For the past two years, Paralym Art has held a World Cup that invites artists with all different types of disabilities to enter their work, and be seen by people from all over the world! This year marks the 3rd annual event and while the theme of “PEACE” was supposed to tie in with the now postponed Olympic and Paralympic Games, the event is still looking to be held in November!

Paralym Art are the main hosts of the Paralym Art World Cup, an event that has been running since 2018! The event is held to help promote artwork that has been created and submitted by Artists with disabilities! 
With Paralym Art however, they do much more than just the PARALYM ART WORLD CUP! As a tie-up with the ongoing crowdfunding project on our sister site, Japankuru Funding, we want to introduce you to one of the rewards that is being offered, the Paralym Art EcoBag, and showcase some of the designers and the designs of the bags themselves!
 

Who are Paralym Art?

Paralym Art have several aims, their biggest being the goal to help disabled artists, by giving them a way to survive without having to have a dependence on social security programs, and to help them form ties with companies that will help back these amazing artists.

A member of Paralym Art, Mai Kannari, who is organising the Paralym Art World Cup 2020 as well as the crowdfunding project

Artists with Disabilities in Japan

It’s not something many people think about, but people with disabilities are always helped as much as they should be.

About 7% of the Japanese population has a disability, which means 4.36 mil with physical disabilities, 1.08 mil with intellectual disabilities, 3.92 mil with mental disabilities. In regards to People under 65 with disabilities there is about 4.15 mil (physical: 1.08 mil, intellectual: 790,000, mental: 2.28 mil)

It’s not uncommon to find that some of these people with disabilities work in public / private companies, with them numbering about 530,000 people. (Of disabled people working, about 70% are physically disabled)

A white paper on disabled people was released in 2019 by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, with the poverty rate for people with disabilities being at 56% where the general population sit at about 16%. This leads to number of users of disability welfare services being about 1.12 mil. This means that all the work that Paralym Art do, is incredibly beneficial for society, and more needs to be done for these people at risk!
 

The Paralym Art World Cup

The Paralym Art World Cup started in 2018 with the aim to show off and display a variety of different pieces of artwork from artists with disabilities. The theme was festival and saw a large amount of artwork entered including pieces from different countries! This success set the wheels in motion to make this event an annual occurrence, an event to help celebrate artists all around the world! Over the past two years, over 2000 pieces were entered with nearly half of the entries coming from outside of Japan! Entrants were invited to the awards ceremony and saw people from all over the world come, such as Cameroonians, Russians, and Philippinos.
 

The Paralym Art EcoBag

The EcoBag itself is a sizable and stylish bag that is made of canvas, making it incredibly durable! What’s more Paralym Art have commissioned 12 designs meaning you can pick from 12 amazing different pieces of work! It feels a lot larger than normal bags and what’s more, some of the proceeds go towards the artist that designed the bag. Obviously, some of the money from the sale has to go towards production costs and so on, but a large majority of the money raised is received by the artist, helping them be self-sufficient which is one of the big goals of Paralym Art!

Bag Information:
Size: Width 41cm x Height 32cm x Depth 18cm
100% Polyester
・Comes with fastener
・Sent in special packaging

A Paralym Art EcoBag designed by JCI(Click to see the original Design)

Original Design: ペンギンが天空で泳いでいる (Penguin floating in the air)
This original design was created 志方弥公(Misato Shikata) an artist that has a hearing disability. She has collaborated on a different project in 2015 in order to create a CD sleeve design.

Original Design: ２つの木の実 (Two fruit of a tree)
This design was created by 相川吉延 (Yoshinobu Aikawa) an artist that has been active in the artists with disabled circle for a long time. They have entered a variety of contests including previous Paralym Art World Cups!

Original Design: 桜（Sakura）- Cherry Blossoms
This design was created by 三浦有子(Yuko Miura), an artist that struggles with an emotional disability. She says that during the time when her disability is in a lull she is able to make these simple but beautiful flower patterns, one of which has been selected to star as an ecobag!

Original Design: しゃぼん玉 (Soap Bubbles)
まと(Mato) is the designer for this piece. Mato looks at making many different pieces of work that incorporates cute item such as teddy bears and so on!

Original Design: クレマチス (Kuremachisu) Clematis.
A design created by KUNIHIKO. This designer mainly incorporates flowers and every single design that has been entered to Paralym Art is an intricately design piece of work. 

The Paralym Art World Cup Crowdfunding Project!

The Paralym Art World Cup crowdfunding project is being held on our sister site, Japankuru Funding and can be found here: https://en.japankurufunding.com/projects/paralym-art/
The project has a goal of 1,100,000 Yen or about $10340 and will be running until the end of June! 
The goals of the project are threefold:

It's currently raised 20% of their goal, and is hoping to raise more to help achieve all they wish to do! 
We hope that you can help Paralym Art as they try to acheive their goals!

For those that haven't seen it, this year’s World Cup site can be found here: https://en.paralymartwc.com/ !
This year’s site lets you view all the entries for the event and have now opened up voting for the general public award! With this year’s theme being “Peace”, you can see an assortment of artwork that focuses on making the world a better place! 

What’s more, if you yourself are an artist with disability, you can enter your own work via the site here: https://en.paralymartwc.com/entryform

The process is quite simple, but before you enter please check out the terms and conditions for entering.