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Past Events
May 2007: Voice Our Concern Art Exhibition
May 2006: MULLINGAR CC DRAMA GROUP ACT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS!
Last week, the drama group at Mullingar Community College performed the Voice Our Concern Amnesty play by Hugo Hamilton as part of their end-of-year concert. The play was fantastic... thanks to Mullingar CC drama group!
May 2006: Mountmellick Youth Theatre perform 'First Day, Last Chance'
The play had a fantastic response and is going to the youth theatre festival in Roscommon in July... well done and good luck! See photos on our gallery ...
April 2006: Battle of the Bands!
By Aine Dawson and Cormac Grogan, St. Mac Dara's Community College, Templeogue
On April 25th 2006 St. Mac Dara’s Community College held a battle of the bands competition in aid of Amnesty International. Over €800 was raised on a fantastically successful night.
The hall was decorated with Control Arms posters that informed people of the campaign. At the entrance the attending public were given Control Arms stickers and leaflets. We also talked to people about the aims of the Control Arms campaign and Amnesty’s hope of getting one million people to sign and put their faces on the petition. An Amnesty International mock advertisement was displayed to the incoming public to show how easy it is to buy arms in any country.
‘Downfall’ got the night of music off to a great start. ‘Red light biscuit’ and ‘None of the Above’, which brought us to the half–time interval, followed them.
During the half–time interval Amnesty’s delicious fair trade chocolate was sold to the audience. We explained to people how more of the profit from fair trade chocolate is given to the people who work hard to grow the cocoa. People were very generous and all bars were sold out on the night.
After the break we were greeted by the ‘Special Guests’, Jennifer Bernie, who stunned us with her amazing voice, and finally ‘The Green’ with their fantastic original songs as well as the ‘Killers’ classic ‘Smile like you mean it’. ‘The Green’ much deserved their win.
Amnesty International’s secondary school representative Karen O’Reilly was present at the event. She presented the winning band with their prize and also gave a speech. During her speech Karen O’Reilly spoke of the Control Arms Million Faces campaign and encouraged people to contact Amnesty International on www.amnesty.ie. She also spoke of the bebo account http://Amnesty-Ireland.bebo.com, which Amnesty International have recently set up to get young people interested in Amnesty International and their campaigns.
Karen O’Reilly was amazed at how much had been raised over the course of the night, saying “Thank you for raising such a fantastic amount of money”.
The people who attended thoroughly enjoyed the night and were happy to be involved in such a worthy cause.
From Amnesty... This event was fantastic, lots of money was raised, fair trade chocolate was sold, and faces were added to the million faces campaign. Well done guys, YOU ROCK! See photos...
Films and Photography:
The VOC films and photography project, which involved 200 students and 10 filmmakers and photographers, is nearing completion. The project's aim is to create short films and photography that express students' human rights concerns. The works are currently in the process of being edited and developed. The photographs will be exhibited and films screened in Filmbase in Dublin on May 16th and 17th and there will be a screening at the IFI on May 17th. The films will also be screened at Cork Film Festival in September.
March 2006: On 25th March, the Amnesty International Student and Youth Conference took place in Cultivate Sustainable Living Centre in Dublin. 120 young people and teachers, including students from 5 VOC schools, attended the event. The students took part in various workshops throughout the day includng a "Make Some Noise" workshop, which proved to be exremely popular. In the afternoon the students held a demonstration march down Dame Street and through Temple Bar. Dressed in 'bloody' (red paint) t-shirts to repesent the victims of the arms trade and carrying a giant clock to represent the fact that 1 person a minute is killed by armed conflict the students performed a dramatic demonstration outside the central bank. The event was featured on News Today, RTE2's youth news programme.
February 2006: On Valentine's Day and throughout the month of February, Amnesty groups, members and supporters all around the country began selling fairly-traded Friendship Bracelets. The bracelets are made by Central American street children and can be ordered from Amnesty and sold for 2 euro each in your school. To order, or for more information, call 056 7753892 or email fbd@amnesty.ie .
January 2006: 16th January: Screening of Pavee Lackeen in association with Irish Film Institute with talk by Martin Collins, assistant director, Pavee Point
18th January: Screening of Pavee Lackeen with talk by Perry Ogden, director
24th January: Screening of Pavee Lackeen
December 2005: 9th December: 10 filmmakers and photographers began visiting 10 schools to work on short films and photography exploring students' human rights concerns.
October 2005:
On 25th October, the Voice Our Concern book of plays and workshops was launched at the Ombudsman for Children's Office, Dublin. There were a number of speakers at the launch including Anne Looney, the Chief Executive of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, who talked about how important it is to hear young people's voices on the content of the curriculum, focusing particularly on a new text message service that is being set up for students to feedback their thoughts on how maths is taught in schools. Hugo Hamilton, the writer of the Voice Our Concern play performed at the launch then spoke about the importance of projects such as Voice Our Concern in broachings issues like prejudice.
Students from Wesley College, Dublin, perform at the Voice Our Concern launch
Nick Harvey, a student from Newpark Comprehensive, Blackrock, talked about the work that the school did with Conor McPherson on the play First Person in Newpark, where students performed monologues based on teachers' lives and vice versa. He also spoke about how the voices of young people can make a significant impact on human rights issues. Finally, Emily Logan, the Ombudsman for Children, spoke about the role of the Ombudsman in promoting the rights and interests of young people under the age of 18 in Ireland, and how Voice Our Concern fits into this. Hugo Hamilton's play was then performed by a group of transition year students from Wesley College, Dublin, directed by Niall MacMonagle. The play explored the prejudices and misunderstandings between two groups of people who come to realise they have more in common than they think. The launch also featured exhbitions of pictures and poetry on human rights issues, produced by young people as part of Voice Our Concern. |
