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Louise Wallis | |
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 Wallis in 2004 | |
| Born | 1964 (age 59–60) Birmingham, England |
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Louise Wallis is a DJ, singer, and writer who is also known for her animal advocacy. She lived in London, England, and now resides in South Wales.
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Louise Wallis | |
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| Wallis in 2004 | |
| Born | 1964 (age 59–60) Birmingham, England |
| Occupations |
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Louise Wallis is a DJ, singer, and writer who is also known for her animal advocacy. She lived in London, England, and now resides in South Wales.
Louise Wallis was born in 1964, into a musical family in Birmingham, England. She was raised by her mother and maternal grandparents. Her grandfather Syd had his own band, notorious in the post-war years for raucous all-night parties, and her great grandmother Kitty was a celebrated pianist who played pubs and clubs into her 90s.
At age six, Wallis acquired a step-father and a new brother; she also acquired a kitten, to soften the blow of a sudden move to Southampton. Four years later she gained a sister.
She sought solace in the company of animals, developing a particular passion for horses.
By the age of 18 she was a fully-fledged animal activist and vegan.
In 1988, as a Regional Campaigns Officer for the National Anti-Vivisection Society, she organised one of the largest national anti-vivisection marches ever held (25,000 people).[ citation needed ]
She then carried out undercover investigations in 1990. Seeing a job advert titled 'An Important Role working with Animals', she soon found herself working as a trainee animal technician with the drug company SmithKline Beecham. [1] She applied for a job at a second animal research laboratory St Bartholomew's Medical School [2] where she worked for several months before being sacked after, in all likelihood, a police tip off. In a bizarre twist of fate, Louise had moved into a flat on Burgoyne Road in north London, which had been vacated by another activist, John Barker, who was later unmasked as an undercover police spy. [3] Nevertheless, Wallis's story made national press, and she was dubbed "Britain's No 1 Animals Rights Campaigner" by the Sunday Sport newspaper.[ citation needed ] With the National Anti-Vivisection Society she launched a 'Free the Beagles' campaign calling for the release of 24 dogs for whom she had cared at SmithKline Beecham; the company refused, and all 24 dogs were destroyed.[ citation needed ]
In November 1991 Wallis was elected president of The Vegan Society. She commissioned and produced the charity's first film, Truth or Dairy, [4] starring Benjamin Zephaniah and directed by Franny Armstrong.
In 1994 Wallis, then President and Chair of The Vegan Society, founded World Vegan Day to commemorate the society's 50th anniversary. Vegans around the world now join together to celebrate animal rights every World Vegan Day, held annually on 1 November. However, the actual founding of The Vegan Society is thought to have been either 5 or 12 November 1944. [5]
On 29 March 1995 she gave evidence on animal welfare at the infamous 'McLibel trial', [6] the longest-running case in English history, which involved two activists sued by McDonald's for distributing a leaflet called "What's Wrong with McDonald's?" In 2013, it emerged that this leaflet had been co-written by another undercover police spy, Bob Lambert. [7]
On 2 October 2010, Wallis gave a speech at the national 'March for Farmed Animals,' marking World Farm Animals Day.
She briefly returned to The Vegan Society as a director in November 2010, before resigning in June 2011. She continues to write for the Society's magazine The Vegan.
Under the pseudonym Luminous, Wallis DJs and sings in the band Luminous Frenzy, a collaboration with her guitarist / composer partner Frank Frenzy. Reviewers have compared her haunting, [8] siren-like vocals [9] to Sia, Alison Moyet and Portishead's Beth Gibbons.
Luminous Frenzy performed at the first Bestival in 2004, and the Big Chill Festival 2005. [10] Big Chill founder Pete Lawrence later cited the band as one of several that year that he considered to be "at the cutting edge of musical progression".[ citation needed ] Luminous Frenzy's debut album, 'Violence Ambience,' (Freeport Records) was released in 2006, and launched at the Big Chill Bar. It included the track 'McEmotion', written for and featured in McLibel, [11] a film directed by Franny Armstrong [11] and later selected by the British Film Institute for their series "Ten Documentaries That Shook the World". [12] The critically acclaimed single 'Three Cliffs Bay' followed in 2007, recorded with Adam Thomas. [13] Expanding to a five-piece, Luminous Frenzy went on to develop a heavier rock-driven sound. This led them to record their next single, ‘Momentary/Random Generator,’ with producer Paul Sampson, whose credits include Catatonia and "Crash," a Top 3 US hit by The Primitives. [14]
Wallis was voted one of the World's 'Top 100 Female DJs', in a comprehensive worldwide listing [15] in the first, and so far only, poll of its kind. She was ranked 68 (19 in the UK), between Radio 1 DJs Annie Mac and Annie Nightingale. [16] [17] For many years she had a monthly DJ residency [18] at the legendary venue The Foundry [19] where she also appeared as a guest on Tracey Moberly's The Late, Late Breakfast Show with comedian Mark Thomas. A French house music fan and francophile, Wallis has performed twice at the French Institute's 12-hour extravaganza 'My Night With Philosophers'. [20] [21] [22]
Combining her love of DJing and veganism, Wallis has created two popular vegan-themed DJ mixes. ‘Vegan Anthems’ in 2010 was described by the award-winning blog Our Hen House as "an eclectic, moving, unexpectedly genius set." [23] In 2011, Luminous created 'Vegan Artists – from Sigur Rós to Black Sabbath' in what she described as "an odyssey." [24]
Wallis writes for various health and lifestyle magazines including Get Fresh!, Your Healthy Living, Vegetarian Living and The Vegan . She has interviewed musicians Johnny Marr, [25] Moby and Geezer Butler, [26] the dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah, and comedian Richard Herring, as well as vegan chefs Mimi Kirk [27] and Mel Baker (aka the Kind Cook). [28]
McDonald's Corporation v Steel & Morris[1997] EWHC 366 (QB), known as "the McLibel case", was an English lawsuit for libel filed by McDonald's Corporation against environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris over a factsheet critical of the company. Each of two hearings in English courts found some of the leaflet's contested claims to be libellous and others to be true.
Frances Power Cobbe was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, religious thinker, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading women's suffrage campaigner. She founded a number of animal advocacy groups, including the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) in 1875 and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) in 1898, and was a member of the executive council of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage.
The Vegan Society is a registered charity and the oldest vegan organization in the world, founded in the United Kingdom in 1944 by Donald Watson, Elsie Shrigley, George Henderson and his wife Fay Henderson among others.
World Vegan Day is a global event celebrated annually on 1 November. Vegans celebrate the benefits of veganism for animals, humans, and the natural environment through activities such as setting up stalls, hosting potlucks, and planting memorial trees.
The animal rights (AR) movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries.
Shamrock Farm was the United Kingdom's only non-human primate importation and quarantine centre, located in Small Dole, near Henfield in West Sussex. The centre, owned by Bausch and Lomb and run by Charles River Laboratories, Inc. for Shamrock (GB) Ltd, provided animals to various laboratories and universities for use in animal testing. It was Europe's largest supplier of primates to laboratories, and held up to 350 monkeys at a time.
Muriel Dowding, Baroness Dowding was an English humanitarian and animal rights activist known for championing anti-vivisection, vegetarianism and the improvement of animal welfare. Like her second husband Lord Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding she was a vegetarian, an anti-vivisectionist, spiritualist and theosophist. She coined the term cruelty-free and was a pioneer of the cruelty-free movement.
Gillian Rose Langley is a British scientist and writer who specialises in alternatives to animal testing and animal rights. She was, from 1981 until 2009, the science director of the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research, a medical research charity developing non-animal research techniques. She was an anti-vivisection member of the British government's Animal Procedures Committee for eight years, and has worked as a consultant on non-animal techniques for the European Commission, and for animal protection organizations in Europe and the United States. Between 2010 and 2016 she was a consultant for Humane Society International.
Juliet Gellatley is a British writer and animal rights activist. She is the founder and director of Viva! and a former director of the Vegetarian Society. She is also a founding director of The Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation, now known as Viva!Health, along with Tony Wardle, with whom she was married and has two sons, Jazz and Finn, born in 2002.
The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Britain from 1903 until 1910. It involved the infiltration of University of London medical lectures by Swedish feminists, battles between medical students and the police, police protection for the statue of a dog, a libel trial at the Royal Courts of Justice, and the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the use of animals in experiments. The affair became a cause célèbre that divided the country.
Emilie Augusta Louise "Lizzy" Lind af Hageby was a Swedish-British feminist and animal rights advocate who became a prominent anti-vivisection activist in England in the early 20th century.
Women have played a central role in animal advocacy since the 19th century. The animal advocacy movement – embracing animal rights, animal welfare, and anti-vivisectionism – has been disproportionately initiated and led by women, particularly in the United Kingdom. Women are more likely to support animal rights than men. A 1996 study of adolescents by Linda Pifer suggested that factors that may partially explain this discrepancy include attitudes towards feminism and science, scientific literacy, and the presence of a greater emphasis on "nurturance or compassion" amongst women. Although vegetarianism does not necessarily imply animal advocacy, a 1992 market research study conducted by the Yankelovich research organization concluded that "of the 12.4 million people [in the US] who call themselves vegetarian, 68% are female, while only 32% are male".
Michael Herschel Greger is an American physician, author, and professional speaker on public health issues, best known for his advocacy of a whole-food, plant-based diet, and his opposition to animal-derived food products.
The Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society (ADAVS) was an animal rights advocacy organisation, co-founded in England, in 1903, by the animal rights advocates Lizzy Lind af Hageby, a Swedish-British feminist, and the English peeress Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton.
Cornelia Cochrane Churchill Guest is a New York socialite, author, actress, and the Debutante of the Decade for the 1980s of the International Debutante Ball in New York City. She is a vegan, known for her advocacy of animal rights.
Alanna Devine is a Canadian lawyer who practices animal law in Quebec and Ontario. She completed her undergraduate degree in criminology at the University of Toronto and obtained degrees in civil and common law at McGill University Faculty of Law in Montreal, before clerking for the Honorable Justice Louise Charron at the Supreme Court of Canada. While a student she founded the McGill Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, a chapter of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. She has been a member of the Law Society of Ontario since 2007.
Dara Kristen Hayes, known as Tigerlily, is an Australian DJ and record producer born in Sydney.
Satya was an American monthly magazine which covered vegetarianism, animal rights, environmentalism and social justice issues. It was co-founded by Beth Gould and Martin Rowe in 1994 and released its final issue in 2007. Scholar Gary Francione says Satya became the main journal that promoted animal welfare after the demise of The Animals' Agenda in 2002.
Jasmin Singer is an American animal rights activist. Since 2022, she has been the host of Weekend Edition for WXXI, Rochester, NY's NPR member station. She is the co-founder of the non-profit organization and podcast Our Hen House, serves as editor-at-large of VegNews, and is the former Vice President of Editorial at Kinder Beauty. She also supports LGBTQ+ and overlapping social justice issues.
P… is not Dead, Luminous Frenzy: The DJs of Luminous Frenzy Sound System will provide the soundtrack to My Night with Philosophers, a 12 hour musical and philosophical journey with a special focus on Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Music
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