Events
Launching Seen and Heard
12-15 February 2024 [Audience: Project Consortium]
Berlin, Germany
What is creative protest and how can it, as a genre, make young people’s voices heard? During this transnational meeting, we explore creative protests, young people’s rights, and their understanding of freedom of expression through various artistic media, including docuseries production, comic book illustration, slam poetry, and community theatre.
Participating artists include: Kate Coleman, Charlie Cauchi, Uli Decker, Ed Dingli, Grips Theatre, and Hamburger Bahnhof.
Workshop: Illustrating Protest, with Chris Riddell
July - December 2024 [Audience: Project Participants Ages 12-14]
Online, Malta, Germany, and Poland
These workshops will be led by Chris Riddell, a multi-award winning artist and one of the UK’s top contemporary illustrators and cartoonists. He is often celebrated for his inclusion of themes of ‘otherness’ and tolerance in books for young audiences without ever becoming didactic or pedantic. His own books include the highly-acclaimed Ottoline titles and the 2013 Costa Children’s Book Award-winning Goth Girl. He was appointed the UK Children’s Laureate in 2015 in recognition of his outstanding achievements in children’s literature.
Storytelling Workshop, In Our Hands: How to Find Your Voice through Creativity, with Sita Brahmachari
9-12 October 2024
Malta
Sita Brahmachari will share her experiences from working in youth theatre, literature and communities with young people and families to find their voices as writers, artists, activists and creatives. The characters in Sita’s children and Young Adult novels struggle to make themselves seen and heard in real or imagined worlds, but through individual or communal efforts, do eventually discover the power that is in their hands to make small and big changes for the better. Workshop participants will be invited to step into these characters’ shoes, discuss their child rights and consider connections to their own lives. The session will be playful and highly interactive, using a call and response method of questions and answers to stimulate ideas. Participants will be invited to write, sketch and create banners and ‘In our Hands’ artwork about the child rights they are passionate about protecting.
Amnesty International Human Rights Education Teacher Training Programme
20 June 2025 [Audience: Educators]
Online
Part of the legacy of the Seen and Heard project is the generation and dissemination of a toolkit for educators. Through this programme, we will be training educators to understand and express themselves openly and carefully about the rights of children and young people to discuss what freedom of expression means in different countries and contexts, and what activism through art could do to open doors for all. More details to be announced in due course.
Roundtable: Literature and Human Rights Education [With the participation of Amnesty International]
10 October 2025 [Academics, Educators, Activists, Artists]
Online
Literature acts as a window into the lives of others and a mirror of our own. How can we use literature as an art form enabling educators and young people to have a conversation about human rights, such as women’s rights, judicial independence, freedom of expression and assembly? Amnesty International’s vast portfolio of books and literary projects for children and young adults aimed at discussing these themes can shed light on this.
Sita Brahmachari will also be sharing the ways in which her community storytelling and published stories have helped mobilise human rights education and advocacy.
Young People’s Voices and Freedom of Expression Conference
5-7 FEBRUARY 2026
Valletta, Malta
The conference will reflect academic diversity and host studies from across different fields of research and practice, academic methods, and cultural backgrounds. We welcome proposals for individual papers as well as panels. We particularly encourage graduate students, early-career scholars, artists, activists, educators, and practitioners to apply.
Roundtable: The Process of Production and Participation in Social Movements Led by Young Migrants
January 2026 [Academics, Educators, Artists, and Young People in Project Consortium]
Online
Hear, hear! Young migrants will run a session with us on social movements and the young participants in the Seen and Heard will share their creative protests. Together, we will explore the topics that young migrants are most passionate about: issues of inequity, good case practice of successful resourcing, the role schools play in facilitating freedom of expression, importance of community and intergenerational support. Book your place here.
Launching Seen and Heard
12-15 February 2024 [Audience: Project Consortium]
Berlin, Germany
What is creative protest and how can it, as a genre, make young people’s voices heard? During this transnational meeting, we explore creative protests, young people’s rights, and their understanding of freedom of expression through various artistic media, including docuseries production, comic book illustration, slam poetry, and community theatre.
Participating artists include: Kate Coleman, Charlie Cauchi, Uli Decker, Ed Dingli, Grips Theatre, and Hamburger Bahnhof.
Workshop: Illustrating Protest, with Chris Riddell
July - December 2024 [Audience: Project Participants Ages 12-14]
Online, Malta, Germany, and Poland
These workshops will be led by Chris Riddell, a multi-award winning artist and one of the UK’s top contemporary illustrators and cartoonists. He is often celebrated for his inclusion of themes of ‘otherness’ and tolerance in books for young audiences without ever becoming didactic or pedantic. His own books include the highly-acclaimed Ottoline titles and the 2013 Costa Children’s Book Award-winning Goth Girl. He was appointed the UK Children’s Laureate in 2015 in recognition of his outstanding achievements in children’s literature.
Storytelling Workshop, In Our Hands: How to Find Your Voice through Creativity, with Sita Brahmachari
9-12 October 2024
Malta
Sita Brahmachari will share her experiences from working in youth theatre, literature and communities with young people and families to find their voices as writers, artists, activists and creatives. The characters in Sita’s children and Young Adult novels struggle to make themselves seen and heard in real or imagined worlds, but through individual or communal efforts, do eventually discover the power that is in their hands to make small and big changes for the better. Workshop participants will be invited to step into these characters’ shoes, discuss their child rights and consider connections to their own lives. The session will be playful and highly interactive, using a call and response method of questions and answers to stimulate ideas. Participants will be invited to write, sketch and create banners and ‘In our Hands’ artwork about the child rights they are passionate about protecting.
Young People’s Voices and Freedom of Expression Conference
20-22 February 2025
Valletta, Malta
The conference will reflect academic diversity and host studies from across different fields of research and practice, academic methods, and cultural backgrounds. We welcome proposals for individual papers as well as panels. We particularly encourage graduate students, early-career scholars, artists, activists, educators, and practitioners to apply.
Amnesty International Human Rights Education Teacher Training Programme
20 June 2025 [Audience: Educators]
Online
Part of the legacy of the Seen and Heard project is the generation and dissemination of a toolkit for educators. Through this programme, we will be training educators to understand and express themselves openly and carefully about the rights of children and young people to discuss what freedom of expression means in different countries and contexts, and what activism through art could do to open doors for all. More details to be announced in due course.
Roundtable: Literature and Human Rights Education [With the participation of Amnesty International]
10 October 2025 [Academics, Educators, Activists, Artists]
Online
Literature acts as a window into the lives of others and a mirror of our own. How can we use literature as an art form enabling educators and young people to have a conversation about human rights, such as women’s rights, judicial independence, freedom of expression and assembly? Amnesty International’s vast portfolio of books and literary projects for children and young adults aimed at discussing these themes can shed light on this.
Sita Brahmachari will also be sharing the ways in which her community storytelling and published stories have helped mobilise human rights education and advocacy.
Roundtable: The Process of Production and Participation in Social Movements Led by Young Migrants
January 2026 [Academics, Educators, Artists, and Young People in Project Consortium]
Online
Hear, hear! Young migrants will run a session with us on social movements and the young participants in the Seen and Heard will share their creative protests. Together, we will explore the topics that young migrants are most passionate about: issues of inequity, good case practice of successful resourcing, the role schools play in facilitating freedom of expression, importance of community and intergenerational support. Book your place here.
