For this year’s UN International Day for The Eradication of Poverty, Kids’ Own developed a creative workshops in partnership with Foróige’s Big Brother Big Sister (BBBS) programme in Sligo. Responding creatively to the theme of ‘Let Dignity be our Compass: Working together towards change to end persistent poverty’, young people aged 10-18, and their mentors, worked collaboratively with Associate Artist Andy Parsons and Associate Writer Sarah O’Keeffe during a workshop series. Working in response to the theme and the overall goal of ending poverty, our youth-led youth-centred approach allowed young people to engage in conversation and creative activities to consider a difficult subject.

Building upon the pre-existing support provided by BBBS mentorship, we invited young people and their mentors to work together within a safe, supported and creative space. By allowing room for their response and dialogue, we also facilitated a wider conversation around poverty and our collective responsibility in eradicating it.

“The theme for this year’s project was: Let Dignity be our Compass – Working together towards change to end persistent poverty.  Andy and I thought about the idea of using a “compass” as a starting point to generate ideas. Andy created a giant 10-foot-long compass that we laid on the floor, working together everyone began sharing ideas. We used the points of the compass as themes to inspire illustrations, paintings, writing, and knitted pieces resulting in a beautiful piece of art. The project theme was challenging and powerful, but we had a lot of fun and laughs throughout. It was such a pleasure to work with  Foróige and all the creative big brother big sister pairs, we hope to share all of their amazing work digitally in the near future! “– Sarah O’Keeffe

Andy said of the project, “We had the idea of using the compass motif as a starting point, so I created a giant paper one in the studio and we laid it out on the floor in the Crib for people to walk around and draw on. The compass is a simple yet powerful image, and was a great way of beginning conversations about the different ways poverty can affect people, and the possible pathways to positive change. The group had such mature and empathetic responses to the subject and the final artwork they created in only a few hours captures a great sense of solidarity and optimism.”

Look out for a digital publication due to be released soon!  You can see last years response here https://kidsown.ie/un-day-for-eradication-of-poverty-2022/

This project was kindly funded by Department of Social Protection.