In the guise of fighting suicide bombers, the Israeli Occupation Forces have been destroying the civilian and cultural infrastructures in Palestine, as well as attacking its population. As artists and cultural workers, as activists and concerned humans, we aim to formulate strategies to deliver creative and collective responses to this crisis and to join our efforts with other international solidarity groups.

The Creative Response came together as an ad hoc group in April 2002 in Toronto, Canada.

Our work is concentrated in three broad areas with a number of specific actions within each:

1) pressing Canadian government into condemning the Israeli aggression and demanding the end to the occupation (letter writing campaign to politicians and press),

2) raising public awareness about the situation in the West Bank and Gaza (public art and education events, visible participation in vigils and demonstrations as artist/cultural workers), and

3) fundraising toward rebuilding of the cultural infrastructure (concert planned for June 20th, public screenings, house parties, art auctions, t-shirt sales).

We're starting from our own local but, hopefully, we can work toward a global network. In the coming days, we'll be setting up a website to act as a local and international clearing house for similar innitiatives. Through this, we aim to politicize and mobilize the arts and cultural sectors in calling for an end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and to facilitate the networking of the international innitiatives focusing on the rebuilding of the arts and cultural institutions.