The YHRCN has supported work with young people in a variety of ways. These include Opinionate workshops with secondary school pupils; working with the the City of York Children’s Safeguarding Partnership (CYSCP) to develop a Realising Children’s Rights Participation Toolkit; and arts-based projects on the right to protest.
Opinionate Workshops
Since its inception in 2015, the annual human rights workshop, Opinionate, has been inspiring young people across York. Using volunteers from the University of York, in collaboration with the York Human Rights City Network (YHRCN), students from York ISSP (Independent State School Partnership) are brought together for interactive workshops.
Drawing on the YHRCN’s work, the workshops are dedicated to transforming awareness into action, encouraging students to think critically about the complex issues shaping their lives, education, and communities. Opinionate has provided an introduction to human rights for students, explored themes such as migration, women’s rights, food poverty, and religious persecution, raised awareness about the right to education using the Realising Children’s Rights Toolkit, and discussed the need to balance Blue Badge accessibility to the city centre with mitigating potential terrorist threats.
Realising Children’s Rights Participation Toolkit
The City of York Children’s Safeguarding Partnership (CYSCP) has developed a Realising Children’s Rights Participation Toolkit with a range of partners, including the YHRCN, Realising Rights, and children and young people. Our vision is that wherever our children and young people go in York and whichever service they come into contact with, they will be told about their rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (United Nations (UN) 1989), and they will be supported to realise their rights.
Children and young people and adults can share the toolkit in any setting that they choose including their home, childcare setting, school, college, youth group/club, team, service or organisation. It can be used at an operational or a strategic level. It can be used on a very small scale, medium or large. It is used to develop rights-based practice. We are inviting you all to use the toolkit and please share your work with us! If you have any questions or would like to share how you have used it, please contact Jo Williams at jo.williams@york.gov.uk
Young People and the Right to Protest
Organisations working with children and young people in the city were invited to respond using the arts to our 2025 annual lecture, on the right to protest. Among the projects supported were a video and art work by Young Adult Carers, including their involvement in the Vandals exhibition in 2025; a Collage of Advocacy developed by Greg McGee with pupils from Westfield Primary School; and spray painting workshops and a mural organised by the Art of Protest.
