Stories about life and challenges
By Vivian Lai and Dorothy Wong
Noise fills the classrooms everywhere, as RCHK students of all ages scurry around their classrooms, laughing and chatting away as they race against time to get their REAL projects done. Nevertheless, one section of the school is completely serene, engrossed in completing their projects, sketching and typing away.
Who are they? They are the participants of the Storytelling for Social Change REAL programme.
English teacher Sarah Lewis, the teacher in charge of the program, is supervising the Year 10 students. She was wandering around the classroom when we first met her, doing her best to assist and advise students with their work. This program, she claims, consists of students who are ‘passionate about a variety of issues in society.’
In this program, they are allowed to make use of their creativity to create projects based on different social challenges. There are several methods of communicating their ideas to the audience, different kinds of media including: photography, drawings, reports, essays, newspapers, creative writing etc. The social challenges that can be chosen range from serious topics like racism, gender equality and human rights, to more light-hearted topics like proving the existence of aliens.
She believes that the most valuable aspect of this program is that it is not only focused on school projects, as it goes beyond the classroom, and students can explore different ways of being an activist, sharing messages with one another, advocating for a change in the society, and allowing audiences to explore various issues based on their experiences and stories.
Hebe Chan has implemented her real life experiences to create a stunning series of artworks, all inspired by one prominent issue that most teenage girls including herself experience on a daily basis -- insecurity.
Drawing of Girl with Plum Blossoms by Hebe Chan
“Like many other teenage girls, I am insecure, and I feel unconfident about myself,” Chan, the creator of the artworks, says. According to her, she has created a series of digital art for this project centered on teenage girls, and she has focused on drawing various girls with different features that may cause them to be insecure and disparage themselves.
She is working on two untitled pieces currently and they are inspired by two different facial insecurities.
The first drawing as you can see on the left, is inspired by a common skin issue, acne. The drawing showcases a girl with red plum blossoms scattered on her face. According to Chan, the scattered red plum blossoms represent pimples, as “it’s natural”. This is inspired by her own insecurities as like a lot of other people, she is insecure about her own flaws. To her, the acne represents her flaws and it made her unconfident about her appearance. However, it’s natural for teenagers to have them due to hormones, and like
flowers, they bloom and will eventually wilt. Plum blossoms symbolise perseverance and hope, as well as beauty and purity.
Drawing of Girl with Freckles by Hebe Chan
Chan hopes that we view acne as something that is natural and beautiful, and that we will learn to overlook it as a flaw and understand we are all lovely in our own way.
Her other piece is inspired from the people around her. She mentioned that she had a friend who was self-conscious about her appearance, as she has a lot of freckles on her cheeks. Chan believes that the freckles don't affect how her friend looks and that they even contribute to making her more attractive. Therefore, she came up with the idea of drawing a girl with freckles, so her friend could see how she looks from her perspective.
Insecurity is one of the significant issues of teenagers in society right now, especially teenage girls. Teenagers experience insecurity about the following three aspects: unfamiliar situations, social judgement, and body image. Most of us are self-conscious about our appearances and how people view us due to social media and judgements. A Huffington Post poll found that 60 percent of people using social media reported that it has impacted their self-esteem in a negative way. They also found that 51 percent say social media has made them feel more self-conscious about their appearance. It shows that social media affects a lot about how we view ourselves and it causes insecurities to blossom.
Information Packet on Polish Gay Rights created by Madeleine Summers
Everyone has their own ways to deal with their insecurities, they may drown in them, lamenting about never being enough. However, Hebe uses her artworks to express how she feels that everyone’s insecurities or flaws are also beautiful in another way: “I like drawing, that’s why I chose to do this. I also wanted to improve my art skills.”
Another student, Ennan Qiu, is taking the long route and has decided to write three articles concerning the climate change issue, how it is affecting the environment and how animal farming is obstructing progress towards achieving sustainable development goals.
He notes that “climate change is causing food insecurity and large natural disasters to occur more frequently.” He believes that if people were to reduce animal product consumption, it would cause greenhouse gases and emissions to fall. Even though writing three articles is taking a lot of time and effort, he thinks that he has learned a lot in this process.
Many may not know this, but livestock farming contributes to 18% of human produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It has also added to land and water degradation, biodiversity loss, acid rain, coral reef degradation and deforestation. Ennan comments that this issue is “not only about sustainability as actual animals in this system are being harmed unnecessarily,” and that we shouldn’t treat it lightly.
As an owner of two cats, he cares tremendously about animals, and he discovered distressing data about 200 million land animals slaughtered per day while surfing the Internet, and it piqued his attention. As an animal lover, he thinks that “it is one of the biggest problems about animals that isn't being cared about enough” and he hopes to raise more awareness about it.
Other projects being created by the other students include an information packet on Polish queer rights drawn by Madeleine Summers. Madeleine has a Polish heritage and she also identifies as queer. So, she has decided to combine these two parts of her identity and create an information packet to talk about a topic she feels is interconnected with herself.
Sketch of Ballet Shoes drawn by Emma
Another student has written a presentation and sketched a picture about ballet, which she believes should be considered a sport. She has made the decision to do this as ballet is her passion and she wants to try to improve her social anxiety by presenting this to her peers.
Each and every student in this REAL group has has worked arduously on their creations, showing different stories through their pieces of work, all making marvellous projects that were very ingenious and ardent about their respective social challenges. They presented their work using different kinds of media, and every piece of their work tells a story, a story exhorting for a change and a story that incorporates their experiences, all hoping that they may be able to contribute to positive change in society.