The Courage to Take Responsibility
Client
Capabilities
Date
01/10/2019
The Forum 2000 Foundation, pursuing the legacy of Václav Havel, supports the values of democracy and respect for human rights, assists the development of civic society, encourages religious, cultural and ethnic tolerance. It provides a platform for global leaders, as well as thinkers and courageous individuals from every field of endeavour, to openly debate and share these critical issues.
We in VCCP Prague are very proud to have been creating the visual style for The Forum 2000 Foundation. For the 20th Conference held October 16-19, 2016, called The Courage to Take Responsibility, we used the very theme of the conference as the core of our concept in order to stress its urgency.
Democratic leadership seemed to be in crisis, contending with a lack of vision, responsibility, and perhaps even courage to lead. Emerged questions like:
Are the current democratic systems unable to generate true leaders?
Is the growing authoritarianism in the world a result of the weakness of democratic leadership?
Where are the Havels, Churchills, or Mandelas of today?
"This campaign was very different from those we were normally used to creating. It has a much tougher goal than the others, not boosting sales or generating profit. It stands out in an indescribably more important way."
In VCCP Prague, we had no other choice but to come up with nothing less than the best possible embodiment of them all: for our tailor-made concept "Leaders of Tomorrow", we designed a number of fictitious controversial figures, such as John Lenin, Martin Luther Kim or Mahatma Kaddafi. We openly called on the general public for their thoughts and their contribution on the subject.
In 2016, the campaign spoke out loud – and even today, the central thought of growing authoritarianism as a result of weakening democratic leadership definitely deserves nationwide attention. We are thus more than glad that our concept helped to highlight this pressing issue.
The Forum 2000 was founded in 1996 as a joint initiative by the late Czech President Václav Havel, Japanese philanthropist Yohei Sasakawa, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel. The conferences and other events are annually held in Prague, and since 1997 they have attracted a number of prominent thought leaders, Nobel laureates, former and acting politicians, business leaders and other individuals, whose common denominative is experience with bearing responsibility, including Bill Clinton, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, Nicholas Winton, or Madeleine Albright.
*Sincere thanks to The Forum 2000 Foundation website for providing information and phrasing used.
