The International Day for People with Disabilities was marked with campaigners in Ireland calling for the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In Dublin's City Hall, meanwhile, pupils from 45 primary schools gathered to promote awareness of disabilities, with the winners of a national art competition being announced. Drivetime's Della Kilroy was there. Sponsored by the Department of Justice and Equality, the Someone Like Me initiative aims to promote conversation about disability at primary level. The competition received more than two thousand entries, ranging from posters and collages, to sculptural and multimedia pieces. Caomhán Mac Con Iomaire, from the Education Department of the National Gallery, was one of the competition's three judges:
"It's a wonderful initiative because it creates a conversation within the classroom of what disability is."
Caomhán told Della that the entries to the competition showed that those conversations had taken place in classrooms across the country. "Attitudes in Ireland have changed a lot over the last 20 years or so," he said, but added that there is still a lot more work to be done, and the younger that work starts, the better.
Della spoke to pupils from The Downs National School in Westmeath, who told her what they learned making their art project for Someone Like Me:
"Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg, will.i.am, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein had a disability. You can't always see a disability and we should treat everyone the same, no matter about their looks or how they are."
The outright winning entry announced in City Hall was from Killeevan National School in Monaghan. Their project comprised a book, in which each pupil took a page to illustrate their responses to various physical, emotional and societal changes.
You can hear Della Kilroy's full report from City Hall, as well as the rest of Monday's Drivetime here: