Dear members of the ITI, dear supporters, friends and colleagues,
we hope and wish that you arrived safely and peacefully in the new year. Unfortunately, this is no longer a routine wish. The horror of two new wars and the return of the worst ghosts of the past takes us back to November 16th 1945, when the founding members of UNESCO declared in the first sentence of their constitution: "That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.“ The ITI, founded on the initiative of UNESCO, has adopted this principle and set itself the goal in its statutes of promoting international cultural exchange to consolidate peace and friendship between peoples in the field of theatre in all of its forms.
Rarely has a self-evident goal faded into utopia as quickly as in the last two years. At the same time, we have realised how globally limited the zones of peaceful coexistence have always been.
The national centres of the ITI are not state organisations. Their task is not patriotism, but the mental anchoring of peace. We must create, preserve and keep open safe spaces for free artistic expression, encounters and debate, spaces in which breakdown, new beginnings, encounter, solidarity, trust, mutual respect and perhaps something like healing is possible.
In the multiple crises of recent years, we have created spaces for dialogue in order to exchange ideas with you, our members, and with representatives of directly affected regions, and we want to continue to do so.
We must not accept mutual destruction as a solution to conflict. We believe that the arts can expose contradictions and incite resistance against the forces that feed the conflicts in order to profit from those.
Kind regards,
Office and board