Author: lauramelroseunsw

DAY SIXTEEN: Lifting our voices to end violence against women: the Hummingsong choirs

The Hummingsong Choirs build “community”, bringing together women of all backgrounds and stages in life to sing, laugh, nourish their souls and build close-knit connections. The other important purpose is to extend support to those most vulnerable in the community, women and children escaping domestic violence. 

Picture above: Still from video: “Fix You” by Coldplay, performed by Hummingsong Community Choirs. Arrangement by Dorothy Horn.

Carolyn Thompson

Anna Humberstone is the Founder and Artistic Director of Hummingsong Community Choirs – a 500 strong group of women across 8 acapella choirs in Sydney and most recently Melbourne.  Hummingsong Choirs are committed to quality music making, taking their non-auditioned members on a journey of aiming high and reaching goals that the singers and often audiences never thought possible.

“It’s not just about getting together and having a good old sing.  It’s much more thoughtfully scaffolded to create an environment that takes each member on a journey that is both musically, socially and intrinsically fulfilling” said Anna.  

For Anna the key word is “community”, bringing together women of all backgrounds and stages in life to sing, laugh, nourish their souls and build close-knit connections. The other important purpose of Hummingsong Choirs is to extend support to those most vulnerable in the community, women and children escaping domestic violence.  For Anna “domestic violence bears no social class…it’s a passion of ours to continue working towards zero tolerance for violence against women.” 

For many years Hummingsong Choirs have raised awareness for the Women’s Community Shelters through fundraising at their annual concert. To date Hummingsong Choirs has raised over $200,000 for this cause.  In 2019 Hummingsong Choirs were able to take their passions of singing, community and domestic violence awareness to a world-wide audience by making the semi-finals of Australia’s Got Talent with their stirring arrangement of Somewhere Only We Know by Keane.  

“Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane, performed by Hummingsong Community Choirs at Sydney Grammar School on 21 September 2018. Accompanied by Sydney Grammar School String Sextet & Bill Risby, conducted by Melissa Kenny.

Fast forward to 2020 and the contrast from last year could not be starker. COVID-19 has brought choral singing and its many benefits to an abrupt halt.  As one Hummingsong member puts it, “not being able to sing has had an effect on my happiness, well-being and overall mental health”. The knock-on effect also means that charities such as Women’s Community Shelters who rely on fundraising through the Arts and Entertainment sector are missing out on the community funds they rely on so heavily to survive. 

In the absence of concerts and reality TV exposure, this year Anna forged ahead with a video production of Coldplay’s Fix You as their major fundraising effort.  Over 230 members individually recorded their parts which were then pieced together to create a moving arrangement.  “Singing over zoom is a poor substitute compared to the benefits of singing in choir” Anna said, however the video has managed to raise in excess of $22,700 of a $40,000 target since its mid November release.  

“Fix You” by Coldplay, performed by Hummingsong Community Choirs. Arrangement by Dorothy Horn.

Now that large gatherings at sporting and theatre events are permitted, it’s hoped that choral singing will soon follow. The life-enhancing benefits for those who love choir and the flow-on support it provides to the vulnerable are what lifts a community and makes it stronger. 

Carolyn Thompson joined Hummingsong in 2015 after the death of her mother left her longing for something to provide some comfort and happiness. Unable to read music and not feeling comfortable singing alone, Carolyn was attracted to this non-audition community choir.  She knew at her first visit she had found something very special. Hummingsong provides a welcoming, fun, challenging and inspirational space for women to come together to learn and sing beautiful songs in harmony.  The friendships, sense of belonging and “soul food” elements of choir give Carolyn so much to be thankful for. The choir also gains a greater sense of unity and purpose through their fundraising efforts for charities such as Women’s Community Shelters. 
Carolyn can’t wait for the restrictions preventing Choral singing due to COVID 19 to be lifted so she can be back with her friends doing what they love, and for the choir to continue its work raising funds to support those experiencing violence at home.

Hummingsong Community Choirs can be found at https://www.hummingsong.com.au/

DAY TWELVE: City Lights for Social Change

To mark 2020 16 Days of Activism theme ‘Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!’ Australian academics worked with local authorities to turn their City orange.

Picture above: Civic Park in Newcastle, New South Wales being lit orange to mark 16 Days of Activism. Photo by Eddie O’Reilly, UON Marketing and Communications. Reproduced with permission.

Effie Karageorgos and Kcasey McLoughlin

In 1991 the Center for Women’s Global Leadership instituted the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which has now spread to over 187 countries. It begins on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and ends on 10 December, Human Rights Day. In 2020, the University of Newcastle’s Gender Research Network has responded to the 2020 16 Days of Activism theme ‘Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!’ by turning Newcastle orange.

The Gender Research Network, established and led by Associate Professor Trisha Pender, has embarked on a Program in Gender-Based Violence research and activism in 2020, aided by a $70,000 University of Newcastle Faculty of Education and Arts Pilot Grant. Spanning sociology, history, law, literary, gender and cultural studies, the Gender Research Network aims to collaborate with local frontline services to tackle the urgent issue of gender-based violence.

The academic research funded by the project will cover legal conceptualisations of family violence, male clergy perpetration of sexual violence, media presentations of gendered and sexual violence in mainstream television and French and Australian media, the #MeToo movement and the relationship between historical Australian archetypes of masculinity and media representations of male violence.

Associate Professor Trisha Pender at the launch of the Newcastle 16 Days of Activism campaign to end violence against women, held in Civic Park, Wednesday 25 November 2020. Photo by Eddie O’Reilly. Reproduced with permission.

The impetus for this program has emerged from the alarming scale of gendered violence in Australia, with one woman murdered each week by an intimate partner. Gender-based violence is a pressing social and human rights issue that causes long-term physical and psychological effects and costs the Federal Government billions of dollars every year.

It is also a contentious issue in Australian society, with proposed legal reforms such as Victoria’s move to ban the public disclosure of names of sexual violence victims and New South Wales Labor’s push to criminalise coercive control causing widespread and impassioned debate from victims, victim advocates and researchers. The Program in Gender-Based Violence will not only address male perpetrators of violence against women, but also violence affecting LGBTIQ communities and children. It seeks to define how gender-based violence is reported and conceptualised within society.

A central facet of the Gender Research Network’s program in gender-based violence is the 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women campaign. The Network was awarded a Newcastle City Council SBR (Special Business Rates) grant for ‘City Lights for Social Change’, which has created a permanent lighting infrastructure for Civic Park. This turned the park orange for the 16 Days in 2020, but will also create a safer public space at night for Newcastle residents and will be available for use by other social change campaigns in the future. In 2020, the University of Newcastle also committed to turning the NUspace building on its city campus orange, and the Newcastle City Hall’s Clock Tower will also turn orange for the 16 Days of Activism from 25 November to 10 December.

NUspace at University of Newcastle being lit orange to mark 16 Days of Activism, a campaign focusing on preventing violence against women. Photo by Eddie O’Reilly. Reproduced with permission.

The launch and vigil of 25 November took place at 8-9pm, featuring Associate Professor Trisha Pender, with the support of the New South Wales Police Force. Pender was joined by a range of speakers from community organisations, including ACON Health and Warlga Ngurra Women and Children’s Refuge, as well as Federal Member for Newcastle Sharon Claydon and City of Newcastle Councillor Carol Duncan. During the vigil, the names of the 45 women killed by violence in Australia in 2020 was read out by a group of domestic violence researchers and activists.

Image from the Newcastle launch of 16 Days of Activism campaign to end violence against women, held in Civic Park, Wednesday 25 November 2020. Photo by Eddie O’Reilly. Reproduced with permission.

The Gender Research Network’s contribution to the 16 Days campaign also included a webinar on the current push to criminalise coercive control in New South Wales. The session was facilitated by Dr Kcasey McLoughlin, Senior Lecturer in Law, and featured Laura Richards, prominent activist and behavioural analyst from the United Kingdom, Hayley Foster, Chief Executive of Women’s Safety NSW, and State Member for Shellharbour Anna Watson, who was responsible for introducing the bill to criminalise coercive control to the New South Wales Parliament.

The recording of the Coercive Control seminar of 30 November 2020 is available online.

Effie Karageorgos is a historian and member of the Gender Research Network at the University of Newcastle. Her research is in the social history of war, and specifically histories of masculinity and trauma. Her monograph Australian Soldiers in South Africa and Vietnam: Words from the Battlefield was published in March 2016. 

Kcasey McLoughlin is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Newcastle Law School and a member of Gender Research Network at the University of Newcastle. She is currently a visiting Scholar at the Australian Human Rights Institute (UNSW). Her research, broadly defined, concerns the gendered values that shape political and legal institutions and the extent to which law can be used as a tool for achieving equality.