Every year, feminists gather at London's Southbank Centre to celebrate International Women's Day with WOW. Missile spoke to WOW's founder, Jude Kelly CBE, about the power of gender equality

Jude Kelly began her career in theatre in her early twenties

Image: WOW

What began as a three-day festival at London’s Southbank Centre, now stands as a global phenomenon of feminism. The WOW (Women of the World) Festival, founded by theatre director Jude Kelly CBE in 2010, celebrates the achievements of women and non-binary people and combats gender injustice. Liverpool-born Kelly had noticed a shift in the feminist narrative and when others decided that feminism had gone far enough, she made it clear that it had barely begun.

Kelly left her role as Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre in 2018 to focus on the organisation and established it as The WOW Foundation, a charity that challenges gender inequality through festivals, events, school programmes and more. This year’s WOW Festival coincided with International Women’s Day in March. The weekend hosted crucial conversations, panels, and performances and platformed small businesses and initiatives with a marketplace that was free to the public. Headliners at the festival included authors Pandora Sykes and Elizabeth Day, activist Warsan Shire and retail expert and broadcaster Mary Portas. A particular Missile highlight from the weekend was Tahmima Anam’s captivating theories on the “resting bitch face”.

We spoke to Kelly about the foundations of WOW and what it means to be a feminist in an age where we are considered “boring”. Read on to discover Kelly’s latest project.

What is your definition of feminism, has it changed over time?

Believing that all genders should be equal. In order to achieve that, we need to understand all structural disadvantage and fight on all fronts.

Was The WOW Foundation something you always wanted to pursue?

I never had a scheme to create a particular thing. Ever since I was little, I have always been so fired up and excited about making the world fairer, for me and everybody else. Not out of fear or anger, just excitement. I've always thought that people would be happier if the world was more interesting, but it took me a long time to realise that some people didn't actually want it to be like that. I just thought that they were misinformed, and I’ve realised it's not quite that simple anymore.

For years I've been in theatre, and I always wanted to tell stories about everyone. I wanted to include everyone in the audience and remove any cultural elitism. And so, I came across the problem that people thought women couldn’t direct and women didn’t have power. So, as part of that overall feeling of wanting to make changes to the world for everyone, I found myself having to protest for my own sake about gender. I’ve always supported women and ideas about equality in order to bring about justice to everyone in the world.

It was only when I became the Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre that I realised, even with that amount of power as a woman in that position, I couldn’t undo thousands of years of exclusion and hundreds of years of a cultural canon that keeps reinforcing ideas of inequality. This made me decide to do The first WOW Festival, particularly because there were so many young, white women who were saying, "we don’t need feminism anymore,” which is a lie. I did the first WOW Festival as a one-off because I was trying to celebrate 100 years of International Women’s Day and it was such a major experience, I cried. When the idea of celebrating all kinds of people and stories is put in front of you, it’s such a moving experience. It made people motivated to make further change. I had to leave my job at the Southbank Centre because three years later and WOW is global. You often arrive at the form your ambition takes, afterwards.

Jude Kelly with the WOW Bradford women

Image: WOW

As feminists, it can be tricky to engage others in our ideas. How do you respond to people who dismiss your feminist opinions?

I knew that when I started WOW Festival that a huge number of people in the cultural sector would lose interest in what I was doing because I wasn’t working for the mainstream anymore, I was working for women. But that’s part of the problem. It would be the same if you were focusing on disability, race, or LGBTQ + rights. People think that if they are not directly part of that group, then it isn’t relevant to them. It’s amazing how many young, modern, educated women think that it’s not for them.  I think one of the things that patriarchy has been so effective at doing is grooming us to feel as if we don't need to complain when we've got money or education. And, that feminism is dowdy, moany or boring.

How do you want people to feel when they leave The WOW Festival?

My definition of who comes to WOW is: if you identify as a woman or know one, it’s for you. So, that’s everyone. I think it's up to everybody to decide whether, when they go into a place that is celebrating stories of achievements, struggles and obstacles, they will feel if it’s a place they should be. What I don't like is when people turn up and exclude others because they feel they aren’t part of it. I don’t want WOW to be owned by a particular self-defining group. I want it to remain a place that welcomes anyone who wants human progression to happen. Without gender progress, that can’t happen. I want it to be fully intersectional.

I don't want it to be a place that chastises people for not knowing all the political jargon or ways of thinking because we are all in a process of learning. And all of us have unlearning to do.

Mary Portas at this year's WOW Festival

Image: Mollie Marshall

You have previously mentioned that you read Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch at university. Would Greer be someone you would have on the WOW Festival stage?

One of the things that I try to do at WOW is make people feel safe, as well as allow them to take risks in their thinking. And that's quite a tricky combination. I want to challenge us, I want us to move beyond our comfort zones, but I want to do that in a way that feels safe.

The thing is, for some people, their modus operandi is confrontational. The great strength of Germaine Greer is her iconoclastic approach to things. She’ll see something of status and importance, and she'll come at it with a great big jousting pole to knock it off its horse. That's a tremendous thing. But I also notice that she can tilt that weapon at all kinds of things. I think she makes some people feel very unsafe that don’t deserve to, including transgender women. She shoots from the hip.

The idea for the Women’s Equality Party began at a WOW Festival. Are there more example of this?

I mean if you talk to Nimco Ali about FGM and her campaign for awareness and issues surrounding FGM, she’ll always say that WOW helped her publicise her campaign. Then there’s Bloody Good Period, they got together at WOW. WOW has been a launchpad for lots of things like that.

What practical things can Missile readers do to tackle issues affecting women?

I think influencing your own contemporaries is a very important thing. And of course, it takes courage. So, if you're at school, I think you need to start some sort of group. If you're at university, you need to join or start groups that will investigate what gender social justice looks like. Just having opinions without education is not enough. People often underestimate reading. I mean, you talked about reading Germaine Greer, but get your hands on Angela Davis’ books, Rebecca Solnit’s books. Get a hold of all kinds that can excel and deepen your thinking. This is still “doing” because you’re giving yourself more information.

I think it's incredibly helpful if people can volunteer at foodbanks, which are largely women attending and, if they can, volunteer to help refugees. Anywhere where women are marginalised and are dealing with frontline issues. So, refugees, homeless women. It’s very important not to just consider theoretical issues. Because, for every inequality that humans suffer, we know that women will suffer more. So a homeless woman, for example, will be more vulnerable to being raped or beaten up. And her reasons for homelessness will probably come out of issues to do with domestic violence. It’s important for women to identify a solidarity with people who are not living their own lives.

Say you volunteer at a foodbank, and you get chatting to someone. You hear their story about being evicted from their home even though they have a job, for example, you can think, “okay, what can I do with this knowledge? Can I speak to an MP on their behalf? Can I fight for greater attention to universal credit?” You’ve got to build your portfolio of knowledge and actions based on knowing people’s real stories. When things are no longer theoretical and academic, it builds your compassion and sense of drive.

Do you have any new work in the pipeline? Perhaps a book?

I'm actually trying to write a book. I'm finding it very, very hard, but I am doing it. So that will eventually come out. I’m still directing, and I want to direct and commission more. I usually don’t have plans, I just always have the same desire which is trying to work out how I can use cultural practice to change the world for better. I never know what form that is going to take until I bump into it.

Career wise, do you have any regrets or things you wish you had done differently?

Whenever I've done something because I thought, “well I ought to do this” as opposed to “I really want to do this,” it’s never been a good idea. It’s always made me feel cowardly and weaker. Whenever I’ve done anything to get someone else’s opinion, it’s never gone very well. It often happens that we get caught between pleasing someone and fearing that if you did what you really wanted to do, you’d be ridiculed for it. Go for the place where you’ll be ridiculed, is my advice to myself. Because if its truer, it’ll be clearer. But if you try to fit in to please people, you won’t please you and you’ll feel like a creative coward.

We at Missile can't wait for WOW's next instalment of festivities. To keep up to date, follow WOW on Instagram at @wowglobal