Each year, The Lovies recognises a select number of Special Achievement honourees alongside our winners. These are European innovators who have changed the possibilities for digital work and use the Internet in pursuit of a better world. Learn about the Special Achievement Winners we’re honouring this year in the 10th Annual Lovie Awards first-ever virtual celebration, Lovies X Everywhere.

Gorillaz, Lovie Lifetime Achievement

Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn, aka Gorillaz, will receive the 2020 Lovie Lifetime Achievement Award for their outstanding work in combining music and digital technology for more than a decade.

Since their inception as a band, Gorillaz has defied all convention both in music—a fusion of rap and rock with influences across many genres—and in the band’s presence as animated characters with stories and personalities of their own. The band continues to innovate on their Internet-savvy focus with new projects, such as their MAYDEUP FEST release last year on Spotify, giving fans all across the Internet the digital “festival” experience; plus their digitally rendered music videos for Humanz and live-streamed Demon Dayz festival. This in addition to limited-edition online releases for coveted products like G-Shocks make Gorillaz the most tech-savvy band out there with an undeniable skill for cultivating fans through an entire online world. This impressive work is exactly what sets Gorillaz apart from other musicians —they not only embrace the Internet (and have since their inception)—but they thrive on it.

What’s more, the band has shown that the global Covid-19 pandemic is a moment to innovate rather than shy away from art; from hosting public, live Zoom sessions with the team who behind their latest album Song Machine, to planning for a live stream concert in December 2020, Gorillaz shows us that indeed, the Internet is the glue keeping us all together through the most challenging of times.

Jameela Jamil, Lovie Special Achievement

Jameela Jamil will receive a Lovie Special Achievement Award for using her massive online platform to advocate for body positivity, inclusivity and self-love, and against shame, notably by founding the inspiring Instagram and online community “I Weigh.”

With over 3 million followers on her personal Instagram account alone, it matters how someone like Jameela Jamil uses her platform, especially during a global pandemic when so many people are more isolated than ever before–and turning to the Internet as a lifeline for support and connection. So it is especially meaningful that she dedicates her online presence to spreading positive messages of self-love, to speaking out against harmful fatphobia and diet fads that create negative self-worth—and to lifting up other activists doing important work for their communities.

What’s more, with over 1 million followers on her Instagram community for “I Weigh,” Jamil has created a thriving and safe space for people to celebrate what makes them beautiful; as well as a vast community making change in the world both by spreading their messages of radical self-love and visibility, and by literally taking their message to advocate for necessary change within the fashion industry all the way to parliament. In this way, Jamil has not only created a wonderful and positive online community but one capable of demonstrating what the Internet can do at its very best: bring people together in pursuit of inclusion and equality, showcase the voices that too often go unheard, and lead the masses to real-world advancement and change.

Special Achievement Winners will be honoured along with all Lovie Winners in the first-ever virtual Lovie celebration, Lovies X Everywhere, starting Thursday, 19 November at lovieseverywhere.com