International Day Conference
Children and the Market: implications for children’s rights
13th April 2011
Institute of Education, Clarke Hall 10am – 5pm
The term ‘the commercialisation of childhood’ makes headlines and stirs strong emotions. Concerns centre on the ‘loss of childhood’, raising images of a supposed age of innocence or the protection of childhood, evoking the victims of labour exploitation and conflict. At the same time there is an increasing stress on participation and rights.
The conference aims to raise questions and provoke debate in three key areas of economic and cultural activity: education, media production and global consumer trade.
Through specific examples speakers will consider developments in these areas in relation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and its basic underlying principles of protection, provision and participation.
Speakers:
Prof. David Buckingham will draw on his work for a major UK Government report about ‘the impact of the commercial world on children’s well-being’, and on his other research in this area. He will seek to challenge the terms in which the social issue of children’s consumption is typically framed and understood. In the context of children’s rights he will discuss the tensions these issues raise in protection, provision and participation, the main principles of the UNCRC.
Dr Dorla Thorsen Teaching Fellow in Human Geography, Reading University will be speaking on the relationship between commercialisation, child migration and children’s rights in West Africa.
Emma Wakefield Company Director of Lambent productions will be speaking about and illustrating the commercial and children’s rights issues raised in making documentaries and factual series with children, often in difficult and sensitive subject areas.
Dr. Gary Wilkinson Programme leader BA Educational Studies, Hull University will be speaking on research into the marketisation of Education and the challenges that this poses for children’s Rights.
For more information and registration please contact:
Andrew Copeland: a.copeland@ioe.ac.uk. Tel: 0207 612 6889
or Liesbeth de Block: l.deblock@ioe.ac.uk
Students: £15.00 Others: £55.00
