Project
Purpose

Unity with Diversity

The Mandala Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting peace through art and education. It offers a visual demonstration of individuals coming together to create something larger than themselves while maintaining their personal uniqueness.

Exalting our common denominators builds a foundation for peace, of which art is a cornerstone.

Truth, beauty, and goodness are values that can be agreed upon in every culture. We all see beauty in nature, and through art we experience the beauty of different cultures. All cultures find truth in scientific facts and goodness in compassion.

The Mandala Project invites everyone to share in personal expression of common denominators known within our values of truth, beauty and goodness. Honoring what we have in common while respecting our differences increases our capacity for creating peace. Truly, the better we understand our neighbors, the easier it is to care for them.

What can this
project create?
Connections
The Mandala Project includes an on-line gallery to which everyone, regardless of race, gender, location, or beliefs, is invited to submit a personal mandala. The submissions become part of a collective art piece, reflecting the diversity of the human race within a unified structure. Each mandala can include a message from the artist as well as email address to enable viewers to make contact.

Education
The Mandala Project sponsors workshops which integrate the arts, sciences, and philosophy in a stimulating, visual, hands-on presentation. The mandala is used as a vehicle to teach scientific facts, mathematical concepts, and art appreciation. It is also presented as an art form which helps the student learn the subject matter kinesthetically.

For example, in science workshops participants learn how everything in life is connected at the molecular level. As people learn to see themselves as part of a whole, the concept of interconnectedness can be expanded to teach personal responsibility, the fruits of which are tolerance, compassion, and appreciation of diversity. These are values which sow the seeds of peace.

How the
project began

 

 

About the Project founder
Lori Bailey Cunningham
An art project that grew
The Mandala Project took form on paper in December 1996 at the Mount Baker ski lodge in Washington State. While my son snowboarded, I had decided to spend the day designing a quilt.

Amidst books on mandalas and sacred art, pens and note pads, the idea for The Mandala Project began as a design for a quilt. As the pieces came together, the potential of something much larger appeared: a collective art piece. And then something even larger, a project that could involve everyone on the planet in the creation of a cyberquilt of mandalas displaying the diversity of humanity, a gallery exhibiting our highest ideals, an opportunity for us to contribute something of ourselves to give to others.

Sound grand? Sure. But why not...

The Mandala Project has great potential for the involvement of many people and organizations–the more the merrier. I invite you to post your personal mandala to the on-line gallery or get involved in the formation of the Mandala Labyrinth Project. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.
Acknowledgments: There are many people to thank that have contributed to this project, but to mention a few...
My husband, David Cunningham, the folks at How It Works, and all my friends and family who have been so supportive.