Influential black women are set to take over the Instagram accounts of their White counterparts on Thursday to mark the beginning of the UK’s Black History Month, reported CNN.
According to an Instagram post by ‘Share the Mic UK’, the campaign is bringing together over 70 women with a combined Instagram following of more than 175 million in order to magnify Black women’s work, lives and achievements.
While Booker Prize winning author Bernardine Evaristo will be taking over CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour’s account, academic and author Emma Dabiri will take over actor and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow’s.
Broadcaster June Sarpong and Kenya Hunt, fashion director at Grazia UK magazine will take over singer and fashion designer Victoria Beckham and model and fashion designer Alexa Chung’s accounts, respectively.
A post from the campaign’s account read, “The voices of Black women have gone unheard and their incredible works and great success has been unseen by many. This needs to change. We want to magnify Black women and their experiences.”
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Organised by Vanessa Kingori, publishing director at British Vogue magazine, and Stephanie Phair, an executive at fashion brand Farfetch and chair of the British Fashion Council, the initiative uses the hashtags #ShareTheMicUK and #ShareTheMicNow and follows the success of the US-based Share the Mic Now campaign.
In an Instagram post, Kingori said, “Never in my life have I had and witnessed more meaningful, honest discussions about racial disparity. This has to be just the beginning.”
