Artist 2
“I am really fascinated by people like Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai because I think they are alone and they fight the system, they fight against oppression.

When I was really young, about 12 maybe, there was a television show in which they were discussing hip hop culture and that was the first time I saw black people and Arab people on TV. After watching the show, I took a can of spray paint, went to the streets, and started painting.

Some years later, I discovered another guy on French TV, Melvin Van Peebles. He was talking about his life, how he had to struggle, and listening to him totally changed my mind. I decided to make more paintings, but also interact with the young generation, talk about the work of people like Martin Luther King and Mandela and about fighting against oppression. Before that, I had just spent a lot of time drinking beer.”

*****

Mathematician
“I’m a mathematician and 92% of people in this field suffer from depression. In all my years of being a part of this circle, I have known exactly one person who doesn’t suffer from it. Even she knows only herself who doesn’t suffer from it and she has been in the field for 40 years.

So, it’s not a good way to be a happy but at least we are doing something that can be productive and helpful to the society. I have known that I wanted to be a researcher doing mathematics since I was 7, that was my calling.

There’s another thing, most of maths is useless, most of logic is useless, but logic came up with one thing useful about 70-80 years ago and that was called the computer. So, if you work at the root of it, there’s a tiny chance you can really change everything.

When you find the results, you realise it is a magical place.”

*****

Artist 1
“When people are so sad poor, miserable and humiliated, it’s like a chemical liquid slowly spreading over the earth. When the gas of that liquid meets the populist speech, it is like a chemical reaction.

Populists start promising exactly what people die to hear. This is my definition of populism which I haven’t found here. However, I’m an artist and will try to realize this idea through my art.”
 

*****

Activist
“It is very common to be arrested in Hong Kong. This year, President Xi Jinping of China was going to visit Hong Kong for Establishment Day which is celebrated on the first of July every year to celebrate the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. Some days before his arrival, my friends and I went to occupy the plaza that he was going to visit. The police came and arrested everyone. We were kept in custody for over 30 hours in a room where we couldn’t do anything except eat and go to the toilet; we weren’t even allowed to write anything on a paper. But I never questioned what I was doing. I think at the end of the day what keeps me going is the belief that what I am doing, what I am fighting for is correct. I believe I have the responsibility to tell people the truth.

*****

Dreams
"A person with good grades in the sciences in Morocco should go to medicine or engineering, so I went to engineering.

I won’t call it pressure but the environment was favoring me into taking that kind of decision. In my third year of college I took a year off before deciding what I am going to do with my life so I went into volunteering. I did a lot of community service and because of this I realized that I want to pursue a career in that direction. That year off gave me the opportunity to see which way I want to go.

I have since created an association called the ‘Marroquian Witness Association’. We are trying to engage people in the process of decision making at the local level and to see how can young people can benefit from more reforms in the community.

None of my dreams as a kid involved engineering I wanted to be some leader, taking the people to a better place somehow, contributing to a better society in which people wouldn’t feel social injustice.

I think the little me would agree the new process I’m starting."

*****

Oppression
“The times of darkness taught me to see the light better... we learned democracy from the oppression we lived, we learned freedom of speech from our long silence and we learned disobedience from obeying for too long.”

“We made our bodies our voices.”

“They want us to think about what we are not who we are.”

*****

Journalists
“Nowadays freedom of expression is endangered all over the word, not only in the ‘new’ democracies, but also in the old ones. Even in the United States you can’t rely on the freedom of media anymore. Therefore, some years ago I founded the Central Asian & Southern Caucasian Freedom of Expression Network in Azerbaijan.

Protecting journalists is a matter of my heart.”

*****

Knowing Myself
“I studied pharmacy for four years but then I quit because I found out that I don’t like it. In that phase, it is hard for you to know yourself, so I took a one-year gap and I travelled far away from my family, my friends, my environment, my culture. Now, I’m starting to know myself better.

Buddha once said, the problem is we think we have time. So, every decision I make, I imagine that it is the last day of my life. We don’t have time, I don’t know when I will die, so I don’t want to spend my day doing something I don’t like.

I imagine myself on this side-street where everything is foggy, I can’t see anything there. I have no idea, maybe the end is a cliff and I’ll fall or maybe the end is a mountain. But I still decided to take this path. Life is too short.”

*****

Protest
"When I was a little kid, I didn’t want to watch the news because I would get really upset and I would cry. I think I was 7 and there was a big protest on TV and I just couldn’t eat because I was crying so badly. My parents decided they needed to do something, so they talked to me about activism. They took me to different meetings and organizations and I think that’s how I got in contact with human rights. Without realizing it, my parents raised a feminist, an activist and a human rights advocate."

*****

Minister
“My goal is to become a minister of the Moroccan government. As I grew up in a country with lots of regional conflicts, so politics has always been present in my life. My brother is in the opposition party and represents the African people in the Arab parliament. I went to conferences with him. That inspired me to start participating myself.”

*****

Happiness
“I always wanted to become a lawyer. My dad is a lawyer and he inspires me. I really love the law and talking about it. The happiest moment of my life was when I received the news that I had been accepted into the law school I had wanted to go to all my life. It’s a very structured subject. I’ve always wanted to do something meaningful and the law gives me the ability to help people. It gives me a purpose.”

*****

Fear
“We are mentally enslaved by certain preconceptions, notions and beliefs about who we are as human beings. We can fear all sorts of things. Actually, the only thing to fear is remaining in this state of mental slavery.

If I have fear, I try to notice it, say ‘Hello’ to it and say ‘I know who you are, but I’m going to do this anyway.’ You take fear as your friend along with you, but you don’t let it stop you doing what your passion is and what you believe you need to do.”

*****

Inspiration
“You have to change yourself before changing others. I have to experience new things myself before I can motivate my students to explore. I had an English teacher in school who would often gather us around himself and talk about his experiences. Once, he was telling us about his first trip to the USA. At the immigration control counter at the airport, a woman asked him why he wanted to visit the USA and he said, ‘Because I speak your language’. And I really wanted to experience that life, to go and discover, conquer the world. And to pass my experiences to the next generations.”

*****

Education
“Until October, I lived in a small town in the north of Romania where the young people are really not aware about their opportunities, and I think I was really lucky in that way. From when I was a little kid, my mum wanted me to be involved in all sorts of activities - English lessons, painting lessons, theatre lessons- everything. Then I had to take exams for entering high school, and I quit most of my extracurricular activities.

I wasn’t used to doing nothing, so after my exams, I decided to do some volunteering. One opportunity led to another and eventually I became really passionate about the NGO system. I think it is incredibly important for young people to be involved in their communities because they can learn a lot of things through such participation, and it is really important for the community as well because young people bring in new ideas and creativity.

We need to be made aware of the opportunities that exist for us, and for that, education is the key. I know it sounds too optimistic but for me for any problem I suggest education as a long-term solution”

Architect
“The quality of a city is measured by the quality of its public space. I strongly believe that creating new public spaces for exchange is essential for democracy. When people meet, talk and see each other it’s much more effective than using social media.

I only started to be an urban planner some years ago, because I always thought that it was to late for me. However, Daniel Libeskind (famous architect) taught me that if you feel passionate about something, you will be able to do it.

It’s never too late try something new. Just go for it all the way and see where it takes you.”

*****

Wishes
“I had so many wishes as a child, I wanted to be a singer and I always used to play football, that was my first love! But where I live it was not common for girls to play football. I live in a small town and we were fighting to get our own club, it was really boys versus girls. I played till high school and then I decided to do something more serious.

Now, I’m studying law because to be honest, well I didn’t know what to choose and law offers so many opportunities and chances. In Bosnia, it’s hard to find jobs so I need to be studying a lot more. I’m not sure whether I want to be lawyer or a judge, but I do know I will work in the civil department.

Even if I get a chance now I won’t become a singer because I want to be more than that.”

*****

The Next System
“I’m studying governance and development and I’m interested in achieving better political systems. I think representative democracy is great, but it also has some problems throughout the world. I think that there will be, at some point, a next system that is beyond representative democracy. I’m interested in thinking and conceptualizing what that would be like.”

*****

Foreigner
"I was in French language school in my country, so it was a clear choice to come to France.

I would like to find a job here because my boyfriend is French so its normal to be here with him than to be there without him. I’m dating a foreigner, and that is a thing back home. The first time I was there with him, it was shocking, people kept judging me.

 I feel some conflict when I come back to my country, people are so serious, so closed, even smiling is a problem, people think that it is too western."

*****

Privilege
“My mother used to work for the foreign ministry, so I was moving around a lot, and going to a variety of schools. I didn’t have a hard time trying to fit in in other countries. It was just the other way around, the most difficult thing for me was coming back, because it is a lot easier trying to adapt in another context than the one you left in the first place.

I was 16 when I moved to India where I finished high-school, I went to university to study Japanese, and started working for Ikea. There you have many different layers of society, for example, you have the middle class, the upper class, the middle-middle class, and as a foreigner you are in a very privileged position, because it is your choice to go there.

We moved to India in April ‘75, and then two months later Indira Gandhi imposed a ‘state of emergency’. There were always a lot of protests organized by students, but I was not attending them usually as they would not be safe enough. Despite this, India remains my favorite place, and it would be my pleasure, after I’m done with everything, to go back there, live in the way I spent my youth.”

*****

Socks
”Nobody has taken photos of my face in a while as they are constantly taking photos of my socks. I don’t remember exactly why I started mixing socks but I hate wearing shoes so now it is a nice habit.”

*****