The Complete Freedom of Truth has never had an official logo of its own. Being a long term international project under the care of Opera Circus, it never felt necessary nor useful. It was the work that mattered.
Years of engrossing residencies with artists and young people from the UK and Wider Europe, funded by the generous Erasmus + others, it left us not really querying our identity. TCFT was a network, a project, a collaboration, contained many partnerships, relationships and friendships and held hundreds of us together. It’s aim always has been to use art to consider what matters to those involved, in particular the young. Democracy, the Earth, those with different abilities, Gender, Race, Human Rights and Fairness and being somewhere else….Bosnia, Kosovo, Italy, Portugal, Brussels and more…Bridport, Portland, Bradford, Battle, London?. .
Rory Newbery created a satisfying and useful image from the theatre we worked in at Bryanston School Dorset in 2014.
Ricky Romain, artist and sitar player, painted this beautiful image in Sarteano, Italy in 2017
As a result of leaving the EU in 2021 (the exit vote in 2016) we lost Erasmus and all opportunities for EU funding. We also had Covid. But TCFT continued within small events, in our networks, in Democracy and Human Rights Events and in its continual links to Europe through the Council of Europe*.
Opera Circus has been a member of the European Youth Foundation, which is part of the CoE for over 15 years. TCFT has encouraged many young people to visit the European Youth Event in Strasbourg, training courses in project management during conflict in Lviv and Lublin, in the understanding of Democracy and Human Rights, Activism in Budapest and representing TCFT at Aachen for the Charlemagne Youth Prize celebrations. TCFT won the UK prize in 2017.
We are hearing about news and events reopening conversations about a developing relationship with Europe. The first sign that the funding is coming back is the offer from Brussels of a grant to engage young people in the UK with the values of the EU + the ongoing discussions about limited freedom of movement for young people within the UK and EU. Then there is Erasmus. We know the conversations are going on in private.
So does a logo matter?
There is a team of TCFT youth leaders, writers and artists who are now updating the web sites of Opera Circus and TCFT. New landing pages, content, photographs, social media posts, comment and blogs. There will be a regular newsletter for both. Irina Maria Ganescu is the designer, Marko Stankovic leads on web management, Mia Nobrega Amaral, Copywriter and Planning and Francesco Pipparelli advising on communications and European Networks. We hope others will get involved.
The purpose and networks of TCFT are now more vital than ever and maybe it’s time we had a logo to spread our ideas and solidarity more widely.
Irina has been working on the new logo and in the next blog will share with you how she reached the, what we think is a beautiful, design for TCFT. It has within it everything that TCFT exemplifies, from inclusion to fairness and beauty and the stories of the many who helped Irina create the images and colour that define TCFT.
We hope you will like it.
*The Council of Europe is an international organisation with the goal of upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe.[3]Founded in 1949, it is Europe's oldest intergovernmental organisation, representing 46 member states[2] from Europe, and is based in Strasbourg, France.
