This national public art initiative draws on women's creative talent - primarily in the form of visual arts - to raise awareness about, and spur action to protect, children's rights. Fifty women artists and poets, 46 of whom are South African, collaborated to produce over 20 billboards all across the country that focus on the issue of children’s rights and welfare(click here to view the products of these collaborative efforts). The women involved represent a diverse range of cultures, and include emerging through established professionals.

Specifically, the process involved collaboration between a visual artist and a poet, such that each produced a work informed by the other on the topic of children's rights, resulting in what is meant to be a product reflecting a creative dialogue between the two mediums. Each billboard features one of the collaborations, which includes an artwork and accompanying poem. At least 2 billboards have been flighted in every province and each of South Africa’s 11 official languages are represented in the poetry; this strategy reflects a commitment to multilingualism and diversity.

In addition to the national billboard campaign, this initiative involves the creation of hand-made portfolio boxes containing the art and poetry, which are being displayed at international exhibitions. In addition, the art and poetry collaborations were collated into a full-colour, A4 size book. Titled look at me - Women Artists and Poets Advocate Children's Rights, this collection includes photographs of some of the billboards, as well as essays and research by a variety of contributors from the fields of children's rights and art advocacy. All of the translated excerpts from the poems featured in the billboard campaign appear in the book.

Children, Rights.

Jan Jordaan, AFH Director, explains that the billboard advocacy campaign is motivated by a "commitment to social development which is based on the observation that societies with a strong history of public art do not struggle with the endemic problems that we associate with the developing world." According to Jan Jordaan, this can be attributed to the fact that art and poetry can inspire the viewer and therefore society with the values associated with good art and poetry. These values include, 'creativity, freedom of expression, respect for the individual, excellence, reflection, pride and dignity, maturity, heritage, development and achievement'. These are all the values embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in turn the basis for sustainable democracy and development.

look at me - Women Artists and Poets Advocate Children's Rights is available from AFH for ZAR175 excluding postage; contact afh@dut.ac.za