Teenager's display raises awareness of poverty

2:00pm Saturday 16th August 2008

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AN Evesham teenager has created a special art display in Evesham Library designed to raise awareness of poverty.

Alice Byrne, 19, from Queen’s Road, has spent the last couple of years putting the pieces together and hopes the display will draw attention to one of the world’s most serious problems.

She explained: “It’s about poverty, not just world poverty, it highlights some of the problems associated with it while bringing the topic to people’s everyday lives.

“Even if we don’t see it, it’s still going on.

“There are four pieces and they are all designed to get people to think about poverty in a different way.

“One is like a classic crime scene, it emphasizes that death due to poverty is preventable and that letting it happen is almost criminal.

“Another piece was used in the Evesham Fair Trade meetings. It’s a little display of human figures with no visible difference in gender, race or age, although one side has belongings - food or money - while the other side has absolutely nothing.

“There should be no reason to divide them, and it highlights the injustice that some people have while others do not.”

Alice has just completed her A-Levels in politics, religious studies, sociology and psychology at the Worcester College of Technology and says she wants to go to the University of Birmingham after taking a gap year.

She started working on the pieces back in 2005 and this display is the culmination of several years hard work.

It will be in the library, on Oat Street, until the end of the month.