The deputy delegate of the Government in A Coruña, María Rivas, presided over the inauguration of the course “Art in the Key of Rights” developed by the UNED in collaboration with the Prison Center of Teixeiro and which seeks to educate and raise awareness of human rights issues through links with art.
During her speech, María Rivas recalled the role of human rights in protecting the dignity of people and pointed to art as a fundamental element for it, since it “is capable of sustaining our ideals with a transforming power and with an enormous regenerating effect.”
In this same vein, he highlighted the work that has been carried out in the Prison Center of Teixeiro for 25 years on the relationship between art and rights.
The deputy delegate sent her congratulations to the director of the penitentiary center of Teixeiro Jose Angel Vázquez, the professional team of the center, and the inmates and inmates who participated in the different programs that “influence awareness when it comes to publicizing a reality, hopeful and little known to the rest of society.”
María Rivas took advantage of her speech to highlight the work of journalists Gemma Malvid and Vanesa Casteleiro, who through various reports showed the daily lives of inmates and inmates within the center. The subdelegate said that she considers it essential to make society aware of how the internal population lives and all the work and effort they do to reintegrate them. María Rivas recalled that thanks to these reports, the two journalists won the “We are essential” award granted by the Colexio de Xornalista de Galicia.
The subdelegate encouraged all participants of the course to become aware that the creative process, in addition to being an artistic expression, serves as “an element of personal regeneration and for the empowerment of human dignity.”
He also stressed that the objective of the course is to strengthen art as a fundamental instrument in the “development of our society and in the defense of human rights as well as in the taking of positions in the face of attacks on freedoms and human dignity.”
The subdelegate ended her speech with a phrase by Mandela “I never considered a man as a superior, neither in my life outside, nor in prison” to emphasize the relationship between art and equality and to insist on the values and objectives of the course “Art in the Key of Rights”.
The event also included the participation of the Valedora del pueblo, Dolores Fernández Galiño; the director of the Teixeiro Penitentiary Center, José Ángel Vázquez Yáñez, and the director of the UNED Associated Center in A Coruña, Germán Carro Fernández.