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Background
to this project:
The poster
led off from the My
Children's Act book previously done for Cape Town Child Welfare.
(view here)
Penny Whitaker of CTCW contacted me and requested that I select 42 pictures
from piles and files of submissions for a drawing competition they had quickly
organised among several schools from disadvantaged areas in the Western Cape
region, to illustrate the 42 Articles of the UN Convention for the Rights
of the Child. I read with interest that such rights were established and agreed
on only quite recently - as in the last 20 years.
Going through all the artwork and selecting 42 - 44 pictures was a huge and
emotional task. There were so many pictures which were beautifully drawn but
didn't quite fit the brief due to uninformed teachers and other breaks in
communication. This made me grieve for the chances lost to such earnestly
toiling little artists. Not always though; sometimes I could cobble together
two pictures to fit the issue they had to describe. Each school was allocated
one Children's Right. Or that was how it was meant to go...
Other times I had to combine two pictures because I couldn't choose betweent
them! Fortunately I didn't have to face the artists - they might not have
enjoyed their drawing invaded by another's work, let alone my manipulations.
One little soul had produced her entry on the back of a school admin form,
probably the only thing the teacher could find to draw on. It was rather nice
buff paper, even if the back of it was full of boring stuff about timetables
etc.
Art is not considered vitally important in our school system and our
more impoverished schools are very under-equipped. Drawing paper you will
not find in a school that's missing windows, ceilings, toilet facilities...
still, the teacher and the child sent in this entry and... well.. how could
I not choose that one too? It was duly combined with another one and if you
look you will surely find it.
What also
moved me was that so many pictures were very telling in the detail. One could
tell that the child had 'been there' and was probably still dealing with an
issue depicted, daily. The pictures often told a story and CTCW was able to
target certain schools and intervene where problems were indicated by means
of the drawings entered for the competition.
It's not all gloom and doom though
- there's a lot of inadvertent humour as in the pic for Article 28, one of
my favourites...The winners
each received drawing materials and a framed version of their artwork in its
digitally manipulated and enhanced form for the poster. These were all handed
out at an exciting ceremony which included drumming and a little party.
I am in
awe of social workers everywhere and the burden they carry; this job
truly became a labour of love. I often found myself entering into a silent conversation
with the child artist while working on a drawing... 'You didn't want that
leg there, did you? That's why you drew that one. I agree, much better, I'll
remove the 'wrong' leg electronically, like you would if you had my magic
tools...' but more often than not I didn't like to interfere too much, and
left exploratory, tentative lines as they were. Too much sanitising destroys
the charm and the integrity of a drawing..
I hope you'll enjoy these beautiful slices of life through children's eyes.
Translations from Xhosa and Afrikaans writing on the pictures will follow
later as time allows.
~Savyra |
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