A GROUND-BREAKING new festival will see leading writers, filmmakers, musicians and visual artists appearing alongside human rights campaigners and people working across health and social care to discuss human rights and the right to health in Scotland.
Declaration, at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow from March 3-6, is the result of a unique partnership between NHS Health Scotland, the Mental Health Foundation, the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland and the University of Strathclyde.
All have come together as part of Scotland’s National Action Plan on Human Rights and the festival is one result. It builds on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s commitment to “do even more, even better on incorporating human rights in Scotland”.
Declaration will feature 30 events – a mix of film screenings, performances, debates, workshops and provocations – each inspired by one of the 30 articles in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The focus will be on how human rights and the right to health come alive in Scotland today.
All events are free and a limited number of day and single-event tickets can be reserved at www.declarationfest.com.
WHO WILL BE THERE?
THOSE taking part in Declaration include novelist Louise Welsh and architect Jude Barber; performance poets Jenny Lindsay, right, and Rachel McCrum; Amal Azzudin of the Glasgow Girls; Kate Pickett, co-author of international best-seller The Spirit Level; the feminist collective TYCI; Psychologists against Austerity; Freedom from Torture; and the anti-stigma campaign See Me.
Among the highlights is a special pre-release preview screening of The Divide, the film version of The Spirit Level, followed by a debate about the impact of inequality on health, well-being and prosperity featuring prominent political commentators Joyce McMillan and Alex Massie along with Kate Pickett.
Other screenings are this year’s Oscar-nominated documentary He Named Me Malala, about the right to education, and a 50th-anniversary screening of Cathy Come Home – director Ken Loach’s hugely influential 1966 TV play about homelessness – followed by a discussion on health, homelessness and human rights.
Meanwhile, Welsh and Barber will be joining performance poet Dorothea Smartt to revive their acclaimed Empire Cafe project exploring Glasgow’s connection with the slave trade, and a panel of health and media commenters will discuss the presumption of innocence through the lens of hit Netflix series Making a Murderer.
WHAT ELSE IS ON?
THE events at the festival are all quite different. For Article 14, the right to asylum, Amal Azzudin of the Glasgow Girls campaign will gather together three generations of asylum seekers to share their experiences.
For Article 15, the right to a nationality, the poet Rachel McCrum, who is originally from Northern Ireland but has lived in Scotland, England and New Zealand, will be curating a performance event looking at what it means to make a new home.
Jenny Lindsay, the other half of Rally & Broad, is curating the festival’s closing performance, with some new work by Scottish performers inspired by the idea of the right to leisure. Other events aren’t really arts events at all – on Saturday afternoon, for example, the Psychologists Against Austerity campaign will be hosting a workshop looking at the impact of welfare cuts on mental health.
IS THERE MORE?
IN many cases the festival is focusing on those currently being denied the rights in the articles. For example for Article 6, the right to recognition as a person before the law: transgender activist Nathan Gale – who identifies as non-binary – will be leading an event about what it’s like not to have your gender recognised by the law.
Gale, right, is a trans queer disabled artist, activist and lawyer and worked as policy officer for the Scottish Transgender Alliance before moving on to a law traineeship with the Crown Procurator Fiscal Service. Gale will lead a panel discussion on legal rights for people who identify as other than men and women.
For Article 3, the TYCI Collective will be asking a few different artists to make pieces about how misogyny affects women’s right to life, liberty and personal security – as well as hosting a women’s safety workshop on the Sunday morning.
WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
THE festival is very much a joint initiative between the four organisations behind it.
“The idea is to start a conversation about health and human rights, and the right to health; something all four organisations are very invested in for different reasons,” explained Andrew Eaton-Lewis, arts lead for the Mental Health Foundation.
“In terms of programming, it’s being led by the same core team of programmers behind the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (SMHAFF)”.
Added Eaton-Lewis: “We’ve discovered through SMHAFF that arts activity is a really effective way of opening up conversations about health – telling stories, which is what artists are really good at, can help to humanise health issues and make them relatable.
“We’ve tried to programme a festival that will feel exciting and fun. Part of the idea behind numbering the events from one to 30 is that we hope people will come for the day, or the weekend, and tick off a few events. And all of it is free!”
For the full programme go to www.declarationfest.com
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