Have a Peaceful Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! I would like to highlight a project which I think is fantastic, created by an artist named Federico Hewson called The Valentine's Day Peace Project. I think he is subverting this consumer-based tradition in a really satisfying way. He is works with children to create community valentines and he is also working with growers to develop a tulip breed called Valentine Peace.

Inspiring excerpts from the Valentine's Day Peace Project website:

We plan to design and develop new breeds – including a Valentine Peace tulip – wrapped in personal poetry; build and promote community peace poetry gardens; construct bulb funding tools for international peace organisations; and assist emerging Fairtrade including conflict and post-conflict flowers and horticulture.  

"The purpose of activism and art is to make a world in which people are producers of meaning, not just consumers." Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark - The Untold History of People Power

VPP flowers and bulbs will help growers and spread peace on three levels - inner, community and global – creating poetry and art; education and awareness; transformative trade and new symbolism for global community and identity.

"Freedom's flowers are blooming." (US journalist on the Arab Spring)