Around the time of it’s inception, I had been attending these think-ins for WOW festival. My partner Chris Weaver and I ran the radio station inside the Hayward Gallery for the grand reopening of the Southbank Centre and Royal Festival Hall, so I felt invested in Southbank Centre and was inspire by Jude Kelly’s approach to programming and community energy. The station had been schools, artists and participant interviews from the top floor of the Hayward Gallery space.The WOW think-ins took many of the themes touched on in the community projects and made them more global, and women-centred. Having these women in the studio really brought home how far the festival had come and how it had grown.
Joined by a group of dynamic women all well versed in the constant debate around gender and society, Fari Bradley discusses the pending take over of London’s Southbank Centre for WOW Festival 2012, marking International Women’s Day.Guests are writer Hannah Pool, best known for her column “The New Black” in The Guardian and co-programmer of WOW, Lynne Parker, founder of Funny Women – one of One Hundred Unseen Powerful Women ‘who change the world’ for her outstanding work in the arts, Rachel Millward founder of Bird’s Eye View an organisation that work to help the mere 7% of all filmmakers who are women, plus Domino Pateman Arts Co-ordinator and Artistic Director Jude Kelly’s assistant on special projects.
We went last year on the winding March Across the Bridge with Annie Lennox, heard women with positions in Afghanistan’s government as well as many other groups explain their work and their situation. The warmth and urgency of the massively diverse crowd has stayed with us. This is the second WOW festival, aiming to put women fully at the centre of public life.
Hear the show on PODCAST
Listen to my WOW Festival podcast on ResonanceFM from last year HERE.
