So after lunch we are continuing to
share resources for you and your
students.
Our next speaker is Heidi Diedrich, the
executive director of Arts works
projects for Human Rights a post she
assumed in July 2016 after working in
human rights in the Middle East for
nearly five years she brings a diverse
background in international development
and photography, complementing more than
two decades of leadership experience and
nonprofit communications. From 2011 to
2016 Diedrich was based in Iraq and
served in leadership roles with
international and nongovernmental
organizations focused on international
development, emergency humanitarian
response, and advocacy. Diedrich was also
director of Metrography, the first Iraqi
photo agency where she led efforts to
operationalize the agency and
established a non-profit training center
focused on cultivating an independent
Iraqi media, and ethical human rights
reporting in the Middle East. Diedrich
has held various other leadership roles
with U.S. nonprofit and for-profit
organizations, since beginning her
professional career as a photojournalist.
She holds a bachelor of science degree
from Southern Illinois University in
Carbondale, where she studied photography,
journalism, and communications. Please
welcome her.
Thank you very much.
Let's see, it's really wonderful to be
here and share the story of artworks
projects for Human Rights which is based
here in Chicago but it's an
international nonprofit organization. I
am particularly pleased to be here
because I come from a family of
educators. My mother was an art teacher
in public school for 30 years, and my
sister and her husband are both
elementary school principals in illinois.
And so you have both an advocate and an
admirer of all the work that you do. I
know that I could not do it. So thank you
very much for the work that you do. I
really am also excited to introduce
artworks projects
to you as a overarching organization
that uses art and design to address
human rights abuses globally.
We are international in scope, but have a
really strong footprint in Chicago and a
commitment to the city of Chicago. We do
a lot of programming both at our studio
in River North where we have a art
gallery plus studio space for holding
community conversations, but we also do a
lot of outreach with the Chicago
Public Schools. The Chicago Public
Libraries and then events around the
city.
This is an image that I wanted to show
you because it really goes back to when
artworks began. We are entering, we
entered our... I forget it's November. We
entered our 10th anniversary season this
fall after starting in 2006 with a
concept that we would use a documentary
photography and documentary film in
large projections in prominent public
spaces around the world to show people
what human rights abuses are
occurring. Artworks projects identifies
human rights issues that often are not
getting a lot of attention. They might
not receive much media attention, or if
they do it's sort of a flash in the pan
and the world moves on. It also covers
issues that often lack the political
will to address those issues both
internationally as well as in nations
around the world. This was one of our
first exhibits, was shown in Paris.
We've shown our work in all
six continents
still thinking about how to
do something on the seventh, but in many
cities and countries around the world.
Before I go further I thought that I
could show you a video of our
organization and our 10th anniversary
that will give you a bit of a snapshot
of the work we do and where we've
shown our work.
We're very excited to be entering our
10th anniversary season doing tremendous
work both in the United States as well
as internationally to help educate
people and raise awareness about the
issues, that affect us all
As a refugee really touching my heart
when I read the story and also seen the
picture. I really feel appreciated that
they are being treated like normal human
beings.
Our building is full of future voters,
future leaders, future decision-makers
and any kind of access we can give them
to know their global neighbors, I think
is always a good thing and images are
great for them.
The students have been able to see how
artists can use the knowledge of the
visual arts, and convey a message. I want
the students to continue to have these
conversations, and to see images, and to get
them thinking about how art can have a
power.
It truly falls upon us as individuals
and as global citizens to demand change
so that we can put an end to human
rights abuses around the world. And so
well it's a little promotional in nature
I thought that I could show you this
video in part to show you that while
we're a global organization, we are
tremendous resource here in Chicago and
we truly are committed to continuing the
work that we're doing in Chicago both
covering human rights, sorry human rights
abuses as well as partnering with
educators and schools and youth groups
in the summer to bring youth into
human rights advocacy through art and
design. In this video we had two Chicago
public school teachers talking about
Workshop to Change The World, which I
will speak about in a moment because
that's our program that is in chicago
public schools.But I wanted to just
really first talk about why we're using
design in the arts to advocate for human
rights, we really believe that it's
important to know statistics and how
many people are displaced in the world,
and know about issues from a more
academic perspective, but we also truly
believe that we have to put a face on
those who are survivors and victims of
human rights abuses.  We really believe
that through the arts and we use
primarily documentary film and
photography that we can connect people
to a common purpose and that it
reinforces a shared sense of humanity. We
also believe it connects people to
issues that the otherwise would be
disconnected from. So oftentimes if
you're not on fully aware of or have
some kind of a personal connection to a
human rights issue, you might feel that
it's just happening
over there. When indeed many human rights
abuses are happening right here in our
own backyard.
As the introduction stated, I just
returned from doing human rights work in
Iraq for five years, and one of the
issues i worked on in Iraq was torture.
And we were anti-torture obviously but
we were working on helping Iraq fulfill
their obligation under the UN
Convention Against Torture which they
signed. At the same time that I was
working on that project and preparing a
report for release to the government of
Iraq and the Kurdistan Region
government, the very next day, the
day before I presented the report the
Senate committee report in the United
States came out and torture.  And so it
really brought home to me two things, one
was that I was doing really important
work in the Middle East ,but there was a
lot of important work to do at home. And
the second was that I would try to
pursue work with an organization that
tells the story of human rights issues
from a perspective that's a little more
personal and that allows me to continue
this work in bridging human rights
issues in the United States to those in
other parts of the world because at the
end of the day human rights truly are a
global issue. They are borderless. And
that if we can approach it from a
perspective of the global citizen and
the responsibility we have, we can
then hopefully make some progress.  And
from our perspective engaging youth in
this is critical because human rights as
a concept is a fairly new point
of discussion in this world only several
decades old
in terms of the legal ramifications
related to human rights abuses in
relation to it being a formal discipline.
And so there are a lot of us
I'm not that old but I'm not that young
there are a lot of us doing this work
and making progress, but we really
believe that it's the next generation of
youth who are are said to have more of a
foundation and social justice and
understanding human rights issues that
they can take the work that we've done
and really make some positive change.
We also believe that our approach
humanizes issues and provides an
accessible platform for educating people
about human rights. We also believe that
the way that we're approaching it with
you saw 270 partners in the last 10
years. With partners around the world
that we're really making it possible to
be educated and understand about an issue
and then inspire people to action. And
that action can be volunteering, it can be
changing careers which I did to go into
human rights work. It can be writing a
senator or a representative. It can be
marching in the streets.
Our goal is to put that information out
there, to help people understand through
images and through film the stories of
people who both are victims of human
rights abuses as well as those who work
to protect them, and then make a decision
on if and how you want to be engaged and
and be active. Most importantly perhaps
is that through using documentary film
and documentary photography, we're able to
give a voice to those who otherwise
might not be heard in particular because
we're covering human rights issues that
are often not covered.
We also are working closely with those
who work to protect survivors of human
rights abuses around the world, to tell
the story of the complexities of
addressing human rights. There are
many different layers of how you go
about supporting victims of human rights
abuses from legal to mental health
services to providing safe passage
for the the individual who's the victim
of the human rights to get to safety and
then of course it it really hopefully
reinforces that human rights are global
borderless and that we all as global
citizens on have a responsibility but
also have a role in how governments
and how communities address human rights
abuses. One thing I wanted to
mention was that our model even in the
United States even though we're a
chicago-based organization our model is
the same around the world in terms of
how we approach a project and we teach
this also through our workshop to change
the world to use so that they can
understand how to ensure that a
perspective on an issue should be
inclusive, and that we all come to issues
with various points of view, and so it's
important to engage and include people
from the communities that you are
addressing human rights issues about so
what we do is we identify human rights
issue that we would like to pursue as a
project.We connect with local
organizations that are working on those
issues, and then we identify local
artists local photographers and
filmmakers. So we did that here in the
United States. We worked with the u.s.
photographer on this project "Transitions,"
and then we worked with a panel of
experts on transitional justice which is
what this exhibit is about. This exhibit
is actually about transitional justice
in four countries. In Columbia, Bosnia,
The Democratic Republic of Congo, and the
United States .Moving forward, will
continue to approach it from a global
perspective, including the United States
when we can, again reinforcing that human
rights issues aren't just happening
another
parts of the world but they are also
happening here in the United States. I
thought again i think watching a video
about how this this exhibit came about
would do it much more justice than me up
here as a talking head so let me...
"Transitions," is an exhibition and it's
also a process. We've come together foru
different countries to discuss our
post-conflict transitional justice
journey.
Some of us are a hundred and fifty years
into the transitional justice process,
and some of us are really trying to get
to a post-conflict scenario.
Having this workshop has open our minds
to different countries who have gone
either to a tradition or has gone to a
peaceful process hearing the experiences
from Bosnia from Congo and the U.S. We
there are some underlying themes that
that overlap with us and is in South
America are so close to an American
audience it sometimes people forget the
things that we've gone through. We are a part of
this international team we're really
proud of it. This has been very
important experience for us, because it's
not unusual to have like this kind of
opportunities to share stories about
conflict. It will be a window local people
talking about himself at the same time,
an occasion to bring all these
different experience around the world
put it together and exchange the best
practice from each country. So i think
it's a wonderful idea or asset you're
like Africa there's a particular benefit
in bringing our work into international
context were very interested in sharing
with global audiences the realities that
are taking place in Congo and creating
invitations and possibilities for people
who are concerned about this to get
involved in ways that are positive that
are empowering that have to do with
mutual exchange.
I had the opportunity to take apart in
telling the story of Bosnia's transition
after this recent genocide. We wanted to
take an approach, trying to show the
process that is still ongoing. So this
was a big experience for me to meet
people from other countries to hear
their problems in the country how they
try to solve it. I can use their
experience in my storytelling.
One of the things that we've learned
through this workshop in Chicago, you can
build solidarity by opening up this
exchange and making it an international
topic.
It allows for people to freely engage
perhaps with less intimidation and a bit
more interesting curiosity. A lot of the
work that I've provided focuses on race
relations in America, I think it's really
important to understand historically why
we are in the same situation that we
were in years ago and understand that
journey we've had when we understand how
systemic oppression has affected
different groups, that's when we realized
what needs to be done now so I want
people walking away from this with the
desire to work together. That's when
we'll really see changes. We would like
people to come to the exhibition or
access it online
and to feel that there are tools out
there for justice. And hopefully this all
comes together to give this very dynamic
commission of what transitional justice
is and why it matters to the individuals
that live in a society.
So the reason I wanted you to have a
sort of a sense of our approach in terms
of how we put together projects, but
these are also a couple of images from
the actual exhibit. The approach that we
take in pulling together a project
and collaborating with people to
identify a human rights issue and then
how we're going to as a team illustrate
if you will, is also the model that we
use in our in outreach with youth
engagement in the Chicago Public Schools.
This is a from Bosnia, the International
Committee on missing persons, I'm not
sure if you've heard of it. It's related
to enforced disappearances which is when
people disappear at the hands of a
government or government at the hands of
the government or a government actor. And
so although the conflict ended years ago
The results of that war continued to
live on. This is a displaced family in
Colombia, as we all know the Columbia
peace process, peace agreement was not
approved and so this family has been
displaced because of the militia
fighting. This is in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, it's a young woman who
now has access to education. The
government in 2010, passed a law that
primary education would be free, and so
it opened up opportunity for millions of
students. And this is a tobacco
farmer in North Carolina and the United
States. In the United States we looked
at property and land rights as part of
the transitional justice
issue and transitional justice and
basically layman's terms is when a
government tries to redress or make
right past human rights abuses and so it
can be through legislative changes it
can be through reparations, it can be
through a myriad of ways including
acknowledging that those human rights of
his abuses happened. That actually is one
of the first steps toward moving
forward and providing transitional
justice is government's actually
admitting and being accountable to the
past human rights abuses that they've
been engaged in. Which then, now leads me
to the youth engagement part of what we
do. I wanted to give you the framing of
the organization again, to understand
that our approaches collaborative,
that a lot of work and workshopping goes
into how we identify issues under an
umbrella human rights topics such as
transitional justice and how we bring in
educators, artists, community activists,
government actors, to look at the issue
from a variety of angles to ensure that
the way that we are approaching it as
best as possible, honors the victims
of those human rights abuses, honors the
government or I'm sorry the country in
which those abuses occurred. At this
sorry you can't see it very well, but
one thing that we will be doing is
mentioned in my introduction I've just
assumed responsibility for this
organization in July, after the founder
Leslie time has stepped down after 10
years. She's still on our board of
directors but I'm shepherding in a new
era for the organization, one that will
continue the work in Chicago while
continuing to build our footprint internationally.
 
In Iraq, I did a lot of work
with youth in a part in particular with
adolescents who is somewhat of a
forgotten population there. There is a
lot of programming around children up
to about the age of 10 or 11, or there
was pre Isis a lot of the funding that's
available now is going directly to
addressing the issue of Isis in in Iraq
and emergency humanitarian response, but
almost fifty percent of the population
of Iraq is under the age of 24 years old.
And so youth is something that I'm
incredibly passionate about and care
deeply about four reasons I've already
stated including the fact that I think
they really offer us the best hope for
long-term change. They can influence and
I know I'm preaching to the choir
here, but they can influence and make
change. And we really do need to engage
them and bring them into a discussion
about social justice and human rights. I
really think it's quite important that
we are very thoughtful and deliberate
about how we engage youth, but that we do
bring them into the discussion because
they have opinions and they have ideas
and they have thoughts about what they
want to happen in their communities and
in the world, and in Chicago and in the
United States. At the same time we
really have to be thoughtful about how
we work with them in this age of
everybody being a documentarian,
everybody having a smartphone, everybody
being able to capture a moment and share
it broadly without really necessarily
thinking about how that that might
impact both the person that's the
subject of the video or photo or impact
on the issue more broadly. Ao through our
our work with youth we teach them to tap
into their own creative talents to
illustrate ways in which they can talk
about issues, but we also reinforced to
them that with that comes great
responsibility.
And so I don't have to tell you all,
or most people that technology has
changed the way people get their
information and share their information,
and are our goal is to help youth and
all people but youth in particular
through our workshop to change the world,
understand how they can do that in a
thoughtful in a responsible way. We also
really believe that our model is
powerful and showing that images and
technology can be used in a thoughtful
way to shape human rights dialogue. UNHCR
is shifting actually a little bit
their strategy away from just reporting
numbers and images of people washing up
on the shores of Greece and other parts
of Europe and fleeing the war in
Syria and in other parts of the world
to trying to do more with illustrating
and showing the actual human face of
the displacement that's happening
globally right now. So we really do
believe that we can use images and then
technology because we can disperse the
information globally to shape human
rights dialogue and hopefully help
educate people to understand a different
side of the story.
We also realize that we have to really
balance the sense of entitlement to
photograph everything with the ethical
responsibility of sharing it and so
we've seen in particular in the last
couple of years in the United States
examples of this where violence against
african-americans has been caught on
tape, police brutality and then an
uprising. And so being conscious of
where information information that we
gather is shared and how it's used or
misused.
And really intersecting between arts and
design and human rights so that youth
can walk away with concrete ways of
understanding how it can be a powerful
medium for them to be able to share
their perspective. As I mentioned, we are
in an image driven world, and where, and I
think that you know I was thinking about
this top that the title which a
millennial gave me in my office. I
was thinking about the title and
actually when we think about issues that
we really care about and issues that
either moved us to anger or tears or
joy or maybe they made us laugh. We
often do think of it in an image ,so if
you think about something in the
history of time that's really affected
you
we often think about it in a still image
first, and so theoretically I think we've
always been visual people that think
about life and think about experiences
through images. The difference now is
that were able to share it in a in a
flash, and not really even oftentimes
think about it we take the picture we
share it and then do we stop and think
oh should I have shared that? In
particular with youth, 71% of
teams according to Pew,  research
are on more than one social networking
site and middle and upper-income teens
are leaning toward an Instagram and
Snapchot. Snapshot is as you know a
snapshot of them information like that.
So how can we get them to use this
technology to in a way that's thoughtful
and respectful when talking about issues
such as human rights? We also know
that they're using social media in ways
that possibly could have been imagined
years ago another study from Pew found
that people are really feeling that
social media helps them get involved
with issues they care about
out and that it brings new voices to the
political conversation.
This was a study that was done this
summer, specifically related to on the
current presidential election but really
we've seen and this is not earth
shattering, but we've really seen a
seismic shift and how people are getting
their information. There's so much
information out there how do we make
sure that that information is ethical
or is accurate and being
ethically presented and so with us
while we're an arts organization that
advocates for human rights through
photography and documentary film, we take
very seriously the issue of ethics and
the issue of human rights related to
reporting on Human Rights so what is the
right of the the victim if
you will, or the right of the survivor of
that human rights abuse, and how are we
portraying those issues.  These are
conversations that we have
with youth when we do our programming
workshop to change the world is one
next-gen committee is another an
emerging lens. Workshop to change the
world is a really wonderful program that
we started six years ago and again it's
in the Chicago Public Schools. When the
program was started we tried to forge a
partnership with the administration of
CPS, but have today been
unsuccessful in doing so, and so what
we've done now is just partner with not
just now what we've done is partner with
individual chicago public schools often
organically through contacts that we
have or through friends who have
children in different schools, this is
my plea that if you're in the Chicago
Public Schools and would like to bring
our programming to your school we would
love to. And it is a really cool, powerful,
remarkable, amazing program I am as I
said passionate about youth
and I'm passionate about photography and
I'm passionate about human rights so
this is my one of my favorite projects
we've done on the programming for more
than 600 schools in six years.
i'm currently working on trying to get
the product the program itself a pool of
funding so that we have sustainability
it costs you nothing, all of our
programs are actually free with artworks
projects that's part of our
mission and part of our commitment to
bringing human rights issues to the
masses if you will.
We are able to do programming with
students from third grade to 12th grade.
And I have some pictures here but i will
tell you a little bit about can you see
those okay hopefully, workshop to change
the world brings into the classroom for
a day or on a series of workshops split
up over a couple hours or however the
school and the teacher wants to do it we
are flexible, we design a program that
will work in that classroom we bring
artists into the school with us we often
start with a foundational issue that art
works projects has covered in the past,
and talk about art and the power of the
visual arts and visual media in
addressing human rights issues or social
justice issues we also talked about what
is social justice.  We make sure the
issues are benign we don't bring in a
lot of the other some issues that might
be a little upsetting to a younger
population, but we also don't sugarcoat
some of the issues so it's important we
think to bring into the dialogue what
kind of issues are occurring both in
Chicago and around the world.
We then have the students break up into
small groups, or if they want to work
individually again it's driven by
the model that the educators want and
that the students will respond to and they then
work to identify an issue in their
neighborhood or community that they
would like to illustrate or
share their perspective and their
opinion through art. Sorry.
And then we workshop. And they go about
it
developing a project you can see
some of the students I think on that you
can see a mentor up here they could be
it could be a painting it could be a
sketch it could be a screenplay for a
film it could be poetry it could be a
musical piece it could be photography
it can really be whatever that student
wants, or the group of student wants
to illustrate the issue.
Not surprisingly especially over the
last few years gun violence has been a
big one.
I'm trying to think, I think I yeah, gun
violence has been a big issue in Chicago
the the point of the workshop is to have
the students identify what they want to
talk about and share their perspective
on and they develop a project around
that. We then, you can see up here, we
usually exhibit the work either up
in the school at a minimum, but also at
our studio at 625 North Kingsbury Street
in Chicago so we want to be able to show
the students that they can use their
talents and interests in a myriad of
artistic disciplines to talk about
issues that they otherwise might not
feel comfortable bringing up or that
they might be thinking about but haven't
really found a way to just talk about.
And then we have the artists work with
them and mentor them about how you can
go about addressing human rights
issues social justice issues through art
and then we exhibit it. So I think it's a
pretty cool program we've had wonderful
responses you saw in the
first video the two public school
teachers who have done the program many
times. Another project that we have
and I am almost done I promise, but
another project that we have is next-gen
and so this might be the age might be a
little older than your the folks you
work with, but it is a youth engagement
strategy for us. 35 is not youth
thirties is not youth but it is a strategy
that we use to bring younger people into
the discussion of human rights
advocacy and the work that we do. We did
a survey with people in this age around
this age range in chicago and the
findings told us that this age group
wants to be involved, but they don't have
money to donate and they're tired of
being asked to donate money and they
want to find another way to be
meaningfully engaged that isn't just
coming to stuff envelopes or folders for
an event or work a registration table
but how can they actually have a say in
what kinds of issues are introduced in
the public discourse.  And so we started
the next-gen committee so
we actually tap into them and in many
ways. One is to do events to bring in a
younger group of people into our
organization into our events into the
kind of work that we do. Another is to
tell us or counsel us,  give input, give
perspective on how we can continue to
grow our youth engagement strategy for
younger people building on workshop to
change the world, but looking at other
program ideas and then they also give us
project concepts and so we are seeking
feedback from this next-gen committee
about issues that are affecting their
generation or their age group both in
the United States and globally, and how
we might plan, it takes about 18
months obviously to plan a project but
how we might put those projects into the
pipeline so that we can make sure that
we're we're gaining perspective from a
younger population.
And then finally emerging lens. Emerging
lens is also one project that is very
near and dear to my heart, it is a photo
a juried photo competition for emerging
photojournalists age 27 and under. We've
done two emerging lens competitions and
we will be launching hopefully our third.
I'm seeking funding for that to,  but
hopefully launching our third in
December. I had a video but i think i'm
going to skip that because the sound
is pretty bad on this emerging lens
recipient winner, Emanuel he did a
documentary store photo story on the 43
disappeared students from the teacher
college in Mexico. We just closed this
exhibit this summer,  but we're hoping
to, I'm hoping to tour it, including he's
very very brave he would like to tour it in
Mexico. I think we're negotiating that
because of his security but Emmanuel
lives in Guillero State which is where the
teachers college is.  He did a remarkable
photo essay that looked at the families
of the disappeared. The 43 students have
still have not been found there was an
investigation by the inter-american
council they were asked to leave Mexico
because they found that it looked as
if the police and possibly the Mayor was
involved in the disappearance.
The UN has not investigated it because
the UN has to be invited into the
country to do the investigation. So for
Emanuel who was one of dozens of
applicants for the emerging lens
competition in 2015,
he felt that this story was critical to
keep putting pressure on the government
to tell the story of the victims through
the family's lens
and so he looked at the entire exhibit
is in black and white he looked at the
the altars trying to find a way to
illustrate victims without being so
obvious such as taking a picture of a
portrait. This is also a
massive altar of all the victims that
disappeared, and then he is going around
the country and photographing the
protests as well so this is an example
that we also would share with our
students when we're working with them to
talk to them about the different ways you
can cover an issue that maybe has
received a lot of coverage in the media
or cover an issue from a different
perspective such as the family story
rather than just talking about the
victim.
Emmanuel continues to do this work in
Mexico taking a great risk but really
was able to get a lot of mentoring from
a couple of professional photographers
that we work with including a photo
editor of a national publication in
the United States as well as us so they
apply for the competition.
The winner then has mentoring from us
to choose a topic that they want to
cover, and then we mentor them throughout
the entire process and then it
culminates an exhibit in June and so we
will launch this in December and the age
cap is 27, but we're looking for
photographers younger than 27 as well
and so you can find more information out
about that if you know anybody that
would want to be in this competition on
our website. And finally we do
community engagement
625 at 625 is a community conversation at
our 625 studio. This fall it's all around
transitional
justice. In the spring it will
be around sanctuary sustenance which is
the story the refugee journey story from
home to displacement to resettlement. We
have a program with the Chicago Public
Libraries for the first time this year
again focused on transitional justice in
the fall and refugees in the summer or
in the spring and then we do a myriad of
community events throughout the year. And
so I wanted to end just with this quote
from Eleanor Roosevelt because I think
it really captures what we're trying to
do in terms of taking global human
rights issues and localizing them. And I
know you can all read it but i'll read
it as well. Where after all do universal
human rights begin in a small place
close to home so close and so small that
they cannot be seen on any maps of the
world yet they are the world of the
individual person; the neighborhood he
lives in; the school or college he
attends; the factory the farm or office
where he works. And so through our work
what we're trying to do is really embody
that quote. wWe identify the issues that
others often are overlooking including
governments and international actors.
And we try to bring it to the community
level to get the community engaged in
understanding human rights issues and
then being advocates to try to hold
government accountable to stop those
abuses and we really
want to engage more youth. We
really want I really would love to be in
every Chicago Public School. It's going
to be a model that we are intending to
take to Europe next year and then
through the Middle East and Asia and
Africa in 2018 and so thank you for
indulging me. I hope that you can see
this is a great resource in Chicago
and we would be really willing able of
happy to work with all of you.
We also accept student groups coming
into our studio we have a beautiful work
classroom space
so we can come to you here you can come
to us so thank you very much.
