Human rights quilt

UDHR Article 18, by Pippa, Imperial War Museum activity day 

human rights quilt

AIM: To encourage students to learn about and understand the rights contained in the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by making a Human Rights Quilt illustrating each article in the declaration

AGE: 11 +

TIME: 2 hours

YOU WILL NEED:

  • Copies of the Summary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one between two students
  • The 30 articles of the UDHR Summary printed in large font on separate pieces of paper, one for each student in the class
  • Carbon paper
  • Pencils, erasers and rulers
  • Scrap paper
  • 30 A4 sheets of white cotton cloth or paper
  • If working on paper use: permant markers, felt tip pens or watercolour paint or coloured ink and brushes, or soft pastel or oil pastel


If working on cloth use: fabric pens, permanent markers, fabric inks or acrylic paint, brushes. (Fabric pens and inks will need ironing on to be permanent)

WHAT TO DO

Introduce the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to students, explain that this was the first international human rights treaty and was adopted by the United Nations on December 10 1948. Hand out a summary of the UDHR to each pair of students.

Explain to students that the UDHR sets out the fundamental rights and freedoms that belong to every individual in the world, whatever their background, gender, age, race or religion. Among other things it covers our entitlement to rights including our right to life, to be free from slavery, torture and ill treatment, to enjoy justice and equality, to express our opinions, to fairness, to democracy, to have a country, to own things, to marry and have a family, to health, housing and education.

Exploring the UDHR articles
Distribute one large print UDHR article to each student. Students should then get into pairs. Ask pairs to read their two articles, discuss what they mean, and work out a short and silent mime to show what each of their articles is about. Pairs then present their mimes to the rest of the class. Other students guess which article their mime referred to. Finally they read out their articles aloud.

Creating the human rights quilt

Each student will now create one square of the class Human Rights Quilt, illustrating their UDHR article.  Their sheets of paper or cloth should be upright - in the portrait position.

Students should draw a line across the top quarter of their sheet. In this area they should write the number of their article and then neatly and carefully trace out and colour in the words of their Article with the help of carbon paper.  

On scrap paper they should sketch out a picture or cartoon to illustrate their article. They may find it helpful to think about what they did to illustrate the article in their mime. They should then draw it out on their sheet and carefully colour it in. (If using cloth the material may need ironing to fix the colours).

Each of the illustrated sheets should then be shown to the rest of the class.

Finally each illustrated article should be glued or stitched in sequence onto a large coloured background sheet (of paper or cloth) headed THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS and put on display in the school.

Variations

A similar exercise can be carried out by

  • painting on tiles,
  • making  small clay models illustrating the articles
  • painting all the articles as a mural on a long wall
  • You could also carry this activity out with younger children by creating a quilt of the articles in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Other resources

Students making a banner for Amnesty's Shell Hell campaign