It’s Human Rights Day so we’re launching our new Poetry Collection!

Today is Human Rights Day, a commemoration of the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10th December 1948.

Created in the aftermath of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlined the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human race. From the right to life, liberty and security to the right to a fair trial, from the right to participate freely in the cultural life of the community, to the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from prosecution, it is the foundation of many of the freedoms enjoyed around the world today, and a yardstick to measure when those freedoms are infringed.

This commemoration has lead us to reflect on our own history as a company. Good Chance is one of the only organisations to straddle two areas of the Charity Commission’s Charitable Purposes. We exist both for the advancement of the arts and for the advancement of human rights. Our argument for this is really the central belief that Good Chance is built on: that art and expression are human rights, and in many of the places we work, they are rights that are under threat.

From our earliest days in Calais to our online collective poetry writing sessions during lockdown, we continually see the transformative power of a space to think, reflect, connect and express. Whether in words, song, movement or colour, the human need to create is fundamental. It is what makes us human.

So this Human Rights Day we promise to continue to stand behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to defend the right for all people to express and create art in all its forms.

And we are celebrating by launching a book of poetry - An Orchestra of Unexpected Sounds - that encapsulates so much of what we stand for: many voices coming together in the belief that their words can bridge divides and speak across space and time, to explore and make deep connections with themselves, each other and the world.

With love and hope,
Joe Robertson
Artistic Director of Good Chance