Being Julia Kochetova

The word photography literally means “drawing with light”, and this is what Julia Kochetova, an amazing young Ukrainian photographer and filmmaker, has done her whole life. Searching for the light we all carry inside as human beings.

Since March 2022, in collaboration with Fine Acts, Julia has traveled across war torn Ukraine to capture the portraits of her contemporaries who chose to stay in the country and fight – as soldiers, volunteers, or first responders. As DEFENDERS.

“The greatest gift is to have something to defend. What to fight for. What to stand for. War is crushing cities and blowing up bridges. War is killing people. But it can’t stop them. My people can’t be stopped by war,” says Julia.

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Along with her regular equipment, Julia decided to use old soviet prism lenses, which distort the subject, to visualise how Russia shattered the lives of Ukrainians – while also making a powerful point: instead of being broken, the country’s spirit has been multiplied.

“In March I went out with my camera to a recent place of hit – Kyiv was shelled every day, endless destruction, pain, but no fear. All the ground, floors, beds, were covered with glass fragments. Glass is the weakest material that shatters immediately when hit by an explosion wave. “War is glass fragments in your bed”, I thought, and understood that my vision was fragmented as well. War shakes your reality, changing it completely, sometimes crushing it, sometimes enriching it with new perspectives. 

I’m using old soviet prism lenses to visualize how our reality has been fragmented, refracted, and damaged. But even if your home window is broken because of shelling, a light shines through the prism. It is always present, and it's so important to peer into life, to notice it.”

In her work, Julia often chooses to focus on topics such as home, post-trauma, and occupation. Her main interest is filming the person in transition. As a photographer, she has covered the Maidan revolution (2013-2014), the annexation of Crimea (2014), and the Russia-Ukraine war (2014-now).

“It shapes my entire professional path – I’m part of the generation of revolution & war.”

— Julia

Her work from the conflict zone has been presented at individual and group exhibitions in the UK, the USA, France, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Serbia, and Ukraine.

“This project is a statement of why my country’s gonna win,” says Julia, and adds: “The most valuable fight is the fight for your people, and your story, to exist.”

DEFENDERS is part of our Being Ukraine series, where we at Fine Acts have been working with amazing Ukrainian artists on creative collaborations focusing on the immense power and resilience of Ukrainian people.

Our 2021 annual report is out - and, folks, isn't it amazing!

Need some inspiration? In these bleak and tumultuous times, see how we’re using art, play and hope to address some of the most pressing issues of our decade.

Feast your eyes on a visual buffet of creative campaigns led by us at Fine Acts – from our urban art actions and installations to our social impact illustrations and creative bootcamps. Take a peek, or better yet, sit back and scroll through our review of the passing year. It features some of our best work yet.

160 artists commissioned from 46 countries, 215 artworks produced, 34 exhibitions and art actions in 20 countries. We’ve had the pleasure and great responsibility to work on creative campaigns addressing issues from climate change and gender equality to racial justice and mental health.

What’s more, our report is no ordinary annual review. It’s also a unique poster collection, which you can download and hang at home or at the office, or gift to friends who can use some hope and joy.

Our work would not be possible without the immense support of our core donors at Open Society Foundations and Sigrid Rausing Trust. And we would not have been able to compile this beauty without our friends at Studio Punkt (design magic) and Oblik (digital wizardry). Plus a BIG, BIG thank you to the dozens of partners and supporters, and hundreds of incredible artists and activists we worked with in 2021.

Here’s to making an even bigger splash in 2022.

Two Ukrainian artists, two cities, two murals

Shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine, we reached out to our friends at Kyiv-based artist duo WE BAD with an invitation to collaborate on a mural project in Ukraine on strength and hope. But they had a better idea. Separated by the war, the artists – Lera Sxemka and Maxim Pavlyuk – wanted to keep working together, and suggested creating two murals – one close to Kyiv, Ukraine, and the other in Kosice, Slovakia. 

“To escape the missiles and bombs, we left Kyiv. And after two weeks, we made a very painful decision: Lera would go to a safe place abroad, to continue working, and Maxim would come back to Kyiv, to be helpful there. We broke apart, the same as thousands of families around the country. […] We’ve always done everything together – and although we are divided by a thousand kilometers, it was crucial to us to continue creating together”, say the artists.

So for our collaboration with WE BAD, Maxim created a mural on the walls of a bombed kindergarten in the Ozero village, Kyiv region, while Lera worked on one on a local government building in Kosice, Slovakia – to give hope to the millions of Ukrainians who find themselves outside their home, and to those on the front. Preview the two works here. 

 We interviewed Lera and Maxim about the murals they created, their work process, and what the role of art & the artist community has been since the start of the war in Ukraine. 

The mural project is part of a series of creative collaborations with a bunch of Ukrainian artists we love: beingukraine.org.

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What is the role of art in war?

Lera: In our world today, war is not only fought on the battlefield, but also in the media. So, art has become an important instrument of resistance and communication. Art is a universal language that is now our weapon in the struggle for freedom and independence.

Maxim: I think the role is not big, unfortunately. It’s all about drawing the world's attention to the situation.

Why was it important for you to create together, even when apart?

L: Parting was painful and hard. I felt like a torn leaf. And I also feel that thousands of people are going through the same thing right now. WE BAD is our kid – it’s the result of many years of learning and work. And we are not ready to give it up.

M: Because we enjoy it.

Tell us a little bit about each work and how they work together? 

L: We wanted to create something simple and easy-to-understand by different people. Something that can work separately and together. This message reminds people that they are not going through this hell alone, that good always triumphs over evil, and that we’ll meet everyone we love soon. 

M: I think everyone will understand what it’s about. The question is if they realize?

What was the process of finding the locations like? Why did you pick those buildings for the murals?

L: For me it was important to create it in a nice, calm central area in the city, where people just live their normal happy lives. Because that was the most shocking moment after crossing the border of Ukraine. I couldn’t understand how life could be so different just across the border.

A couple of years ago we took part in an artist residency programme, organized by Street Art Communication, a local organization that works with street art in Kosice, Slovakia. We became good friends and these guys helped us with finding the wall for the second mural and getting permission. The building is in the historical part of the city and hosts local authorities. From the first days of war, this building was the spot where support services were offered to Ukrainian refugees, including food and clothing.

M: I must say that I’ve been to this place many times before, and I was shocked to see this beautiful city and its streets, buildings, cars, cafes and other places destroyed. I was horrified at how this can happen in the 21st century. And at the same time on Instagram, I see how life is continuing as usual – people hanging out in Berlin, for example.

I picked a kindergarten. Childhood is the most free, defenseless and happy age, and now it’s taken by sick adults. In this case, the kindergarten is a message to adults – how crippled and inhuman they can be.

What is your message as artists? What do these works mean to you?

L: Good always triumphs over evil. We are a brave nation and we are going to fight for what we love.

M: I want people to pay attention to this war in a European country and think about the lives of millions of Ukrainians, and at this point also about their own lives. I want people to reconsider their values.

How is the artist community in Ukraine and beyond resisting the war, and supporting people within the country?

L: Since the war started, people in Ukraine have united as a family. After the initial shock passed, the artist community activated in an amazing way. Designers, illustrators and artists started to create NFT, sell artworks, and document the history of the war to raise money for our defenders.

M: Everyone rallied and works to help Ukraine.  

How has the war affected you – personally, creatively?

L: I feel empty and tired. Values have changed. Many things that used to be important are not anymore.

M: It changed my views on many things.

What do you hope for? 

L: All my hopes and beliefs are about our speedy victory. Each day I wake up and before checking the news, I hope that I don’t see information about new civilian and children’s deaths. My hopes are about expelling the Russian army from my lovely native Kherson, so I can finally see my family and not worry about them like crazy. 

M: I don’t have any hopes, I just strongly believe in our victory. 

What is “normal” and what is “different”? A TED-Ed video by Fine Acts’ Yana Buhrer Tavanier

The word “normal” is often used as a synonym for “typical”, “expected”, or even “correct”. By that logic, most people should fit the description of normal. But time and time again, so-called normal descriptions of our bodies, minds, and perceptions have turned out to match almost no one. So what does normal actually mean— and should we be relying on it so much? Fine Acts’ executive director Yana Buhrer Tavanier investigates.

Directed by Eoin Duffy
Narrated by Pen-Pen Chen
Music by Adam Alexander, Bamm Bamm Wolfgang

10 illustrations you can use for free for Black History Month

It’s Black History Month and time to celebrate Black people’s contributions and achievements (which should be every day). To honor the month, we’ve curated an awesome collection of illustrations from TheGreats.co, our unique platform for free social impact art. 

8 of these works were created by talented Black and POC artists. We also added a couple by allies that you can also put into action. Amidst the heightened divisions in our society, these artists weave important messages of togetherness, solidarity, and change into their designs. 

This collection of artworks (and tons more on TheGreats.co) can be used and adapted for free by activists, nonprofits, and educators. Love these and need more? Check our collaboration with 12 Black artists on 24 protest posters.

Selection of illustrations: 

Hust Wilson (Download)

Jean Carlos García (Download)

Aleea Rae Campbell (Download)

Phathu Nembilwi (Download)

Ipsita Divedi (Download)

David Jon Walker (Download)

Kevin Adams (Download)

Sakina Saïdi (Download)

Linoca Souza (Download)

NSN997 (Download)

10 human rights campaigns that bring us joy and give us hope

Illustration: Atanas Giew for Fine Acts

It’s International Human Rights Day, and we decided to celebrate it with a cocktail of some of the best social campaigns that have brought us joy and hope through the years (as we suspect you might be in need of an extra dose in your life right now). Despite having different release periods, formats and approaches, these campaigns all manage to deliver a creative interpretation of the issue that makes us feel like it will all work out in the end. Gifts should be a thing on Human Rights Day, so here’s one from our team, to you.

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Fuck The Poor

A brilliant campaign for the Pilion Trust that shows the importance of crafting the right message. By portraying the difference between saying “fuck the poor” and “help the poor” it proves that people really do care, but also that we are quite desensitized to certain topics. We tend to respond to messages that challenge our beliefs but remain uninvolved as long as the issue is easy to ignore.

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Ice Watch 

The melting of the polar ice caps might feel like such a distant issue and data is just not compelling enough to convey the seriousness of the situation. Artist Olafur Eliasson and geologist Minik Rosing made the issue hit “close to home” – by bringing 12 blocks of ice from near Greenland, and arranging them in a clock-like formation in front of Place du Panthéon in Paris, where our climate’s future was being decided during COP21. While the blocks were melting, people could interact with them and really gain a sense of time running out, and what’s being lost.

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Marriage Equality: Bring Your Family With You

This campaign around the 2015 marriage equality referendum in Ireland delivers a superbly wonderful presentation of the LGBTQ child–parent relationship, and how important it is. A great example of hopefulness and support.

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UNSTOPPABLE

The most awesome aspect and strongest point of this campaign video by Planned Parenthood is that it fully consists of real-life footage. There’s something truly special about seeing real people unite for a common cause, fighting for a better world.

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The Thrill of Victory

One of those videos where the music and visuals align just right to deliver a message beyond words. It’s energetic, passionate and inspiring. Well done, Amnesty!

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Flash Drives For Freedom

Can you imagine what it’s like to live in a country where information needs to be smuggled in on flash drives from abroad? To know almost nothing of the outside world and its progress?  Well, welcome to North Korea. Flash Drives For Freedom by the Human Rights Foundation is a truly brilliant and insightful initiative that fights against the lack of information in the country by having people donate flash drives, which are then loaded with various media and smuggled in. Pure genius.

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When You Don’t Exist

Refugee issues can feel distant when you're on the safer side of the border. This campaign by Amnesty International shows what it would be like if the tables were turned.

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The Story of @bee_nfluencer

Fondation de France created a fictitious Instagram influencer called B, a bee that endorses products and does all the things an influencer does. The mechanic was simple – all ad revenue goes to fund saving the bees. Featuring an unexpected twist at the end.

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Go Back To Africa

There’s beauty in taking a phrase that has a negative connotation, and flipping it. This is exactly what happens in this campaign with the phrase “Go Back to Africa.” There’s insight, there’s tech, there’s a message, it’s all there.

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Eco-bot.net

A campaign that uses AI to shed light on the issue of climate change disinformation and greenwashing on social  media. Truly, an activist campaign for the modern age. Launched just over a month ago, shortly before COP26, we think that we’ve yet to hear much about Eco-bot.net. 

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Enjoyed these? Want some more inspo? Check out our own campaigns on a vast range of human rights issues. Or, if we’ve put you in a creative mood, head over to TheGreats.co, our platform for free socially-engaged visuals, download an illustration and make it your own by changing or translating the copy, and give the gift of hope to your own community. Happy Human Rights Day!

Our open-license Climate Collection is LIVE!

We’re excited to announce that The Climate Collection – our unique open-license vault of illustrations on climate, launched together with TED Countdown – is now live! It features illustrations and digital artworks that showcase a hopeful climate future, or have a clear message around the urgency for actionable change.

The works have been selected as part of Artists for Climate – our open call that sought awe-inspiring digital illustrations, graphic design, lettering art, and typography targeting climate change. The illustrations focus on themes including conscious consumption, renewable sources of energy, protection of nature and species, and coexistence. 

The project received 2,222 submissions by 1,432 artists from 95 countries. The outstanding work of 50 Selected Artists has been chosen by the Artists for Climate’s esteemed jury panel, including visual artist and author, Oliver Jeffers; the founder of Goodtype, Brooke Robinson; the co-founder and Executive Director of TREEage, Shiv Soin; multidisciplinary artist Bahia Shahab; artist and designer Safwat Saleem, and other acclaimed creatives and experts. Together with the Selected Artists, the initiative also recognized 46 Finalists. In October 2021, Fine Acts will also announce a list of Honorable Mentions.

TED Countdown, a climate initiative powered by TED and Future Stewards to inspire and catalyze action around imaginative and scalable climate solutions, partnered with Fine Acts to curate а free library of artworks under a Creative Commons license to humanize the impacts of the climate crisis and showcase positive solutions. The open call urged artists to employ Fine Acts’ hope-based approach to build a new hopeful visual vocabulary around climate change that sparks climate action. 

The resulting Climate Collection is meant to serve as an invaluable resource and tool for non-profits, campaigners, and educators from around the world, working towards climate action. All works are published online under a Creative Commons license on TheGreats.co, our platform for free socially-engaged visuals, and are available for anyone to use and adapt non-commercially, to help shift the global narrative of the climate crisis towards a brighter future.

Visit artistsforclimate.org to browse the collection and put it into action.

Artists For Climate receives 2222 submissions

Illustration: Kissi Ussuki for Fine Acts

We're excited to announce that we received a record amount of submissions – a total of 2222 works by 1432 artists, submitted through our website form, and on Instagram! Thank you to all the talented artists who took part in our open call Artists For Climate, launched together with TED and Countdown – for digital illustrations, graphic design, lettering art and typography on climate change, with a focus on hope and solutions.

This has been a truly global call. Visual artists from over 95 countries joined Artists For Climate – from Burundi to the United Kingdom and Brazil to India. This amazing diversity is reflected in the artworks themselves – showcasing different cultures, diverse ways climate change is affecting us, and a multitude of ways we can act.

In August the jury will convene to review the submitted artworks. We will choose the 50 honorees, as well as the finalists whose works are selected to be included in the Climate collection on TheGreats.co. We’ll announce the results in September across all our channels, so stay tuned for updates: https://artistsforclimate.org/.

Our 2020 annual report is OUT!

We are so excited to share a digest of our finest acts yet. Click on the link bellow to see it.

2020 put us to the test, but amidst the crisis we found innovative directions that grew our artist and activist communities, as well as our creative arsenal for exacting change. From protest posters to animated videos of slam poetry, from urban art interventions for climate justice to art hackathons, from children’s books to online platforms for open visuals – we did it all.

In our busiest year yet, we produced artworks and campaigns that drove awareness and understanding, provoked empathy and sparked conversations. We played and experimented with new formats, taking us to places from Cairo to New York City, and from Vancouver to Seoul.

A BIG HUGE THANK YOU to everyone we’ve collaborated with – from the amazing artists to our trusted and brilliant partners, and most of all – to the Open Society Foundations and Sigrid Rausing Trust whose invaluable core support makes all our work possible.

A very special thank you to Punkt for designing the report and Oblik Studio for creating a digital experience like no other.

Launching Artists For Climate

EARTH TO ARTISTS: 👋❤️ Today, in collaboration with TED and TED Countdown, we are launching Artists For Climate – an open call for digital illustrations, graphic design, lettering art and typography, focused on climate change.

Together, we are building a unique collection of open-license art that inspires climate action. We are looking for awe-inspiring illustrations that depict a hopeful future around climate change. 

The top 50 illustrations, selected by our jury, will:

• Receive a $500 USD licensing fee

• Be featured on a global stage at the 2021 TED Countdown Summit in Edinburgh, and various TED conferences

• Gain exposure on TED and TED Countdown digital platforms, including social media channels, newsletters and blog pages

• Contribute to the broader goal of spreading awareness about climate action through your work by becoming part of this visual library, and by allowing TED, TED Countdown and Fine Acts to use your artwork to shape the climate conversation

• Be included on TheGreats.co, our free vault with carefully curated open socially engaged visual content intended to elevate art to help bring about social change.

In addition to new work, you may submit existing works that are not subject to exclusive rights and can be licensed based on our criteria. 

The 50 selected works will be published online under a Creative Commons license and available for non-commercial use. This collection of open-license art will serve as an invaluable resource and tool for activists, grassroots organizations and nonprofits to use in their campaigns about climate change awareness.

Visit artistsforclimate.org to learn more about the open call and how to submit your work. Submit by August 1 ❤️🌎
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Illustration: Sa6ettu for Fine Acts

We're Finalists in FC's 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards!

BIG NEWS! We’re super excited to announce that The Greats – Fine Acts’ platform for socially engaged visuals – was honoured as Finalist in Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards! We are one of just 4 Finalists in the Creativity category, amongst the largest number of entries ever received for the awards. 

TheGreats.co is the absolute go-to place for socially-engaged visual content. All available works are published under a specific open licence that allows free noncommercial use and adaptation, given the appropriate credit. It offers a solution to a key issue for the non-governmental sector – visual content is of grave importance for engaging support, however, often organizations lack the capacity and resources to create it. 

Since its launch last year, The Greats has become home to more than 750 artworks by 400 global artists. The works have been viewed more than 150 000 times and downloaded thousands of times. These are just a few examples of how different nonprofits have been using the illustrations:

• International Service for Human Rights

• National Coalition Deutschland

• Creative Commons’ Her Story series
  

Thank you to all of the hundreds of amazing artists that we’ve worked with over the past year, making all of this possible! We’re seeing a record number of activists use The Greats for their campaigns and initiatives, spreading a new vision for human rights.

2020 in review: Bringing hope to unchartered territory

2020 was like no other year we know. It was frightening, challenging, and overwhelming, but it was also uplifting, exhilarating and unifying, pushing us into new waters and territories. During this new stage, our community of artists and activists grew and so did our campaigns and actions. And even though we were confined to the walls of our very own homes for a greater part of the year, we felt that we travelled the world, working and carrying out meaningful initiatives in places from Cairo to New York City, and from Berlin to Seoul.

See our trends and highlights from last last year.

SPRING OF HOPE

Illustrations from our Spring of Hope campaign.

The pandemic upended our day-to-day personal and work lives. So to counter feelings of despair and anxiety, we launched Spring of Hope, our global open art campaign spreading hope. Hundreds of artists and creatives took part with powerful and uplifting illustrations, licensed under Creative Commons, that are free to print and share.

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BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT

Protest posters from our 12 Black artists, 24 protest posters campaign.

2020 protests on anti-Black racism and police brutality swept the United States and beyond. Our team supported the BLM movement and amplified important voices and messages through a number of art initiatives: 

12 BLACK ARTISTS | 24 PROTEST POSTERS: We collaborated with 12 Black typographers and lettering artists to create and release an open pack of 24 protest posters – all free to print and share, and ready to be unleashed into action. The posters made it to the March on Washington in August and were even projected onto the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC. Read more about our impact here.

POSTCARDS FROM FOREVER | For Postcards from Forever, our postcard writing campaign, we worked with prominent American photographers past and present in creating a powerful set of postcards that highlight the timelessness and perpetuity of anti-Black racism and police brutality in the U.S., while also creating a space where people can call on their legislators to work towards a more accountable and equitable future.

SURVIVING BLACKNESS | We teamed up with Lee Mokobe – an award-winning Black trans slam poet – on Surviving Blackness, a poem on systemic racism towards Black people. Injustice is not to be navigated, but to be fought. Watch our animated video.

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ARTISTS FOR COUNTDOWN

Featured artworks from our collaboration with TED Countdown.

Art can change climate change. In October 2020, we launched our global art action in collaboration with Countdown – TED’s global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. We worked with a group of prominent TED Fellows artists to create ten public artworks in ten cities around the world - from Cairo to NYC and from Vancouver to Dallas, to bring the issue of climate change closer to home. Fine Acts curated and produced the collection. See all the artworks.

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THEGREATS.CO

In 2020, we revealed TheGreats.co, our new and unique platform for free socially engaged illustrations. It is the absolute go-to place for socially-engaged visual content - whether you want to use it, or donate it. Works (already over 500 of them) are published under a specific Creative Commons licence that allows free noncommercial use and adaptation, given the appropriate credit. 

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HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Illustrations from our Reimagining Human Rights campaign.

According to Amnesty International, 2020 has brought human rights to the fore of public debate. However, to be truly effective, we need to redefine how we speak about human rights. The future of human rights must be hopeful. When we only show the abuses, people start to believe that we live in a world of crisis with no alternative. Browse some of the campaigns we launched this year that tackle human rights’ image as a whole, or focus on specific issues.

REIMAGINING HUMAN RIGHTS | We launched Reimagining Human Rights, our campaign in partnership with hope-based comms, to challenge creatives everywhere on reimagining how we envision human rights. We were blown away by a wave of amazing submissions. Hundreds of organizations and activists used these visuals for Human Rights Day (Dec 10), and beyond.

VAGINA MATTERS | We released Vagina Matters, our illustrated sex education book for girls, in October. The book, initially the target of a smear campaign launched by a far-right political party in government, has been read over 75,000 times on our website, and reached women and girls all across Bulgaria. It will also be launched in the UK in 2021 in partnership with Your Daye and Brook.

LOVE SPEECH | A popular study states that looking into a stranger’s eyes for four minutes can bring you closer. Dozens of social experiments over the years have proven this claim. We decided to test it too - but with a twist. Watch our video that became instantly viral in social media, and see what happens when people meet and hear the stories of LGBT people, Roma people and POC. 

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A heartfelt thank you to all our donors and patrons for making this work possible. 

Uplifting Black artists’ voices

In response to the killing of George Floyd that set off mass protests across the United States, we collaborated with 12 Black typographers and lettering artists to create and release an open pack of 24 protest posters in June 2020 – all free to print and share, and ready to be unleashed into action in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

The project was widely covered by media outlets, including Mashable, Culture Type, Design Taxi. The campaign is still ongoing, and the posters are being used in protests and widely shared online, reaching over 200 000 people. Through a series of collaborations, Fine Acts also made it possible for the posters to be sent as postcards, projected on buildings, and turned into gifs, further amplifying the project’s impact. 

In the first of our collaborations, we joined forces with Congress cards, a platform where you can customize and mail real postcards to your representatives about the causes you care about. We published a selection of our posters in the form of postcards in support of the #BLM movement. Anyone can pick a card, write a message, and send it to your representative. For every card sent, $1 will be donated to the NAACP Legal Fund. 

In preparation for the March on Washington on August 28, 2020, together with our artist crew, we promoted our protest pack as an awesome resource tool for the demonstration that drew hundreds of thousands. The posters are published under a Creative Commons license, which means that they can be directly used, adapted or printed for free for noncommercial use. During the March, we were on the ground giving out hundreds of posters to amplify the message of the protest. 

People used social media to urge others to spread the word about our protest poster set to be used in local protests across the country. Supporters shared their printed posters with us.

We also teamed up with Into Action, a movement of designers, illustrators, animators and artists building cultural momentum around civic engagement and the issues affecting our country and world. They transformed our powerful protest pack into a set of gifs that can easily be found on Giphy’s platform through keywords such as “black lives matter”, “protest”, “justice” and “blm”. Not only that, they can directly be used on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

We collaborated with Projection in Protest, a group that projects images to transform spaces and inspire change. They lit up the Brooklyn bridge with a projection of Hust Wilson’s poster “Black Lives Matter” in July in solidarity with ongoing protests at the time.

Not only that, we also joined forces with Kosan, a company that produces ethical travel gear and clothes. We worked with them to produce a human rights apparel collection that features the amazing work of five of the talented Black artists we had a chance to work with on the protest pack. 100% of the profits from their sales goes towards a human rights cause. Besides being featured, each artist got to select which organization to donate the proceeds to. Among the chosen organizations were National Urban League, the largest historic civil rights and urban advocacy group, devoted to empowering communities, Know Your Rights Camp, a free campaign for youth founded by Colin Kaepernick, an American football quarterback and civil rights activist, Build Power, an organization that engages athletes and entertainers to use their platform to advance radical social change, and Black Lives Matters in Nashville.

Thank you to all the 12 artists we teamed up with: Adrian Meadows, Agyei Archer, David Jon Walker, Edinah, Emmanuel Wisdom, Eso Tolson, Gia Graham, Hust Wilson, Jean Carlos Garcia, Kevin Adams, Leandro Assis and Rick Griffith.

We’re launching Vagina Matters in two countries this fall

Illustration: Borislava Karadzhova (Borislava Madeit) and Mihaela Karadzhova (Stalker 1993) for Fine Acts

After much anticipation, we’re announcing the expected release of Vagina Matters, our illustrated sex education book for girls, this fall. The book was created by us at Fine Acts, and backed by close to 200 people in over 20 countries from across the globe in our Indiegogo campaign that we launched last May. 

And, we are launching in two countries simultaneously – Bulgaria, and the United Kingdom!

Vagina Matters covers everything from periods, vaginal health and STIs, to body positivity, sex, LGBTQ+ issues, and even self-exploration and masturbation. It aims to close the sex education gap in Bulgaria and beyond. It is the first illustrated sex ed book for girls in Bulgaria – a country that completely lacks sexual health education classes as part of the approved curriculum and, along with Romania, has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in the EU. 

1500 free print copies will be distributed in Bulgaria together with our partners Loveguide.org, the largest online platform for sexual education in the country, and the Bulgarian Fund for Women network. The book will also be available for free (in the form of a PDF) on the Vagina Matters website already in September. 

Vagina Matters is an open book, created with the idea to make it available for publishing in different languages and contexts. “We’re set on encouraging a culture of curiosity and openness around sexual health issues that are so crucial to growing up and understanding ourselves. For this reason, the book will be published under an open license, empowering anyone anywhere to translate it into their language,” says Svetla Baeva, Campaigns Director at Fine Acts and co-author of the book. 

In the first such collaboration, Fine Acts partnered with Daye, the gynae health innovator, and the UK's leading sexual health and wellbeing charity for young people, Brook, to publish the English edition of the book in the UK in November. The book will be available for free (in the form of a PDF) on Daye’s site, and in print for an affordable sum, to be fully donated to uplift women’s rights worldwide. 

“It is crucial that we empower our young people to understand their bodies as this allows them to become their own health advocates," says Ndidi Edozie-Ansah, Education and Wellbeing Manager at Brook. 

Vagina Matters is a project and a publication by Fine Acts. It is authored by Svetla Baeva, our Campaigns Director and activist Raya Raeva, and illustrated by two sister artists Borislava Karadzova (Borislava Madeit) and Mihaela Karadzova (Stalker 1993).

One month since we launched Surviving Blackness

In July 2020, we collaborated with award-winning Black trans poet and LGBTQ activist Lee Mokobe on Surviving Blackness – a spoken word poem and video calling for support of Black Lives Matter. 

In a continuous commitment to amplify Black artists’ voices, for the video Fine Acts used fonts by Vocal Type — a protest type foundry uplifting creatives of colour. 

@LeeMokobe – an award-winning #blacktrans slam poet and #LGBTQ activist - teamed up with @fine_acts'
Pavel Kounchev, a former Columbia @ObamaFoundation Scholar, to create "Surviving Blackness" a dynamic video with a powerful message. https://t.co/v8QCQcqeBm

— ColumbiaSchoolofArts (@ColumbiaSOA) July 16, 2020

Surviving Blackness – stirring spoken-word poem by slam poet, trans man of color, and #TEDFellow @LeeMokobe, commissioned by @Fine_Acts, a mighty force of art-driven justice in this world https://t.co/BXQsQ9dyCq

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) July 29, 2020

The project was launched in mid-July, and already has over 50 000 views across platforms. It was widely shared by Black and Trans activists alike. 

Injustice is not to be navigated, but to be fought. I encourage you to not just listen, but HEAR 'Surviving Blackness', a spoken word poem by Lee Mokobe (@LeeMokobe) for Fine Acts (@fine_acts). https://t.co/kNAZMx4yaM

— Peppermint (@Peppermint247) July 27, 2020

We’ve got a lot of love for this poem by Lee Mokobe:
Surviving Blackness:https://t.co/pN2eCA0MPA@fine_acts#BlackTransLivesMatter

— Trans Actual (@TransActualUK) July 24, 2020

This Black trans poet just released a powerful poem on anti-Black racism

Today we released Surviving Blackness – a powerful spoken word poem on anti-Black racism. 

For this piece, we teamed up with Lee Mokobe – an award-winning Black trans slam poet and LGBTQ activist. The poem and kinetic typography video can be viewed at https://fineacts.co/surviving-blackness. 

Lee Mokobe, referencing to their experience as a Black transgender immigrant, speaks of the entrenched racism in the United States: “You who fashions nooses and makes us wear it like it is our birthright. [...] You who make Black parents teach us guidelines on how to survive.” They share their unapologetic set of survival skills developed over the years, sounding the empowering call to action to stand up and live.

“I have experienced racism intimately as a black person. Even more so as a transgender person and African. This piece is my own sort of lamentation towards the problems we face as a community and as individuals. It was to look at myself in the mirror and ask what do I want this world to look like for black people and how do we get there. I am constantly surviving my skin in a world that has the power to give me my human rights, without clauses and prejudice. It is to ask the world to do better by bettering ourselves,” says Lee Mokobe. 

People across the world have taken to the streets, calling for systemic change and an end to anti-Black racism and racial injustice. We wanted to bring a piece that both stems from the movement, and has the power to rally and uplift it. So we turned to the spoken word, an art form historically connected to the civil rights movement. We believe in the power of art to ignite and transform, and we are committed to producing works that matter, and to amplifying Black artists’ voices, which serve to inspire and point the way forward. 

Last month, we commissioned 12 Black typographers and lettering artists from around the world to create an open pack of 24 protest posters – all free to print and share, and ready to be used in action in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The posters can be previewed and downloaded here: https://fineacts.co/blm

Need hope? Use our free inspirational artworks in your work!

In April 2020, we launched the global art campaign SPRING OF HOPE as a response to the acute necessity of hope and positive messages amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. The campaign included commissioned works, as well as an open global call, and engaged more than 80 artists from over 30 countries. It resulted in over 100 works - all free to use, share and adapt. It was featured widely by media outlets such as Mashable and It’s Nice That, and endorsed by global organizations such as TED, The Obama Foundation and Creative Commons. 

The campaign reached millions online, and engaged tens of thousands; the illustrations were used by dozens of organizations to promote their own work on social media; several books and reports also used the images, e.g the latest report by Oxfam on Narrative Power used 10 of the illustrations as their main visual components.

In June, one of the artworks served as an inspiration to South Korean composer Lee Sung Gyu to compose a music piece, played daily for a week on a local radio show. Romanian organization ArtLink included a selection of 20 of the artworks in their AR exhibition. 

Many people reached out with images of the artworks being printed as posters and postcards and distributed in different cities in Europe. 

We invited 12 Black artists to create an open pack of 24 protest posters

We teamed up with 12 Black typographers and lettering artists from around the world on an open pack of 24 protest posters  – all free to print and share, and ready to be used in action in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

The featured artists are Adrian Meadows, Agyei Archer, David Jon Walker, Edinah, Emmanuel Wisdom, Eso Tolson, Gia Graham, Hust Wilson, Jean Carlos Garcia, Kevin Adams, Leandro Assis, and Rick Griffith, who represent the US, the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dominican Republic. 

12 Black artists – one for each month of the year with deliberate violence inflicted on Black people by the state. 24 black-and-white posters – one for each hour of the day with systemic anti-Black racism.

All works, commissioned specifically for the campaign, are free to print and share – they are published under a Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC-BY-NC-SA) and are available for free noncommercial use and adaptation – given the appropriate credit.

We urge people to take the posters to the streets, place them around their neighborhoods, put them on their windows, or send them to friends and loved ones. 

“Whether it be for the lives of Black transgendered people being murdered, for Black lives being murdered by police, or for Black people being constantly oppressed by systemic racism, there’s a lot of causes worth fighting for right now. I wanted to make a piece that resonated enough contextually for each cause, but general enough to communicate the overall mandate: THIS HAS TO STOP”, says Memphis-based artist Eso Tolson. 

“We live in an era where police officers can kill innocent civilians, walk away and still get paid. The system is broken and the bloated budgets need to be re-evaluated”, says Atlanta-based artist Gia Graham. 

While all posters are free, we ask allies to donate to one of the fundraisers listed here: www.ally.wiki. 

Fine Acts Annual Report for 2019 is Out!

We are happy to share what we have been working on in the past year. Girls and boys, it was a handful!

Props to the artists we worked with, our partners and donors for their incredible support, our patrons and our friends. It was a good year!

We have so much in the oven for 2020. Buckle up!

So here it is - the report.

access the interactive report here: report2019.fineacts.co

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The project "New forms of transparency and community engagement" is implemented with the financial support of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway under the EEA Financial Mechanism. The main goal of the project "New forms of transparency and community engagement" is to increase the capacity of the Fine Acts Foundation, as well as the civil sector in Bulgaria.

This material was created with the financial support of the Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria under the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area. Fine Acts Foundation bears the entire responsibility for its content and it can be assumed under no circumstances that this material reflects the official opinion of the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area and the Operator of the Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria.

More about Active Citizens Fund Bulgaria: https://www.activecitizensfund.bg/

We are recognized in FC’s World Changing Ideas Awards - again!

We are thrilled to announce that our open platform for free socially engaged art has been recognized in Fast Company's 2020 World Changing Ideas Awards.

TheGreats.co (previously known as TheAmmo.org) has been selected as an honorable mention in the Creativity category of the awards. We've been chosen from a pool of over 3000 global entries.

Illustration: Aleksandra Georgieva (Sa6ettu) for Fine Acts

Until now, The Greats has been functioning in its early beta stage, and we are launching a fully functioning platform next month that will feature hundreds of free artworks (on topics such as women's rights, LGBT rights, freedom of expression & more). Our platform is unique as it allows not just open use, but also free noncommercial adaptation by nonprofits and activists. Stay tuned for more, by signing up for our newsletter!

This is the third time that Fine Acts has been recognized in the World Changing Ideas Awards - we were selected as Finalists in 2017 with The Future (on armed conflict, with Alicia Eggert and Safwat Saleem), and in 2019 with Project Light (on avoidable blindness, with Peek Vision).

About the awards: World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better.