The Power of Voice:
Protesting Oil Sponsorship of the Arts
Posted: 04/03/2013 14:36
The Southbank Centre
in London is the largest single-run arts Centre in the world. On a recent
Friday evening, a musical performance was hosted by the Shell Oil Company. During this event, ” The Shell Out Sounds” (SOS), a campaign activist group, disrupted the event using
chants and slogans to protest the sponsorship of Shell Oil Company in the British arts. The purpose was to draw attention to
the oil industry’s exploitation of land, resources, and people across the world
and to shed light on the monetary connection between the corporate giant and
London’s Southbank Centre.
Shell-out Sounds (SOS) flash-mobbed the audience during the
Shell sponsored musical performance at London’s Southbank Centre. The chant
sang their spiritual version of Down the River to Pray, describing the
disastrous effects on communities by Shell’s operations. They concluded with the words, "Oh, Shell, not your name; No more oil, no more pain; Oh, Shell not your name; Art not in your name!". The Shell Oil Company is the biggest sponsor of the arts in the UK and SOS wants an end to this relationship. SOS speaks of how Shell is trying to become entwined with British cultural traditions by hosting these art functions. SOS states:
Is this yet
another way that large corporations are edging their way into British
traditions? Does this relationship between oil giants and the arts impact
British freedom of expression via creation? SOS argues that "corporate
sponsorship, especially by oil companies whose livelihood depends on not moving
forward from the outdated oil age, stifles and censors the arts".
Shell Out Sounds takes offense to oil industry giants like BP and Shell funding the arts with the dirty money earned in the exploitation of other countries. SOS wants to see action taken by the Southbank Centre to cut ties with Shell. The oil giant’s investment in the tar sands of Canada, fracking, recurrent oil spills in Nigeria and Shell’s controversial Artic drilling are all efforts by Shell to earn huge amounts of profit at the expense to land, resources and people.
One of these areas abused by Shell is in Nigeria. Human rights issues have been understated in the Niger Delta regions where Shell has, since the 1950’s created an ecological polluted disaster. A group in the early 1990’s, known as the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) were retaliated against for their nonviolent protest in Ogoniland that caused Shell to pull out of its operations in the region. The MOSOP was retaliated against by the government who raided villages and arrested the protest leaders, now known as the Ogoni 9.
Ken Saro-Wiwa, a popular author, TV producer and recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work, was executed in 1995 due to his involvement in the MOSOP. Amnesty International had tried to have him released from prison to no avail. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s protest had been a plea to have Shell cease destroying the Ogoni way of life by polluting the lands that they farmed and devastating the Niger Delta with the many oil spills over the years. The industry was supposed to be for the good of the Ogoni people but out of 5000 jobs in the workforce that were promised, only 100 or less of the employed were Ogoni. Shell had not only
backed out of promises to the Ogoni people but had stripped their lands of resources
by their operations.
In January, this year, Shell was found guilty in a Dutch court
of oil pollution in the Niger Delta. It will take decades to remedy the
ecological and environmental pollution in the wake of its operations. Faced by 11,000
members of the Niger Delta Bodo community, Shell has admitted liability for two
spills in the Bodo region.
The SOS’ chants become the voice for those who cannot speak up about the injustices of corporate oil giants like Shell. They are the voice for the Ogoni people whose protest over Shell’s unethical activities ended in the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa. SOS "uses art to bring people together; uses music to tell stories of fractured, weeping communities; sings haunting harmonies to convey the disharmony that companies like Shell create”. By flash mobbing London’s Southbank Center, SOS hopes to be loud enough for executives of the Center to find other ways to monetarily sponsor the British arts in London and shed light on all of the unethical practices of the Shell Oil Company.
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Zion Lights is a writer and mother interested in ethics, attachment parenting, permaculture and green living. She is a regular contributor at One Green Planet.
