'With No Immediate Cause' by Judy Chicago

One Billion Rising, the new initiative of Eve Ensler, Tony Award winning author of the Vagina Monologues, is a global campaign, a grassroots movement that from Lima, to Paris, New Delhi to Kinshasa, Manila, to Bahrain is clamoring, loud and clear, for the end of violence towards women and girls. On February 14th, 2013, One Billion women and the men who love them will rise up on the planet, joining Eve Ensler and the activists of her foundation V-Day to strike, dance, shake the world and shift the energy, empower women and girls and break the cycle of violence.

Art has long been a vehicle of protest and an agent of change. Art is the most powerful the most direct and visceral way of speaking to people across boarders, and barriers. Art Motivates, art empowers, art opens people minds creating new ways of thinking. This is why I have wanted the OBR UK Art Festival as part of the campaign to bring together artists, performers, dancers, poets, playwrights, art lovers and the public in unity against violence. Once we are aware of something we can begin to change it.

Nadja Romain, Chair OBR UK Art Festival