Mosaic of Peace and Racial Harmony to be unveiled Friday
Stabroek News
March 17, 2004
The Mosaic of Peace and Racial Harmony sponsored by Rights of Children (ROC) will be officially unveiled on Friday at 2:30 pm in the foyer of the National Cultural Centre. Two students have been selected to unveil the mosaic, one from Buxton and the other from Annandale, the villages most affected by racial violence in 2003, according to a press release from ROC.
Members of the public, particularly those persons who wrote messages of peace and harmony on the mosaic are welcome to attend, ROC said.
The theme of the mosaic "One Culture, We Culture" captures a basic ROC conviction that all Guyanese can celebrate any aspect of their culture as a shared inheritance, regardless of which ethnic group may have contributed it to the country.
The mosaic was started in a derelict building at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, the release noted. The work consists of a watermark background of the Guyana flag on which is super-imposed 'One Culture, We Culture'. A group of medical-student ROCers spent hours patiently cutting, measuring, painting and numbering over a thousand of the jigsaw-type pieces of coloured paper that eventually made up the mosaic. The letters and the border were left blank.
The interactive dimension of the mural was launched at the Ethnic Vibrations No.2 concert and fair on November 22 last year. Members of the public were invited to write messages of peace, love and racial harmony on the coloured pieces and carefully paste them in the appropriate place on the mural.
After Ethnic Vibrations other ROCers took the unfinished panels onto the streets to complete the interactive messages, and members of the public participated enthusiastically, posting over 500 messages in two hours on a busy Saturday before Christmas. Later the mural was clear-varnished to preserve the colours and to protect it against the elements, and then the panels were locked together, the release added.