The largest painting to be ever done on canvas will be auctioned in Dubai to raise $30 million for enhancing digital equality and education across the world. The auction is part of a charity initiative titled ‘Humanity Inspired’ launched by UAE-based global philanthropic organisation Dubai Cares, part of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives; Atlantis, The Palm; and renowned artist Sacha Jafri’.

‘Humanity Inspired’ will support a joint global effort by Dubai Cares and its partnersUnited Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)to scale up digital connectivity and provide equitable access to remote learning for children and youth across the world.

The humanitarian initiative will also support the Global Gift Foundation’s key-projects centred on children’s education and wellbeing, with a special focus on helping those most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Partners from the public sector in the UAE including the Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence, Ministry of Education, and Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) are also part of the initiative.

Working over a period of 20 weeks, Dubai-based Jafri will create a massive painting titled‘The Journey of Humanity’.Due to be completed by 7 September, the painting is set to establish a Guinness World Record for ‘The Largest Art Canvas’. The initiative has been endorsed by more than 100 celebrities from across the globe, including: Virat Kohli, Eva Longoria,  Deepak Chopra, Brooklyn Beckham, Holly Branson, Ronan Keating, Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, Shilpa Shetty, Pixie Lott, Leona Lewis, Nile Rodgers, David Walliams, Katie Piper, Luis Fonsi, Kylian Mbappe, Kirsty Gallacher and Rita Ora, among others.

Funds raised by the auction will contribute towards mitigating the significant disparities between industrialised and developing countries in digital access. Dubai Cares and its partners will launch a Global Declaration on Connectivity with the aim of establishing digital access for learning and livelihood as the right of every young person. The initiative will see UN agencies, UAE Government entities, NGOs and private sector firms working together to promote its mission.

Jafri’s 1,800 sq. m.painting, which is larger in area than two football pitches combined, will be unveiled at Atlantis, The Palm in November 2020. It will then be projected onto the UAE’s most iconic landmarks and displayed in the world’s leading museums. After its global tour, ‘The Journey of Humanity’ will be divided into 60 individually numbered, signed, catalogued, and framed canvases and auctioned at a gala dinner in December 2020. Buyers from over 140 countries will be invited to participate in the auction through live streaming. Each successful bidder will own a piece of the largest painting ever created on canvas, and more significantly, a piece of history.

The initiative will also invite tens of millions of children around the world to submit their drawings, pictures, paintings, collages and sketches on the theme of isolation and connection amid the COVID-19 outbreak, via www.Humanity-Inspired.com. Jafri will incorporate their ‘artworks’ into the first layer of his Canvas (the Soul), within huge circular portals that will serve as windows to portray a better future from a child’s perspective.