artists from around the world as lecturers and to have more people watch the event, live and online, to interact with each other using modern communication tools via the internet and social media.

More information: https://graphicstoriescyprus.com/

(General Editor: Simon Mundy)