Earlier this year, the Swan Valley Regional Secondary School entered into a partnership with the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth (MACY) to collaborate on a Re-Right Project. A Re-Right Project is a community art initiative that promotes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child through public art and murals. As of March 2026, six murals have been completed through the Re-Right Project, five of which are in Winnipeg and one in Nelson House.
Winnipeg artist Charlie Johnston was chosen to work with students at the SVRSS on the Re-Right Project. Johnston is a well-known artist who has painted numerous murals and has a great deal of experience teaching and mentoring young artists.
“I’ve done some work with MACY and they are doing a series of murals centred around the International Declaration of Human Rights for Children and Youth,” said Johnston. “It’s a parallel declaration to the International Declaration of Human Rights. MACY fights to advocate for the rights of children and youth. This completely aligns with their mandate.
“I’ve done other mural projects in Winnipeg with youth and there have been other artists who have as well. The reason we wound up doing one of the mural projects in Swan River was that they wanted to provide more representation and service to the area. This was a good opportunity to express that.”
Students at the SVRSS were able to work with Johnston on creating a concept and painting the mural for the Re-Right Project. The Swan Valley mural is the seventh in the Re-Right Project. The mural shows the students’ interpretation of the right to be protected from harmful substances, including from making, selling or using drugs (UNCRC article 3).
“The mural was open to all high school visual art students from grades 10 to 12,” said SVRSS Graphic and Design and Visual Arts Instructor Amy Rogalski. “We had one class that focused on developing the mural and then students who expressed interest in participating in the painting portion of the mural. There were 20 students who were part of the class that developed the concept and eight students who participated in painting the mural with Charlie.”
“The creative process is always amazing for its strength, healing, and it’s engaging,” said Johnston. “I’ve worked with adults and young children on projects, but with kids, you put a brush in their hands and you can’t stop it; they just take off. As we get older, we get more conscious and thoughtful in the process. This was an opportunity for the youth involved to open themselves up to that process. It’s about finding the inner artist in oneself. This was an opportunity for the students to express their feelings about the issues that they felt the strongest about and let those feelings out and express them.
“In this process, I like to engage the participants in every facet of the creative journey. I like to get their creative intuition flowing from the start. In that sense, the students were the conceptual artists and put the idea together. They chose which declaration in the Human Rights Declaration was the one that mattered most to them. We went through a democratic process where we went through the list of Human Rights Declarations and they narrowed it down. They almost unanimously picked this particular issue, which is that children and youth have the right to be protected from harmful drugs.
“That really stood out like a beacon to them as the topic that they wanted to creatively express about,” said Johnston. “Then we went through the creative process of taking that idea and expressing it as a mural, and how you come up with the subject matter, imagery, style and the way it’s going to be painted.”
The Re-Right Project started within the first month that students were back to school and didn’t take long to complete. Once students fully understood what MACY does and the importance of having rights for children and youth, they became engaged in sharing their own personal experiences and providing input towards the project.
“We began the mural on September 28 with an introduction of the project and Charlie,” said Rogalski. “It was finished October 22 when the final signatures were applied.
“The students took about a day to engage. I think there is always the challenge of having a new teacher and then meeting an artist and being immersed in a new experience. Once they understood what MACY is and what the project meant and could represent for the community, they became more committed to what it could mean.
“The class that worked to develop the concept for the mural were really committed to the right they chose—the right to be protected from harmful drugs,” said Rogalski. “They were engaged in discussions of personal experiences and why this matters so much to them as students of the Swan Valley community. After concept development, the students who participated in the painting process were regularly ready to go. Every day of painting, they arrived to class for attendance and then were off to paint. You could see the pride, intensity, joy and focus they had in what they were creating and sharing with the community.”
“To us, this right means more than simply keeping harmful drugs away,” said SVRSS Student Liz Desjarlais. “It means building communities where people feel safe, where families can find support, and where those who are struggling with addiction are not forgotten.”
“Dragonflies were chosen to represent the heroes; they are a spiritual ally, as they have the ability to capture and contain the needle mosquitoes,” said SVRSS Student Sam Sakayigun. “The dragonflies are wearing symbols of health services, justice, safety patrol, and most importantly – love.”
The Re-Right mural unveiling was held on November 5, at the SVRSSS. The mural is located in the school hallway along the Cultural Arts Centre.