Amazing Dissidents and Activists

Liza Donnelly
5 min readMay 27, 2022

Live drawing the Oslo Freedom Forum

I just got back from Oslo, where I live drew the Oslo Freedom Forum, as I have done for 7 years now. It is an amazing conference, with speakers from around the world, many of whom are dissidents and activists for global and local causes. It is run by the Human Rights Foundation, and to learn about the event in Oslo and NRF, I suggest you go to their websites. You can see some, if not all, of the proceedings and make a donation.

I am honored to be invited to draw the events, it is an incredibly inspiring few days and I meet so many passionate, committed, friendly, outstanding people. The fact there are so many dissidents having to battle so much violence, hate and oppression hurts my heart — the numbers are staggering. But it is inspiring they are amongst us, and I am grateful that they get the open and loud support of the HRF, this helps keep them safe.

In the meantime, here are my drawings from the past three days. I also tweet them in real time, so they can be seen on my twitter and Instagram.

I have to pinch myself sometimes.

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