Each year, the Quest for Wisdom foundation develops an artistic intercultural programme highlighting the art of living as World Citizens. We present the Quest for Wisdom’s yearly search for themes on the Golden Ratio through various artistic and digital media — like the intercultural programme around the statue of the Rainbow Paradise Bird with the Cosmic Egg — as well as by Seasonal Meetings and the Annual Meeting Day.
Fresh from my liver bubbles the feeling that these initiatives are essential for a society, bottom-up encounters, where humanity appears in difference.
Warmheartedly,
Personal communication, 4th of April 2019
Global Citizenship of the Street: 2023-2024
A follow up in 2026-2027
Pakhuis de Zwijger Side Event Programme against Racisme-With Playful Dialogue Tables-19 maart 2026Pakhuis de Zwijger Side Event Programme against Racism -QfWf-Table with flyers Playful Dialogue
The Quest for Wisdom foundation is participating as one of the eight Alliance partners to fight against discrimination (as an administrative priority of the Municipality of Amsterdam for the period 2026-2027) and to promote an inclusive society, in order to develop global citizenship. To this end, the Association Aaneen is applying for a subsidy as the lead applicant. In collaboration, we will organize activities in Amsterdam that bring people together to promote empathy for one another. Together we are stronger, and thus we have developed a Project plan to develop and spread our Global Citizenship program.
Although the subsidy from the municipality of Amsterdam has not been granted, the Alliance Aaneen has been invited to organise a Side Event on Thursday 19 March 2026 at Pakhuis de Zwijger as part of the commemoration of 21 March 2026, the 60th International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, established by the UN after the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960, during the Week against Racism. The Quest for Wisdom hosted two tables with intercultural game and dialogue forms and playful elements from its QfWf-Global Citizenshop Programme.
Greg Suffanti telling about his Migrant series during the opening of the Amor Mundi exhibition in the Library OBA.
In our Report on an experiment “Global Citizenship of the Street” the development of our QfWf-project has been described as an triptych in three phases. The first phase consisted of remembering the colonial past of slavery by means of research and essays by Fred de Haas. This author adds historical and intercultural background to the deplorable facts, as well as the beauty of Caribean poetry and music, reflecting the transforming intercultural identities. Josee Tesser made drawings on the different themes, with a touch of sharpness and humour. The result is published in 2025 as the book (Post) Koloniale wa(a)r(d)en.
Indigenous Surinamese group Wehpokamanong Presentation Amor Mundi 28 sept.2024 OBA
The QfWf-Soul circle expresses through painting, singing, dancing her dream of World Citizenship, as documented in the book Amor Mundi (phase 2). The Arts Dialogues around the board-game and book Amor Fati, has been shared with social groups and partnering organizations in diverse events during the season of 2024-2025: for Ukrainian refugees, living at the Regenbooggroep and for global citizens of the street in the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, located in Weesp and Reigersbos (fase 3).
QfWf-Regenboog Paradijsvogel-Kosmisch Ei – Camile Smeets
In this way the QfWf-project group presented Art as a means to wonder and organized a travelling exhibition around Amor Mundi and the presentation of the book and game Amor Fati ― playful wisdom for the cosmopolis. In 2025 more stories, practices and dreams of global citizens will be gathered and published on The Golden Ratio. The intercultural artistic programme was a cocreation with collaborative partners Culturele Droomwevers and Curinesa, autonomous artists, like Camile Smeets — who made together with the QfWf-projectgroup a ceramic statue of the Rainbow Paradise Bird with Cosmic Egg — as well as with the indigenous Surinames Cultural Group in Weesp Wehpokamanong, who is dedicated to transfer the cultural heritage to younger generations. The Qfwf-Exhibition on Global Citizenship will be travelling to other locations with the Qfwf-Intercultural programme.
Animal wisdom-programme ― narratives for both young and old
The Fonds voor Zuidoost has — in collaboration with the Prins Bernard Cultuurfonds — provided the QfWf in 2020 a small grant to support her programme on intercultural storytelling Animal Wisdom, espcially during the Corona lockdown:
“Fund Amsterdam Southeast is unanimously enthusiastic about your project. Although they think the project is ambitious, they find it a worthy initiative. They like how you use this project to introduce children to the multicolored multicultural society.
In the eyes of the neighbourhood committee, you are making an important intercultural contribution that can be used in many schools.
There is confidence in the organization and in the lessons that have already been developed.
They welcome your digitization and wish you good luck.”
Tekening Nour Kayali 2021 voor Animal Wisdom
The intercultural lesson on Animal Wisdom was developed by gathering animal stories from the four corners of the world. Its goal is to transform examples of the old storytelling traditions into educative artistic forms for actual contexts and the young generation, in order to let them discover both the beauty of cultural diversity, as well as transcultural paterns between the divers storytelling and wisdom traditions. During the Corona lockdown the artistically developed materials were gathered on a specially designed website Animal Wisdom. On it you will find Animal Stories from different cultures, such as the Great Goose Rap from the Buddhist Jatakatamala tradition, as well as information on their (inter) cultural and historical context.
An Intercultural lesson
The wisdom of the octopus is a symbol for Animal Wisdom — Chrisje Ronde
The intercultural lesson for students serves as an example and intercultural perspective, to be developed further into educative modules for (world-) citizenship; both for primary and secondary schools. The educative materials are presented through different media and arts, to stimulate the imagination and to show culturally diverse narratives and symbols of animal wisdom, such as the intelligence of the octopus as well as of the fox Reynaerde and of the spider Anansi. The intercultural Animal Wisdom programme shows colourful unity of archetypical symbols within the diversity of cultural traditions.
The project was developed in 2021-2022 and presented in the Library of Amsterdam South-East with two workshops and follow up programme:
Workshop 1: When Animals Narrate Cultures …
Workshop 2: Animals as Wisdom Seekers
Due to the application for funding from the KNAW Pilotfonds Wetenschapscommunicatie door Wetenschappers the QfWF is building a network with researchers from the University Leiden and the African Research Institute of Óbudai University in Budapest, Hongary.
The Universiteit Leiden has published on the QfWf-projects in her online news. On the Annual Meeting Days of 2020 and 2021 more Animal Wisdom content is developed with storytelling, dance, play, music and art.
Please, take a look at the QfWf-video-channel withanimations and videos.
Animal Wisdom — e-books
Worldwide animal stories convey both wisdom about animal coexistence, promoting ecological awareness, as well as serving as a mirror for human society. As such they call attention to issues of diversity and inclusion in education. To this end, there has been a spinn of to the intercultural animal wisdom teaching module, resulting in the QfWf-series of (e)books. The Animal Wisdom series is generic in scope so that it can be applied in many educational contexts – such as secondary education and (higher) education. An Animal Wisdom game is under construction.
One hundred percent of the money raised by the sale of all of the products will be used in realising our upcoming QfWf educational projects, all of which are non-profit and run by volunteers.
Game for wisdom ― the Wheel of the intercultural art of living
The first project of the Quest for Wisdom consisted of the development of the Game for Wisdom in the year of her foundation in 2016. The core of this game was the Wheel of the intercultural art of living in order to categorize the mythical stories, symbols and proverbs from all corners of the world without ranking them in a way suggesting cultural superiority.
To play the game, you are invited to explore your vision on happiness by means of seven questions, confronting you with met different visions from cultures from all corners of the world. As a result the Wheel of the intercultural art of living is leading you to one of the 20 stories and 80 symbols that are integrated in this game.
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Each year, the Quest for Wisdom foundation develops an artistic intercultural programme highlighting the art of living as World Citizens. We present the Quest for Wisdom’s yearly search for themes on the Golden Ratio through various artistic and digital media — like the intercultural programme around the statue of the Rainbow Paradise Bird with the Cosmic Egg — as well as by Seasonal Meetings and the Annual Meeting Day.
as well as with the indigenous Surinames Cultural Group in Weesp Wehpokamanong, who is dedicated to transfer the cultural heritage to younger generations. The Qfwf-Exhibition on Global Citizenship will be travelling to other locations with the Qfwf-Intercultural programme.
The Fonds voor Zuidoost has — in collaboration with the Prins Bernard Cultuurfonds — provided the QfWf in 2020 a small grant to support her programme on intercultural storytelling Animal Wisdom, espcially during the Corona lockdown:
Worldwide animal stories convey both wisdom about animal coexistence, promoting ecological awareness, as well as serving as a mirror for human society. As such they call attention to issues of diversity and inclusion in education. To this end, there has been a spinn of to the intercultural animal wisdom teaching module, resulting in the QfWf-series of (e)books. The Animal Wisdom series is generic in scope so that it can be applied in many educational contexts – such as secondary education and (higher) education. An Animal Wisdom game is under construction.
The first project of the Quest for Wisdom consisted of the development of the Game for Wisdom in the year of her foundation in 2016. The core of this game was the Wheel of the intercultural art of living in order to categorize the mythical stories, symbols and proverbs from all corners of the world without ranking them in a way suggesting cultural superiority.