Bezalel Students Design Campaign for Equality in Mixed Cities

April 6, 2011

Bezalel student Noa Snir (second from right), who won first place and an NIF scholarship, is joined by NIF leaders Naomi Chazan, Rachel Liel and Daniel Sokatch at the Dizengoff Center exhibition.

In a project organized in partnership with NIF, students from Israel’s leading school of art and design, the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, participated in a project to design ad campaigns for equality in Ramle and Lod - Israeli cities with mixed Muslim, Christian and Jewish populations. The best ads are being exhibited at Dizengoff Center, one of Tel Aviv's busiest malls, from International Day against Racism (March 21) through the end of April. The students whose works appears have been awarded NIF scholarships.

Students spent time in Lod and Ramle to experience first-hand the hardships and challenges facing Jews, Muslims and Arabs, veteran Israelis and new immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union coexisting in some of the country's most disadvantaged neighborhoods. The students met with residents from all walks of life and with staff working in SHATIL's Mixed Cities Project, who discussed what is being done to empower residents and make them proud of their cities.

Noa Snir, who won first place and an NIF scholarship said, "The encounter with a very different reality to our own, and especially with so many people involved in daily work to improve the situation, and the protest against injustice and to offer alternatives for a more sensible and proper future opened our eyes and caused us to want to enlist. We believe in the power of design and advertizing to influence reality, and we hope that all major processes begin with small steps like the exhibition here."  

Click here to view a photo album from the exhibition.