User:TransCultural Exchange

TransCultural Exchange is an award-winning organization whose current project [The Tile Project, Destination: The World] is the first U.S. project sponsored by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) since the U.S. mission rejoined UNESCO. UNESCO’s Director-General Koichiro Matsurra, noted of the project, “This original project linking together artists all over the world in a spirit of international harmony and exchange, ties in directly with the main objectives of UNESCO’s programme in the field of art and creativity and the promotion of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue.”

The Tile Project, Destination: The World is a project that will culminate in 22 new public art works, 16 of which have been completed. For these public art works, artists, students and teachers from over 40 countries, donated more than 2000 tiles to the 22 world sites to create 22 site-specific works as symbols of international goodwill, cross cultural respect and global cooperation. Their resulting multicultural structures now dot the world landscape from Berlin to Boston, Manila to Mumbai, Toronto to Taipei and 16 other sites in between, including Boston’s Pauline A. Shaw School, Chicago’s North Side Preparatory School and Washington DC’s Peace Garden at the Cardozo Senior High School.

The organization realizes just how important it is for artists to engage in the new global society that we now find ourselves in. Therefore has created The Conference on International Opportunites in the Arts, the first conference of its kind in the United States. Its aim is to provide the American creative force with the means to meet and work with artists from abroad. In this way, the creative force can gain greater cultural awareness and transmit this newfound knowledge of what it means to be a global citizen today through their work and, in many cases, teaching. This year TransCultural Exchange sponsored the Massachusetts artist, Thomas Matsuda, to attend the D. Fleiss East West Artists Residency program, where he worked with artists from around the world as well as a strong contingent of Romanian artists. According to Mr. Matsuda, “This experience changed my life. I am sure that my work will reflect the experiences that I have taken away from this residency and I look forward to long friendships with all the artists I have met.”

Community artists can become major players in the larger international arts arena, education and opening doors to global communication that brings pride to cities and countries and their residents the world over.