7 Days of Inspiration

Let me tell you about a beautiful dutch initiative. In 2009 Martijn Aslander felt inspired by the clean up project in Estland and decided to found the 7 Days of Inspiration. His idea: to give the Netherlands an upgrade by spreading inspiration on social goodwill, culminating in 7 Days of Inspiration.

 

7 Days of inspiration has grown to be a week full of positivity.

 

This year the 7 Days took place in the first week of march. 14 Dutch cities were involved! All kinds of people came together to start all kinds of inspirational sustainable initiatives.

I contributed to the magazine that was launched that week. The magazine found it’s inspiration in a dutch part of the twitter community called “dare to ask”. You can use the hashtag #daretoask if you have some burning question, and with which you can make an appeal to other tweeps to help you out. The magazine thought this was characteristic of social goodwill.

41 Professionals collaborated in this magazine. Illustrators and photographers were asked to use a tweet as inspiration for their art. The one I used said: who wants to make a dance of joy with me?

My illustration:

 

ellen vesters vreugdedans dance twitter

 

ellen vesters vreugdedans dance twitter

 

Very happy when I opened the magazine (and the paper smelled sooo good!):

 

ellen vesters vreugdedans dance twitter

 

Here’s a link to the complete magazine, I am on page 31:

http://www.7dimag.nl/

 

Networking

Somebody made me blush this week. The very gifted photographer Armando Ello wrote a flattering blog about my networking skills (it’s in dutch)…!

http://www.armando-ello.com/hoe-moet-je-netwerken-column-blog/

 

Poetry Collaboration

It’s been a little while ago, but I wouldn’t want you to miss out on this fascinating collaboration. In february, together with the amazing Gilly Rochester and Daria Hlazato I was featured on the Creaure Mag blog with an illustration accompanying a grim poem by Ben Macnair.

The image of a crime scene immediately made me think of an infamous, brutal murder in the Netherlands. On the 2nd of november, 2004, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by an extremist, because of his controversial opinions. The illustration I made was inspired by one of the most well known pictures from this time. The ice bears are a reference to the snow in Bens poem and to the white suits, worn by the crime scene investigators.

 

Bens poem and my illustration:

Crime Scene
Don’t follow the red snow,
it is a warning,
that around here are
Grim fairy tales
with an eighteen certificate.

ellen vesters crimescene