Our Children on Water An international art exhibition of children’s paintings on water and the vital role of chemistry in providing this safely and sustainably We would like to build on the highly innovative exhibition by the children from Room 13 in the Sapebuso School in Soweto, South Africa, where children were asked to express their thoughts on the following question in their paintings: “Water is a resource that we all need everyday. Tell us how you and your family collect, store and use water, and how you feel about water.” The resulting collection of paintings displayed breathtaking imagination and showed that the children were able to view water from many different, thought-provoking perspectives.

The Idea We propose to continue this art exhibition with paintings from children from other parts of the Pan African Chemistry Network, including Nairobi in Kenya and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. This would be enhanced by paintings from children in well-known European locations, such as London, Madrid, Bratislava, Berlin, Budapest, etc – countries which face different challenges in providing their citizens with clean sustainable water. Such a collection of paintings, if prominently displayed and strongly promoted, would draw attention to the work of scientists in industry and academia in providing safe and clean water for people across Europe and in Africa. This project would be pan-European, and would have the potential to make inter-continental links to African countries. It would enable the chemistry community to shine a light on the many international projects on sustainable water that exist.

Making it happen The scale of the exhibition would depend on the number of participants, with each country encouraging local children to create a set of paintings on the theme of water, and arranging exhibition space in a well-known location. We expect that the total exhibition would include between 100 to 200 paintings. Once this has been defined, a schedule will be agreed for the tour, which would include African and European locations. The experienced communications team at the RSC would work with partner societies in each participating country to maximise publicity. In order to make this possible, we will be seeking funding from our industrial partners to cover the costs of this project. We will leave you with some more images from Soweto….