“FOR so many years people have been saying Bradford is going to be on the up but it does finally feel we are getting there.”

Theatre director Evie Manning, who runs the award-winning Common Wealth theatre company, is passionate about her home city and is eager to see it thrive which is why she is helping to bring the forthcoming WOW Festival (Women of the World) to Bradford.

WOW is an annual event held at the Southbank Centre in London. Launched in 2011 in London by Jude Kelly CBE, the aim of the event is to celebrate women and girls and focus on obstacles that prevent them from achieving their potential.

So far, WOW - whose president is HRH Duchess of Cornwall - has reached more than one million people worldwide and the aim is for a WOW commonwealth festival at the Commonwealth Games in 2018 with all 53 nations.

Evie’s involvement as festival programmer came through her award-winning theatre production ‘No Guts, No Heart, No Glory’ - based on interviews with Muslim female boxers, including two national Muslim female champions in Bradford, Saira Tabasum and Ambreen Sadiq.

Interestingly, Ambreen and Saira are among the many high-profile females participating in the WOW festival when it arrives here, making it the first northern city to host the event.

Running over the weekend of November 5 and 6 at the Kala Sangam Arts Centre in Forster Square and Bradford Cathedral in Stott Hill, the festival also features other high-profile females including teenage campaigner, activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Malala Yousafzai; MP Naz Shah; Jasvinder Sanghera from Karma Nirvana; writer Kay Mellor OBE; Fiona Macaulay from Bradford University’s Peace Studies department; Kersten England, chief executive of Bradford Council; and spoken word artist and basketball coach, Asma Elbadawi. Bradford Bulls winger, Omari Caro; Asif Quraishi (whose alter-ego is Muslim drag Queen Asifa Lahore) and Imam Alyas Karmani will also be appearing at the festival.

Since its establishment, WOW has become a global festival movement having a presence in five continents in countries from Pakistan to the USA.

Support from Spirit of 2012, a funding charity established with £47m from the Big Lottery to fund partners providing opportunities in sports, physical activity and arts, volunteering and social action, has led to the creation of nine new WOWs in five cities across the UK commemorating the centenary of female suffrage in 2018.

Bradford will host three festivals, presenting an opportunity for hundreds of women and men, boys and girls from across the city to come together and celebrate the achievements of women and girls. Music, dance, theatre, performance, poetry and comedy feature throughout the festival.

Evie explains how it aims to empower local people through initiatives such as leadership and volunteer programmes offering training for local women. The Wowser programme involves young women planning a powder paint event. Themed around ‘I am Perfect As Me’ the event focuses on the pressures young people face to look a certain way. “They want it to be something fun, of women accepting who they are and how they look because the main thing they feel as young women is pressure to look a certain way,” explains Evie.

Local schools and organisations will participate too. “Hopefully we’ll get so many amazing people under one roof together it will spark off a lot of conversations and ideas,” says Evie.

The event will create a safe space for discussing hard-hitting issues affecting women and girls, locally and nationally. Evie hopes it will also encourage people to come together to find solutions on how to help their communities in light of the austerity cuts. “It’s also about making change,” she says. “We need to make significant changes in Bradford because there is so much potential here and so many brilliant, skilled, experienced people and finding ways we connect and work together to fulfil women’s potential.”

The event isn’t solely for women. Evie wants men and boys to come along too. She says the festival is for people to feel energised and aware of their potential to make change. “The brilliant thing is WOW has got something for the next three years, three years to grow and develop the festival, and hopefully there will be enough cultural will in the city for people to continue it.”

Visit southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/festivals-series/wow-bradford

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