The current exhibition a display of children’s art called Take One Picture shows how the skilful deployment of one brilliant

The current exhibition, a display of children’s art called “Take One Picture”, shows how the skilful deployment of one brilliant painting by Canaletto, The Stonemason’s Yard, can galvanise whole communities of children into thinking creatively about the world.
Here’s how it works. His is an inclusive message, for a Europe which is home to all its peoples and to all its citizens.. One thousand four hundred years ago, this early Irish European, in a letter exhorting the Pope to “arise from his sleep”, described the Irish as ultimi habitatores mundi – the inhabitants of the world’s edge It is a powerful message to the enlarging Europe. Their rightful place at the heart of this community will also give them new confidence, new dynamism, which will generate positive effects on the whole Union.In time, it will help us to rediscover of the spirit of 1989, that annus mirabilis, which has since yielded in some places to feelings of uncertainty, and some economic hardship.Robert Schuman once wrote that an Irish saint, Saint Columbanus, was “the patron saint of those who seek to construct a united Europe”. They opened a pathway to reconciliation and progress which none had walked before We are the beneficiaries of that legacy. Fifty years ago, a generation of European leaders, after a devastating war that divided our continent, saw all too clearly what was, but were prepared to dream of what could be They had the courage of their European convictions.

We are the beneficiaries of that legacy.
I acknowledge today the leadership and determination of peoples and successive governments in the new member states. Today the transforming generation of leaders is awarded a glittering prize.The new member states will now be firmly anchored in the community of values that inform and permeate the public purpose of the Union. And lack of it makes you feel like a citizen of a lesser class, barred from full participation in society. Another few days of this – never mind years – and I would be a disability rights militant.Back on my feet now, after a month of wheelchairs and crutches, other people’s prejudices are now obvious.

And so are my own.Why did I feel compelled, for instance, to keep telling complete strangers that my disability was temporary? “Haven’t quite got the hang of this wheelchair yet,” I would offer, lest they think I was not one of the up-on-two-legs, able-bodied majority. My muscle tear was pathetically revealing about me, as much as other people.. Nothing was straightforward, from the detours to locate ramps into buildings to the pitted paths and general dearth of lifts. Then there was the suffocation of swarming crowds when you are waist-high to everyone else.In the seaside resort, people had at least made space for the chair In the city, people made no allowances No path opened up in the crush. The chair and its user were just a nuisance.So despite the pain, I was soon on my feet, preferring to hobble along, with support, at the same level as everyone else in the throng Big mistake. But you need to be denied it to fully appreciate why the disabled lobby make such a meal of it. By evening, my leg was a swollen yellow and blue balloon.Next day, back in the chair and in agony, I made the journey back to London, alone My family was flying home to Scotland And that’s when frustration really set in.