The Designing Peace exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, SMITHSONIAN DESIGN MUSEUM, the only museum dedicated to historic and contemporary design, explores what our lives would be like if societies designed and acted as a whole for Peace. Among the 40 design proposals, initiatives and interventions from 25 countries, represented by objects, full-size installations, maps, images and films are also our favorite Safe Passage bags products! Thus, the highly aesthetic creations of the Safe Passage workshop of Solidarity Lesvos, which gave a new meaning and a second life to the life jacket, a symbol of the refugee today and created a fertile ground for the integration of the refugees of Mytilene, traveled to New York and participate in the periodical exhibition of this historical museum.
Visitors to the exhibition, which will run until September 4, 2023, encounter a wide range of design challenges from around the world that examine issues such as socio-economic inequality, environmental degradation, while at the same time being encouraged to consider their own 'proposal' for the peace planning through interactive installations, quiet moments of reflection and opportunities for practical action. Exhibits include "Black Lives Matter," a Harlem Street graffiti, one of eight painted in New York, the new World Peace Symbol, created by a Uruguayan graphic artist, contemporary applications such as Regreening Africa, which allows local farmers to easily record and share their land restoration efforts in sub-Saharan Africa, Collaborative Architecture's Peace Pavilion, which created a "national war museum" competition to change the conversation about war and nationalism but also the PeaceTech Lab's Hate Speech Lexicons, a series of manuals that identify and explain conflict-inducing language!
Established in 2015, the Safe Passage Bags workshop, which offers job training and employment opportunities to refugees and locals living on the island, creates new products by recycling immigration-related trash. Life jackets, boats, tents and old clothes convey the stories of the refugees who passed through, forced to make the journey from Turkey to the camps on Lesvos due to the EU's unfair and dangerous border policies.