Passion for Freedom

Happy Easter from Passion for Freedom. Wishing you bright, joyful days filled with laughter, light, and the kind of conversations that stay with you. May this Easter bring fresh energy to create, curiosity to explore, and the confidence to speak in your own voice. Enjoy freedom!

It’s about the mechanism: how easily “offence” becomes a tool of control, how institutions start choosing safety over truth, and how quickly self censorship begins to masquerade as responsibility. Freedom of expression does not preserve itself.

This April we nominate Tyler Fischer because comedy can be one of the clearest stress tests for free speech. Not because every joke must be liked, but because a culture without fear can handle disagreement, satire, and discomfort without reaching for silence.

Image credit: Helayne Seidman (via New York Post). Source (image): nypost.com/2022/05/21/com…

Passion for Freedom is international in the most literal sense. Over 17 years, artists from around 60–90 countries have been part of this platform. These are artists who are brave and often deeply connected to their home and values.

European institutions are meant to support culture. But this reel asks a sharper question: when funding frameworks define the “right” themes, does support become instruction?  Freedom of expression is not a grant category. It’s the condition that makes art matter.

We are speaking from the heart of the EU institutions, where culture is increasingly shaped through frameworks, criteria, and funding language. This tension grows in parallel with the European Democracy Shield, presented as protection against interference and manipulation.

Baroness Caroline Cox, Member of the British House of Lords, speaks about why Passion for Freedom matters. As a practical response to injustice. Barones names what art can do when words fail: images that carry stories beyond time and place to show the suffering.

Passion for Freedom is independent. No one has bought us. We don’t soften our message to fit someone else’s expectations. We don’t filter artists to match the sponsor’s taste. Freedom of expression in art only works if it includes what is uncomfortable.

Political art is not the opposite of aesthetics. It is often the condition behind it. Every artwork sits inside a civilisation, a legal order, a cultural climate. It is funded, bought, exhibited, or blocked by people and institutions with power, taste, and limits.

He lists how people self-limit themselves, refuse to name the problem by its name, withdraw drawings, cancel events, and call it “responsibility”. Passion for Freedom exists for the opposite reason. To keep the space open for art and literature that do not ask for permission.

Douglas Murray is a prominent British author, journalist, and cultural critic known for his sharp critiques of immigration, Islam, identity politics, and "woke" culture. He is a long standing supporter of Passion for Freedom. He points out what many wish to avoid discussing.

Freedom is not a metaphor. It’s a daily life that can be taken away. Credible sources report that Hengameh Shahidi was pardoned and released in February 2021. More recently, there are reports (April 2025) of a new judicial case filed against her for social media activity.

At Passion for Freedom, the struggle to uphold free expression is not accidental. That is the core of our activity. Over the years we have created space for artists to explore and express what many societies prefer to avoid: taboos, forbidden questions, uncomfortable realities.

It’s a work of art that travels hand to hand, without permission, without translation, without a slogan. You can watch the full interview with Miriam, conducted by Wendy Earle, here: youtube.com/watch?v=xadU2_…

Miriam took something familiar with a warm aura around it and turned it into something sinister that you cannot unsee. Safe edges, no words, seven plates only. Childhood format, adult threat. The contrast is not decoration. It is the whole mechanism.

The biggest threat to artistic expression is often not a law on paper, but a lack of courage in practice. The quiet retreat from truth, beauty, and freedom when pressure appears. Today artists face death threats and intimidation.

Free expression in the arts matters because art can transform what arguments often fail to grasp. One artwork can touch people transgressing languages and physical borders. It can defy censorship with  beauty and truth.

14 February we celebrate freedom of speech For us, it is the anniversary of the Copenhagen terror attack on free speech and artistic expression. One of our co-founders and chief curator, Agnieszka @InesP4F , was there. She ended up speaking after more than 200 bullets were fired.

Read the full interview here: gq-magazine.co.uk/article/ricky-…

Ricky Gervais puts it plainly: freedom of speech matters because it is tied to human rights. We agree and we’re glad to see a public voice say it without hedging. Comedy has always done more than entertain.