Invitation to Schools – Celebrate 25 years of the UNCRC
Rights Museum Launch
Ombudsman for Children’s Office
The Ombudsman for Children’s Office is celebrating 25 years since Ireland ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child making a promise to all children and young people to prioritise their rights and hear their voices.
To mark this significant anniversary a national invitation has been extended across Irish society including schools and their communities of staff and students to join with in the celebrations, raising awareness and understanding of children’s rights and listening to children and young people ensuring their voices are highlighted and heard. The aim is to provide creative and innovative ways to mark the 25th Anniversary and to enable educators to start the ‘Rights’ conversation in school – across many subject areas.
How to Get Involved
Get Animated About Rights
The OCO has teamed up with the Irish Animation Industry in a unique way to invite young people to create an image of the right that means most to them and have the opportunity to have it animated by one of Ireland’s leading animators.
Five winning artworks will be chosen by a panel of judges (including Oscar nominee 2018 Nora Twomey ‘The Breadwinner’, Best Animated Feature) for animation and winners will be offered an exclusive ‘behind-the-scenes’ tour of the hugely successful Brown Bag Studios (home of Give Up Yer Aul Sins, Doc McStuffins, Angelas Christmas and Octonauts). The animations will feature permanently on the OCO website.
Closing date is 16th June.
The Rights Museum
A cross-sector collaboration between OCO, National Museum of Ireland and Collapsing Horse Theatre. From September 2017 the OCO has been piloting this new education resource with Larkin Community College in Dublin (the first Rights Museum exhibition launched in March 2018 in the National Museum, Collins Barracks and runs until 29 June 2018). The Rights Museum resource will be available online on www.oco.ie from September 2018 inviting Junior Cert students to explore the UNCRC, choose and curate objects representing rights to exhibit in a pop-up Museum in school or in the local community.
The process of creating a Rights Museum offers schools opportunities for co-curricular co-operation, increased professional collaboration and students possibilities to apply learning in different contexts, engage in research, be creative and learn new skills. Collapsing Horse and Larkin’s pilot of the resource will be available as a short video piece.
Exhibition runs until 29th June
Check out Dan Colley, Collapsing Horse Theatre director guest blog series for the Arts in Education Portal on the project Rights Museum Project – artsineducation.ie/en/guestblog/dan+colley
Act Your Rights
Take part in the national ‘Act your Rights Drama’ competition in partnership with The Abbey Theatre.
Running until 30th May the OCO invite teachers and students to complete the ‘Act your Rights’ online resource. Make a short play, email a 3 minute taster and enter the competition to get the opportunity to perform on stage in the Peacock in September 2018.
The ‘Act your Rights’ online resource available here is a joint collaboration between the Ombudsman for Children’s Office and the Abbey Theatre. Act Your Rights aims to help children to become more aware of their rights and explore how rights are reflected in their everyday lives. It offers an innovative and enjoyable way to talk about rights with 4-6th class students through discussion, drama and art activities.
Closing date is 30th June
For more information go to www.abbeytheatre.ie/act-your-rights-competition/
Children’s Rights, Children’s Writing
The OCO were delighted to collaborate with Fighting Words and The Irish Times on a 25th Anniversary publication inviting 25 young people from a variety of ages and backgrounds to choose a right and respond to it. The pieces reflect their views of their ‘rights in reality’ and are available for research (or inspiration!) at www.oco.ie/childrens-rights/un-convention/celebrating-25-years-of-the-uncrc/projects-we-are-working-on/
The OCO have also created a special 25th Anniversary Information pack with materials to help organise your own events and activities, including a summary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, suggestions, a ready-made presentation and the 25th logo go to www.oco.ie/childrens-rights/un-convention/celebrating-25-years-of-the-uncrc/celebrate-the-uncrc-with-us/
For more information on all the events go to www.oco.ie/childrens-rights/un-convention/celebrating-25-years-of-the-uncrc/projects-we-are-working-on/