As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Pavel Kounchev and his teammates at Fine Acts, a non-profit for socially engaged creative solutions, knew they wanted to respond to the crisis with an initiative that could lift people’s spirits around the world. They responded by launching Spring of Hope, a global campaign of inspiring artworks that are licensed for free use by everyone.
In March, Kounchev – who was a member of the first cohort of Obama Foundation Scholars at Columbia World Projects in 2018-2019 – was in New York watching the coronavirus crisis rapidly unfold around him. He and his Fine Acts co-founder Yana Buhrer Tavanier started brainstorming how the organization could respond. “We kept reading about the increase in anxiety, depression and other mental health issues around the pandemic. We also felt our own general uncertainties and fears, and big questions with no answers,” Kounchev said: “So, we came up with Spring of Hope - a massive collaboration with international illustrators whom we commissioned to create inspirational posters on the topic of ‘hope.’”
The initiative has one condition: That submitted artworks not address the COVID-19 crisis directly, but reflect on hopes for the future and tactics for fighting bad moods.
Kounchev is a co-founder of Fine Acts and also the founder and director of Time Heroes Foundation, the largest civic engagement platform in Bulgaria, matching nonprofits with hands-on volunteers and pro-bono specialists.
The Spring of Hope initiative launched in mid-April with artworks commissioned by Fine Acts from 37 artists from 20 countries around the world, including Colombia, India and Kounchev’s native Bulgaria. After the original artworks went online, Fine Acts opened its submission process to anyone who wanted to take part.
The works have gained international attention online and have been covered in outlets like Mashable and It’s Nice That. Creative Commons, a non-profit that allows users to legally share creative works, started an unprompted online contest for their followers to choose their next social media profile header image from one of four Spring of Hope illustrations. The campaign website has been visited more than 30,000 times, and social media posts featuring the works have had millions of views. Eighty-two artists from 32 countries on five continents are now featured. And there’s more new art to come: This month, a new piano piece based on one of the artworks by the South Korean musician Lee Sung Gyu will be published online.
“Spending a year in New York with the Obama Foundation’s Scholars program at Columbia University has vastly opened up my thinking in terms of breadth and depth of action,” Kounchev said: “I can’t wait for our next global collaborations.”
The works are free to download and share with credit to the artists.