The musician appears in an animated video for a new initiative, Join The Chorus, which aims to stop and prevent violence against women and girls
FKA twigs has joined a new global campaign to end domestic and sexual violence.
The musician appears in an animated video for the new initiative, titled Join The Chorus, which has been launched by domestic violence organisation NO MORE Foundation, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and creative agency GentleForces.
In the video, twigs calls for collective action to help stop and prevent violence against women and girls. “Home. It should be a space where we all feel safe,” she says. “But for some, home can be a dangerous place with no escape. But while one voice might go unheard, a chorus cannot be ignored. Together, we can help free those harmed by domestic and sexual violence.”
Sharing the clip on her own Instagram, twigs wrote: “The more we speak up, the more we break the silence surrounding domestic and sexual violence. I’m proud to #JoinTheChorus in support of survivors.”
Actors Thandiwe Newton, Rose Byrne, Mahira Khan, and Joselyn Dumas are also part of the campaign, each narrating the same video as twigs.
FKA twigs has previously spoken out about her own experience of domestic abuse, alleging assault, sexual battery, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress in a 2020 lawsuit against her ex-partner Shia LaBeouf. “It’s a miracle I came out alive,” she recently said of the abuse. “That's the thing about domestic abuse, domestic violence, that it’s a real gradual step-by-step process to get somebody to a place where they lose themselves so much that they accept or feel like they deserve to be treated in that way.”
The Join The Chorus campaign will provide tools to governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and the public in 54 countries to tackle the increase in domestic and sexual violence during the pandemic. In the UK, for example, domestic abuse charity Refuge reported a 700 per cent increase in calls to its helpline in a single day in April 2020, while calls to the Revenge Porn Helpline nearly doubled in the first week of last year’s lockdown.
“In March 2020, news reports of the exponential rise in domestic violence due to COVID-19 were devastating, but also motivating,” GentleForces founder Danni Mohammed said in a press release. “This effort started out with a small team I brought together who wanted to make a difference, and grew into our own chorus of more than 80 volunteers spanning the creative, film, production, animation, and entertainment industries.”
She continued: “Join The Chorus uses the strength of film and animation to engage. In its purest form, it’s based on the power and wisdom of a fable. By creating a fable, we can turn a complex issue into a simple call-to-action, and unearth what’s been typically seen as a private issue into everybody’s issue, and this is what domestic violence needs help with.”
Alongside calling on the 54 member governments of the Commonwealth, and as part of the Join The Chorus initiative, the NO MORE Foundation is launching an action guide for ‘bystanders’ to learn more about the issues of domestic and sexual violence.
Watch twigs’ video above, and find out more about the Join The Chorus campaign here.