“The Joy of Europe” is the largest and oldest international manifestation of children’s creativity, founded in 1969 on the occasion of World Children’s Day. Every year, at the beginning of October, children from many countries of Europe come to Belgrade – to play, sing, act, exhibit their artwork, but above all, to make friends and have a good time. There is almost no European country whose children, during these 49 years of the event, were not guests of Belgrade.
Part of the manifestation “The Joy of Europe” since 1998 is the International Art Contest “The Joy of Europe”, which is of a competitive character. Over time, the competition has grown beyond the borders of Europe, bringing together children and young people from all over the world, and the Children’s Cultural Center Belgrade has thus gained a rich fundus of fine arts that carry irreplacible artistic values from various cultural environments. The power of children’s artistic expression is commonly known and hides within itself the great beauty of the immediate truth, which is of utmost important necessity for modern civilization. There are more and more art studios around the world that work solely with children. There are more and more pedagogues and educators who are trying not to cannonade the children’s senses and mind, but to create a space for children’s inner life, where they will imagine, create, devise in the absence of mental noise. Artistic creativity in children is an aesthetic event in which the emotional-cognitive component is embedded, wrapped in a tangled knot of numerous emotions.
From year to year, the award winning art works testify to the authenticity of the visual culture of childhood, developing the sensibility of the audience, as well as the professional public for this form of visual expression. At the prize competition, works of children between the ages of four and eighteen in five age categories are rewarded. The best children’s works find their place on the commemorative postage stamp “The Joy of Europe”.
Motif on the stamp: drawing by Teodora Despotović (7 years, Serbia). Motifs on the vignettes: drawings by Svetla Strnad Ornik (8 years, Slovenia), Heer Chauhan (9 years, India), Quentin Peng (6 years, China), Aleksandra Radujko (14 years, Serbia), Nataša Vlahović (4 years, Serbia), Teodora Tuibin (8 years, Serbia), Daniela Bila (8 years, Slovakia). Motif on the envelope: drawings by Petr Ageev (5 years, Russia), Đurđa Vasić (5 years, Serbia).
Expert collaboration: Lidija Seničar, Editor of drawing and painting competition, Children’s cultural centre Belgrade.
Graphic realization of the stamp: Jakša Vlahović, academic graphic artist.
