Amnesty International at The Big Chill 2009
September 10th, 2009 by sparky
This year’s partnership between Amnesty International and The Big Chill was an enormous success, with creative campaigning, vital funds raised, and new members signed up to the global human rights movement. The Amnesty movement is about people coming together – there is power in numbers, and the more voices, the louder we can shout. Donations and membership fees are essential to an organisation depending on this for the majority of its income.
The focus for Amnesty at the festival was to highlight issue of gender inequality in Iran, and the Iranian Women’s Campaign for Equality. Women in Iran are discriminated against by law. Evidence given by a woman in court is considered only worth half that given by a man. Girls under the age of 13 can be forced to marry a much older man. A group of brave Iranian women have been campaigning for the abolition of or reform to these laws, and Amnesty is working alongside them to build solidarity and keep an international spotlight on their plight.
To get the message out to festival-goers, we asked Big Chillers to have their photo taken with an Amnesty placard in support of the campaign. This generated over 1300 pictures and 2500 individuals who have been added to a visual petition of solidarity. Check out our Flickr photos to see the incredible range of pics we managed to get.
Our play ‘Masculine Law’ which took place in the Words In Motion Tent on the Thursday was also a great success, giving Chillers the opportunity afterwards to ask questions and participate in debates with Amnesty’s Stop Violence Against Women Campaign Manager, members of the cast, and director of the play.
To read more about the campaign or add your name to the petition, please visit Amnesty’s website.
The Big Chill’s generosity of including a year’s student membership within the cost of a student ticket to the festival brought in 700 new student members of Amnesty. While this was at no extra cost to the Chiller, the benefit to Amnesty is huge – by helping to grow the movement and bring even more people together, the impact we can make also increases.
Donations given by all those with guest tickets, and an initiative with Havaianas flip flops at the event also raised a whopping £25,000 for the organisation!
A three-way collaboration between Amnesty, The Big Chill and Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz resulted in a fab tshirt which was onsale throughout the weekend and will soon be available through Amnesty’s online shop.
Other ongoing creative projects that Amnesty and the Big Chill have worked together on include The Big Chill Illustrated and The Blank Canvas Project – both raising money to help Amnesty continue to fight for justice around the world.
Thousands of people taking action, hundreds of new members, tens of thousands of pounds raised, and exciting creative projects – we can’t wait for Big Chill 2010!
Protectthehuman.com
