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Women of the World festival is back
The WOW is back in person!
London’s greatest women’s festival 11th - 13th March at the Southbank Centre
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Founder Jude Kelly
Photo©EllieKurttz Miss Baby Sol
New kids corner WOW Marketplace
WOW - Women of the World - Festival is returning to London in person in 2022 and celebrates International Women’s Day, which usually takes place on the 8th March each year. The festival is coming home to its birth place at the Southbank Centre from 11 to 13 March. The London edition of the world’s biggest, most comprehensive festival celebrating women, girls and non-binary people will be back after some of the toughest years in recent history for gender equality. Across the three days, WOW London 2022’s line-up of world class speakers, inspirational activists, musicians, artists and comedians will take over the Southbank Centre for discussions, workshops, performances and debates including everything from sex to politics, “grandmotherdom”, divorce, sexual violence, childlessness, reproductive rights, career changes, poverty, resistance and resilience, girls’ education, love and relationships, football and how the pandemic has affected us all. Line up to be updated in the New Year.
The WOW Foundation’s CEO and Founder Jude Kelly said: “WOW Festivals are a time to celebrate, to connect and to work out what we need now and next. We know that women and girls have been hardest hit by COVID-19; finding themselves in ever more precarious positions, especially those already marginalised. Looking to 2022, I feel as keenly as I did when WOW started 12 years ago that there is even more that we can be doing every day to bring about gender equality. We know the need is urgent. So in 2022 I am inviting some of the most inspirational speakers and activists from around the world to share their vision for the future - social, economic, political and cultural - so that we can work together on how to put those ideas into action. As always we will have some of the most talented and thought-provoking artists, musicians and comedians to bring us together in the biggest celebration of the rights of women, girls and non-binary people across the world.”
A sell out every year, Day Passes are now on sale. These give WOW festival goers access to dozens of talks, performances, workshops and more, which are the heart of the festival. WOW London 2022 will see the return of many other WOW favourites including the free-to-explore WOW Marketplace and the sell-out Under-10s Feminist Corners. On sale now, these fun interactive workshops invite children to explore equality and discover what life is like for their peers across the world. WOW has also revealed that Miss Baby Sol will be its first ever WOW Sounds Artist in Residence. Miss Baby Sol’s music spans funk, soul, pop and jazz and her lyrics explore many areas of activism. As part of the residency, Miss Baby Sol will create three new tracks which she will perform at WOW Festival alongside her existing material.
Individual ticketed events taking place every evening and all day on Sunday will be announced in the New Year, alongside a digital programme that will be accessible worldwide, and feature events in partnership with other WOW Festivals across the globe.
Run by UK charity The WOW Foundation, 2022 marks the 12th WOW London Festival. In 2018, WOW Founder Jude Kelly built on the success of the festival to create UK-based charity The WOW Foundation to run the global WOW movement that believes a gender equal world is urgently needed, possible and desirable. Since the inaugural London Festival in 2010, WOW and its partners across the world have reached more than three million people in more than 100 festivals and events across six continents. n
On the Royal Festival Hall stage
