| Women of the World Festival | |
| Founder Name: | Jude Kelly |
| Activity: | Celebrates the achievements of women and girls and highlights the obstacles they face |
| Patron: | Queen Camilla (president) |
WOW – Women of the World Festival (WOW, WOW Festival) is a network of arts festivals that celebrate the achievements of women and girls as well as highlighting the obstacles that face them, and is part of a global feminist movement. The WOW Foundation spearheads the festivals and forms partnerships to hold WOW festivals across the world.
The festival was founded in London in 2010 by Jude Kelly, a theatre director who was at that time artistic director of the Southbank Centre. She felt that the feminist movement was "in a lull" at that time, and that it needed something to revitalise it.[1] [2]
Since 2015, Queen Camilla has been WOW's president.[3] In 2015, the BBC broadcast Woman's Hour from the London festival.[4] By 2018, there had been 42 WOW festivals in 23 countries.[5]
The WOW Foundation became an independent charity in 2018, with Kelly as its first director.[6] She stepped down from her position at the Southbank Centre in May 2018, in order to concentrate on WOW.
In 2020, the festival's tenth edition featured an address by Camilla (then Duchess of Cornwall).[7] In May of that year, the WOW Foundation ran a two-day online event in partnership with BBC Arts[8] and a 24-hour marathon festival called WOW Global 24, with participants from around the world, which was produced in-house.[9]
In March 2021, as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to be felt, the festival moved online.[10]
WOW Festivals take place all year round in various locations. The WOW London Festival takes place over several days in early March, around International Women's Day. WOW includes talks, debates, music, comedy, performances and mentoring sessions on a range of themes and topics.
At first, the festival's principal venue was the Southbank Centre in London. There are also festivals in many other locations, both within the UK and throughout the world. these included the cities of Cambridge,[11] Liverpool, Cardiff, Leeds, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, Hargeysa (Somaliland), Alexandria, Beijing, Athens, Karachi, and Istanbul, as well as in Finland and several locations in Australia, Bangladesh and Nepal.[12]
The first WOW event was held in Katherine, Northern Territory, in 2013. Subsequent events have been held in that town, as well as Melbourne and various cities in Queensland. After an initial event in Brisbane, Queensland, in 2015,[13] WOW Australia has been based in that city since 2021 (having had to cancel the 2020 event owing to the COVID-19 pandemic). It is a three-year collaboration between Queensland Performing Arts Centre (Southbank Centre) and the non-profit Of One Mind, and supported by the Queensland Government.[14]
WOW has worked with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women[15] and is a supporter of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.[16]