COURAGE

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Lauri Vahtre (b. 1960) is an Estonian historian, writer and politician. He is active in popularising history.
As a student at the Tartu State University, he was an activist and one of the main members of the Noor-Tartu (Young-Tartu) student movement. In 1983, he was expelled from the university shortly before he would have defended his thesis. His exmatriculation was not directly connected with his activities in Noor-Tartu, as he had distanced himself from the movement for a long time before, with the aim of not causing it trouble. However, his intentions and exmatriculation did not spare the movement, and it was closed by its members in 1984.
Vahtre managed to complete his studies in 1984, however. Later, in 1988, he also gained a candidate degree from the Institute of History of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. From 1989 to 1992, he taught as a senior lecturer at the University of Tartu. He was a member of the Congress of Estonia, and from 1991 to 1992 was a member of the Constitutional Assembly.

Milko Valent is a Croatian writer and cultural activist born in Zagreb in 1948. He graduated with a degree in philosophy and comparative literature and has worked as a professional writer since 1976. Being active in the field of culture, he is interested in cultural events in Zagreb and had followed Eurokaz program since its beginnings. He published his impressions on Eurokaz in the book Eurokaz-Burning Solstice.

Heiki Valk (b. 1959) is a senior research fellow and head of the Archaeology Centre for Research and Infrastructure at the Institute of History and Archaeology at the University of Tartu. He graduated from the Tartu State University (the name of the University of Tartu from 1940 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1989) as a historian in 1983, specialising in Late Iron Age and Medieval archaeology. He gained his PhD degree in 2001 from the same university. The title of his dissertation was ‘Rural Cemeteries in Southern Estonia 1225-1800 AD'.
He was a founding member and a core activist in the Noor-Tartu (Young-Tartu) student movement from 1979 to 1984. Today he is one of the owners of the collection of this movement.

Mari Vallikivi is an Estonian art historian, and the curator of exhibitions and a work coordinator at the Kondas Centre of Naive Art. She studied at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and graduated with a BA in 1998. After that, she worked for Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus (the Estonian Publisher of Encyclopedias). Since 2003, she has been a curator at the Kondas Centre. Her main research interest is amateur art during the Soviet period. As a curator, she has to study a large number of different fields, due to the numerous temporary exhibitions at the Kondas Centre. In her opinion, approximately 300 exhibitions have been held. She has worked at the Kondas Centre since its beginning, and has been engaged in its development. In 2008, she began to research Kondas' person and work more closely. By now, thanks to Kondas’ letters and diaries, she has decoded several of his works. Mari Vallikivi considers the study of cultural opposition important, because it is part of Estonian history. The paintings by Kondas are part of this, which becomes clearer and clearer the more information about him is collected. According to Vallikivi, all art should be cultural opposition, in the sense that an artwork without a message does not move forward, art must address and upset, if not directly, then between the lines and allegorically.