Estevan Diversified Services is teaming up with the Estevan Comprehensive School’s art department to breath new life into the list of human rights by creating a colourful and easy to understand book.
After receiving a $40,000 grant from the Government of Saskatchewan through the Community Literacy Fund in April 2014, EDS looks poised to create a graphic human rights handbook for people with intellectual disabilities by delivering a clearer level of writing and visual representations of each right.
The progress so far has been extremely positive.
“This project has the potential to have a large impact on many people’s lives,” said Connie Wahlmeier, project co-ordinator at EDS. “Some intellectually disabled people don’t understand that they have rights.”
Several meetings among EDS employees regarding what kind of project they should pursue with the grant were held after the grant was obtained. The lack of an easy to understand outline of the Saskatchewan human rights, combined with the expressed interest from ESL and family literacy groups who also appreciated the idea of a simplified human rights book, eventually resulted in EDS focusing on a human rights book.
“Human rights are frequently discussed,” Wahlmeier said. “And with the recent opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg we felt a book that simplified those rights was an excellent idea.”
This idea also includes the work of six art students from ECS, overseen by their teacher Wade Kotelo, who selected students for this project based on their ability and interest. Kotelo noted some of the challenges the students initially encountered, including coming up with an overall art style.
“Everyone had different styles and different approaches, which is great, but this project has to have a unified look,” he said.
After some discussion, the group decided to go with a “cut-paper, photographic approach,” Kotelo said, which includes pieces of cut paper forming an image.
“It has a graphic look but also has a handmade quality to it as well that gets everyone on the same playing field, and it’s new to everybody,” he explained. “They can work in their own styles in the concept work, character development and composition work, but when we make our decisions about what we want to push forward with we go with a new medium that disguises style.”
Each image will be glued down and pressed under glass. The next step is going to be coming up with ways to visually represent the book’s characters and their disabilities, both physical and mental, in an intellectual and respective manner. A trip to EDS in September assisted with this process and allowed students to gain some perspective on some of its clients.
“We also want to have characters that demonstrate diverse races, genders and body types, because not everyone is cut from the same cloth,” Kotelo said.
Two of the Grade 10 students working on the project, Isabelle Beahm and Rezoona Khin, displayed some of their concept art during an interview with the Mercury, and it was clear there was no shortage of creativity and enthusiasm towards the project.
“Art is a huge part of my life, so being able to help others understand that they have rights through something I like doing is really exciting,” Isabelle said.
Rezoona also noted the human rights book will serve as an excellent portfolio piece.
The students are working twice a week on the project and on some weekends.
EDS was one of many other agencies that are involved with family and workplace literacy in Saskatchewan that received the extra funding earlier this year in order to develop new teaching tools.
Wahlmeier said they have until May 2015 to finish the project.
