Education and creation:
a global challenge

To understand a text, a poem, an artistic or graphic work, in its text, in its language, to understand the hidden meaning of the double meanings, the symbolism of the works whatever they are … no matter how cryptic, to face an image and to understand the meaning, to learn to understand a cartoon, an editorial drawing and to evaluate its scope, all this is essential. And all this is of course only possible through education! Education to acquire knowledge, to no longer suffer taboos and obscurantism, to learn how to overcome the pitfalls of manipulation, fake news and rumors of all kinds, to enjoy free will.

But this education is inaccessible to many and lots of cultural elements can act as obstacles: poverty, social determinism, lack of schools, traditions, geographical isolation. The difficult transmission of knowledge still affects a third of the world’s children today. Some still think in 2018 that the earth is flat. Others have never read a novel or even a book in their lives. And in the twenty-first century, many girls – and too many women – are confined to domestic activities keeping them away from school.

The expertise of cartoonists, illustrators, editorialists, humorists, caricaturists and artists is to be able to transmit an idea in one stroke; a synthetic ability to transform concepts into images beyond the barrier of languages ​​and cultures.

This Global Forum offers to bring together the actors of cartooning to share their solutions using this unique ability to bring and give to those who do not have, the basic tools of knowledge, the critical mind, the analytical and synthetic mind in order to offer them freedom, to decide, to disagree, to choose, to think, to live.

Patrick Pinter
Member of the CGF Steering Committee
Cartoonist, Illustrator and Artist