Troubled Images

John Johnston,
80:20 NI, talks about murals, human rights,
art and education in East Belfast

Northern Ireland has presented, and indeed continues to present, a number of difficult yet stimulating challenges for 80:20.

Through our Belfast office in Orangefield High School, we have worked with a broad variety of young people and interested adults. The partnerships have delivered projects that question the sometimes-narrow confines of Northern Ireland in relation to an ever ‘complicated outside world’.

Young people often lead the way in this debate. They have been a major influence on our work as each project is designed to respond to a particular theme or issue that relates to both the realities of young peoples’ lives here in East Belfast and the core values of 80:20.

The notion that young people have power is a challenging one for adults. To this end 80:20 have deliberately set out to work with both parties. This approach has seen a greater understanding develop between teachers and pupils, youth workers and young people, politicians and young people and, in the most extreme circumstances,
paramilitary groups and young people.

A central theme in our work is Human Rights through education. With ongoing projects, such as a human rights education curriculum at Orangefield High School and the 80:20 Vision projects within the
local community, we are beginning to see a growth in understanding of human rights and wrongs and the implications of such for both the individual and community. We ask young people and adults to step up and accept the challenges that our modern world presents and in doing so recognise and claim the opportunities that these provide. The outcomes are clear to see with the evolution of the rights curriculum and most particularly in the evidence from our 80:20 Vision programme of public education through art.

Recently, we began a wall mural project with little interest from the local community or for that matter from the young people who ‘hang out’ in the area. However, in partnership with an energetic and progressive community group we eventually produced a large-scale image (see opposite) that celebrated the industrial heritage of the area.

Young people and the surrounding community came forward in numbers to claim the mural and play a role in its production. The final painting now sits proudly on a wall once used only to propagate paramilitary allegiances and sectarian values.

This is the visible evidence of a community looking to change the values of our past.

However, at 80:20 we want to go much further. The added value of our approach is to be found in our links and work on other ‘international’ issues, such as genocide and HIV and AIDs (subjects regularly covered during workshops and projects).

This provides an opportunity for young people to explore such issues within an educational framework and to use their learning in a progressive and real way in the production of resources, visual art materials and in the establishment of working groups.

Our objective is simply to ‘provide a helping hand’, to assist in the opening of various chapters in different life stories and then to have the privilege of standing back and watching as the process unfolds…