Red, Yellow, Blue: Reviving a Forgotten Idea About Peace
A hundred years ago, three colours carried a message. Red. Yellow. Blue. Today, most people see them only as paint on a canvas.
Walk into any major museum, and you will likely find a Mondrian. His grid-like canvases, built from red, yellow, and blue, remain instantly recognisable. Sit in a design-conscious living room, and you might spot Gerrit Rietveld’s iconic chair, its red and blue frame finished with bright yellow rod ends. Look closely at certain buildings in the Netherlands, and you will see the same three colours arranged with quiet precision.
These works all trace back to De Stijl, a Dutch art movement founded in 1917. It emerged, like Bauhaus and Dada around the same period, from the ruins of the First World War. Each movement searched for new meaning after a war that had shattered the old order.
De Stijl’s answer was universal harmony, expressed through colour and form. Red, yellow, and blue were not chosen at random. Together, they symbolised unity, a shared visual language that could speak across borders. The artists, architects, and designers who joined the movement believed something larger was possible: an international style built on peace.
That message faded. The paintings stayed in museums. The chair stayed in design catalogues. The buildings stayed standing. However, the spirit behind them quietly disappeared.
We want to bring it back.
A Gap Nobody Else Was Filling
The idea for Red Yellow Blue (RYB) started with a simple observation. The United Nations has offices everywhere. Governments have embassies in nearly every capital. Yet ordinary citizens have nowhere to gather and engage with national or global development, in a way that also connects them internationally.
Diplomats have their buildings. Citizens, it seemed, did not have theirs.
RYB set out to fill that gap: an international network of physical spaces, open to citizens, built around the same three colours that once symbolised peace. Each space would connect local communities to a much larger, global conversation.
From Colours to a Culture of Peace
As the concept grew, it found a natural partner in UNESCO’s global movement for a culture of peace. RYB joined that movement, and from this connection came a sharper concept: Women, Culture and Peace, or WCP.
WCP places women’s experiences and leadership at the centre of peacebuilding. It treats culture not as decoration, but as a tool for transformation. Like RYB itself, the WCP concept is still unfolding, one project at a time.
Cities Can Choose Peace, Too
A related question soon followed. UNESCO already runs a Creative Cities Network, where member cities organise around themes such as design, music, or gastronomy. So, what if a city organised around a culture of peace instead?
This question led to a second concept, and a second website: cultureofpeace.nl. There, we ask a deliberately local question: how could Amsterdam become a Creative City for a Culture of Peace? And from there, a larger one: how could this idea spread, linking into UNESCO’s existing network and other creative city alliances already in motion?
We imagine artworks, exhibitions, festivals, and fashion shows built around this theme. Eventually, we imagine permanent spaces, the kind of citizen buildings the original idea called for, hosting these works year-round.
How far this grows depends on something we cannot fully control: how people respond, and how the work gets funded. For now, we are simply asking the question, in public, and inviting others to think it through with us.
A Small, Growing Network
Step by step, this thinking has grown into a small family of websites, each with its own focus:
- redyellowblue.org sets out RYB’s concepts and the global development background needed to understand them.
- cultureofpeace.nl explores how Amsterdam, and eventually other cities, could become Creative Cities for a Culture of Peace.
- europaregina.eu focuses on Europe’s creative industries, including future fashion events held with the European Fashion Council (europeanfashioncouncil.eu) and its member countries across Europe.
- bali.international is building spaces around local global development, sustainable tourism, and arts and culture in Bali.
Most people have not heard of any of these names yet. That is not a problem. There is always something pleasant in discovering an idea before it becomes familiar.
What Comes Next
We are not asking anyone to imagine a finished picture. The picture is still being painted, one project, one space, one city at a time.
What we can promise is this: the colours mean something again. Watch this space, and the others, as the rest takes shape.