Among these artworks a banner from the Hepburn Health Service's art therapy group for women with depression will be jetting off to Tuscon, Arizona.

The group has been working on the Global Art Project for about five weeks.

Group facilitator Jyoti Thomas said since the event began in 1994, 78,000 artworks have been exchanged between 74 countries around the world.

Katherine Josten began GAP in the United States to encourage others to make art and promote tolerance and non-violence.

"Everybody makes these works and then on April 23 all of the groups send their artwork to their recipient and so, in that week, all these artworks for peace will be crossing the world going to their owners and then they will be

displayed in the community," Jyoti said.

The group has created a banner with a message of peace surrounded by eight mandalas in which the women have put symbols of peace and images drawn from their lives and nature.

"It has been such a joyous, wonderful feeling creating this piece of work and everyone (in the group) has really noticed that," Jyoti said.

"There's such a feeling of goodwill and it's such a peaceful thing to create this work because you know you are creating something that is going to get carried off to the other side of the world ...

"It brings you out of yourself and into a different space thinking beyond yourself.

"I thought the project sounded great but I didn't anticipate that it would be so satisfying doing it ..."

Jyoti said the idea of the worldwide art exchange was to connect people who wanted to create and share a vision of global peace and to focus on the value of the arts as a pathway to understanding the world as it is and to imagine how it might be.

The group will also send photos and a blurb about the members to its recipient.When the group receives its artwork from overseas it will be on display at Hepburn Health Services.

For more information: www.globalartproject.org