Changing Perspectives: Equality and Diversity in My University by Sinéad Dinneen

Changing Perspectives: Equality and Diversity in my University by Sinéad Dinneen

Competition poster used to advertised the competition

I lecture in Visual Art in the Department of Arts Education & Physical Education in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland. Last October 2007 I entered an inter- varsity photography competition aimed at staff and students of the seven universities in Ireland to help us to celebrate the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All 2007.

The theme of the competition was “Changing Perspectives: Equality and Diversity in my University”.

As 2007 had been ear-marked as the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All to raise awareness, stimulate debate and to emphasise the positive contribution that all people, irrespective of their sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation, can make to society as a whole. A photography competition was organised by the Equality personnel and Students Union’s in all seven universities to contribute towards the aims of the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All by increasing awareness amongst the Irish university population of approximately 16,375 staff and 96,637 students about the equality/diversity of staff and students in universities in Ireland.

As I am a visual artist and work as many artists do by going through an artistic process to come up with ideas, this challenge was no different. I started by looking at my University physically, in the canteen, reception areas, staff spaces, car parking area, toilets, walk ways, lecture areas etc. I began to think about how we embrace the broad and specific issues of equality and diversity. One morning in October 2007 there were contractors in the University to carry out line painting of the parking areas the campus, this action got me thinking regarding labelling and how we label our environment i.e. reception area, staff car parking, canteen staff, disabled parking only, caretakers office, male toilets etc. It also got me thinking about how we label ourselves as groups/individuals in society and this by its very nature can have a both positive and negatives impact. While pondering this thought I noticed that car number plates were telling us ‘personal histories’ relating to the car. This gave me the idea of replacing the cars personal histories with perhaps our own personal information displayed in the same manner. I played with the idea of getting my colleagues and students to hold these car plates during an educational celebratory time in the college i.e. Graduation Day but decided that I wanted the visual impact to be more subtle. Mary Immaculate College Graduation Day 2007. Some staff and students participating in the Equality and Diversity Photo competition

As regards the visual impact being more subtle I decided that number plates in essence belong on cars so I temporally placed the plates onto cars. I again played with the idea of location until finally deciding on the below image. Final photograph choice for ‘Equality and Diversity in My University’ competition

On the 15th February 2008 I was invited to represent Mary Immaculate College and The University of Limerick as over all staff winner to The Equality Authority in Dublin. During this ceremony Mr Niall Crowley CEO of the Equality Authority presented me with framed photograph of my work and also the prize money. As part of this process there were calendars printed with all the winning photographs entries from staff and students from all the universities in Ireland.