Helping is not an art – but art can help!

People are generous around Christmas, for helping others makes one’s own Christmas tree shine a little brighter.

But what happens after the feast? In January and February, when winter strikes with all its might, when the days are short and the nights are bitterly cold?

People don’t stop feeling hungry just because the glow of lights and the glimmer of candles have faded away.

Compassion and the willingness to help must be based on need, not on the calendar.

Helping is not an art – but art can help!

As part of his latest art event, the artist Dennis Josef Meseg and his team will serve about 100 hot meals per day at the Update gallery, Bonn, Breite Straße 85, from 15 January to 9 February 2023 between 5 pm – 8 pm (except on Sunday, 21 January, 29 January and 5 February).

Free of charge, to people in need, who want to feel welcome and secure for a while. Just like all of us.

“What’s for lunch today?” is a question everyone likes to ask, because it triggers such a good feeling. When gathering around the table, the pleasant anticipation spreads of receiving a good meal in a sheltered atmosphere, knowing that once again everyone will get up having had enough to eat.

But there are other tables where this question is asked in a slightly different way.

“Anything for lunch today?”

“No” is the answer at those tables, and how bitter must it be having to tell this to children with hungry eyes. Or to old people who had worked all their lives and still receive just a meagre pension. Or to refugees, the homeless, Hartz4 recipients, single mothers, victims of the flood disaster in the Ahr valley – the list of those in our country who do not get enough to eat is long. And the disastrous war, the continuously increasing price for electricity and gas and food make the situation even worse. Maybe we can’t help every single person. But we should give it a try. Because a little happiness for one is a great happiness for all of us.