You can be part of Small Places

Everyone can participate in Small Places in their own way. Just reach into that creative part of yourself or involve your creative friends. It’s easy, its fun – and it’s a great way to stand up for human rights.

Getting involved is easy

  • Decide what you want to do.
  • Register your event here.
  • Choose a person/community to champion here.
  • Download or order the resources you need here.
  • Ask for support here.

Looking for ideas? Here you go ….

Musicians and club owners

  • Are you a musician? Dedicate a scheduled concert to Small Places or do a special club or house concert.
  • Place a Small Places banner on your website. Donate concerts tickets, merchandise, music lessons or a back stage “meet-and-greet” experience.
  • Member of a school band? Play a Small Places school gig.
  • Ask your school choir to do a performance of social justice songs.
  • Club owner? Bring together musicians for a special Small Places show, use funky Small Places table coasters, feature a Small Places petition.

Register an Event

Actors, comedians, theatre directors

  • Dedicate a scheduled performance to Small Places, including an Amnesty petition and merchandise table.
  • Your acting company creates a variety show or cabaret evening, or presents an evening of readings on human rights themes.
  • Your improv or comedy troupe hosts an evening of human rights satire in the spirit of the Secret Policemen’s Ball.

Register an Event

Educators and students

  • Visual arts or writing students create work based on the statement: “When I imagine a world that respects human rights, I see ….”
  • Teaching an ESL class? Students champion an individual/community at risk, write appeal letters to governments, write short stories or essays about the person.
  • Link the study of a specific country, literature text or social studies topic to a Small Places person/community at risk or human rights theme.
  • Turn your law class into a courtroom. Have a mock trial of Omar Khadr or of officials who abuse human rights activists in Burma/Myanmar.
  • Focus a creative writing or video-making unit on Roosevelt’s “small places” quote, a theme like “human dignity”, or one of the Small Places cases.
  • Use your art history class to study specific art works through a human rights lens.
  • A theatre class unit on advocacy or agitprop forms of art – then students try their hand at creating examples of such art.
  • Encourage students to take their Small Places projects beyond the classroom through acts of witnessing, surveys, activism or story-gathering.
  • Read a human rights quote or an Article from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights each day during school announcements.

Register an Event

Visual artists, art educators, gallery owners

  • Join with artist friends to create and exhibit work prompted by Roosevelt’s quote, or a featured Small Places individual or community at risk – see the example of John Murphy’s work here.
  • Gallery owners: organize a painting, video or photography show.
  • A community or school human rights mural project – see the example of “Project: Urban Canvas.”
  • Have your video, flash animation or photo workshop do a class project on a human rights case or theme.

Register an Event

Family, friends, neighbours

  • Play an instrument? Have musician friends? Hold your own Small Places house party.
  • Taking an arts class? Suggest participants do a human rights-related project – or do one yourself.
  • Invite professional contacts in local or online networks – writers, painters, photographers, videographers… – to submit human rights-themed contributions to an online human rights art gallery.
  • Organize a public debate or forum on Roosevelt’s quote or on the relationship of “human dignity” to public policy, or another human rights theme that is close to your heart.
  • What about creative cookery? Get your cooking class or club to stir up a Small Places feast, then invite friends and neighbours for the price of a tasty meal out.

Register an Event

Writers, story-tellers, book club members

  • Ask your book club to choose a series of titles touching on human rights themes or related to the people you champion.
  • Ask your writing circle to do some creative work inspired by human rights concerns and themes.
  • Story-tellers present a public evening of established and original work on one or more of the featured cases or another human rights theme.

Register an Event