July 2015 Changing face of human rights is reflected through photography, drama and music

Ahead of its move to the UN Headquarters in New York, a photography exhibition commission by UNESCO in 1949, is to be presented by NUI Galway from 9-24 July. The images toured the world not long after World War II in an effort to build awareness and understanding of human rights, and following on from the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Now the exhibition, The Changing Face of Human Rights, which takes place in St. Nicholas Collegiate Church in the heart of Galway City, will be displayed alongside modern images demonstrating perceptions of human rights today.

The exhibition is an integral part the Galway International Summer School on the Arts and Human Rights that runs from 9-11 July at NUI Galway. The Summer School, organised by the Irish Centre for Human Rights, brings together arts and human rights practitioners to explore their shared space. Events take the form of panel discussions, exhibitions and performances as well as three parallel-track workshops on the topics of: literature and human rights; the visual arts and human rights; and music and human rights.

Performances during the Summer School will include a free public performance on Thursday 9 July at 8pm in the CUBE in Áras Na Mac Léinn in NUI Galway. The event will feature Ariel Dorfman’s drama, ‘Speak Truth to Power: Voices from Beyond the Dark’, directed by Professor Patrick Lonergan, Director of NUI Galway’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance.

This will be directly followed by a concert based around the piper Mickey Dunne who came from an Irish Travelling family who were steeped in the playing and protecting of Irish Music on the Uilleann Pipes. The concert will also feature his daughter Bríd on fiddle and the Galway established composer, musical director and pianist Carl Hession. Songs will be presented by the contemporary folk singer Mary Mc Partlan and the evening will be narrated by Professor Donncha O’Connell, Head of the Law School at NUI Galway.

“Practitioners in the areas of the arts and human rights, both of which are strongly aligned with issues such as social justice, cultural expression and cultural freedom, can learn from each other and understand each other much better”, explains Professor Michael O’Flaherty, Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway and co-director of the Summer School with Dr Dominique Bouchard, Curator at the Hunt Museum.

Professor O’Flaherty continued: “The Changing Face of Human Rights is a fascinating and moving photographic exhibition. Over time the display was ‘lost’ until re-curated last year by the Danish Institute of Human Rights. Now those historic photos will feature in Galway side-by-side with the winning images from our recent international photographic competition. In this context we get a sense of how some notions of human rights develop over time while others seem not to change at all.”

The photographic competition judges include Irish Times Photographic Editor Frank Millar, internationally renowned artist Paul Seawright, and Professor Rod Stoneman, irector of the Huston School of Film and Digital Media at NUI Galway. The exhibition is open from 10am to 5pm during normal public visiting times of the Church. Entry is free of charge and visitors are invited to make a small donation for Church upkeep.

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