What is WOW?

In 2010, WOW Founder and Director Jude Kelly CBE was Artistic Director of Southbank Centre, one of the Europe's largest arts centres. A renowned theatre director, Jude had become concerned that women and girls had seemingly lost both the space and dialogue to discuss gender inequality.

"2010 was a year in which people believed women had already achieved equality. We had the legislation and style of an equal society and young women had been told that the job of feminism had been done. But they didn’t have equal pay and they didn’t have respect in lots of ways."

It was at the 2011 Festival that campaigner Nimco Ali first spoke about FGM for the first time in public and was inspired to start a campaign which resulted in new Government policy announced by Prime Minister David Cameron in July 2014 to stop the practice globally.

In 2012 the second WOW London Festival continued to strive forwards. Women on the Move Awards was launched at the festival, the first in a long partnership together to celebrate migrant and refugee women making exception contributions to UK society. 

Baroness Scotland launches programme to address Domestic Violence and Abuse, Bloomberg become headline sponsor and the festival went global, with the first ever WOW in the USA - WOW Baltimore.

Fast forward two years and WOW London 2014 sold out immediately, with Alice Walker, Julie Walters, Ruby Wax, Michael Kimmel, Angelique Kidjo and Fatoumata Diawara. 2014 also saw not only the first WOW events take place outside of London in the UK - WOW Derry-Londonderry as part of the UK City of Culture - but new WOW Festivals in Australia with WOW Sydney and the first WOW Katherine Festival, Northern Territory.

In 2015, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall officially became WOW's President.

The next few years saw WOW grow around the world. In London, Malala Yousafzai delivered an International Women’s Day keynote speech at WOW London; the second WOW Katherine took place in Northern Territory, Australia; new festivals and events take place across the UK in Egypt, New York, Brazil, Pakistan, Samailand, Nigeria, Finland and more.

In 2018, Jude left her role at Southbank Centre to form The WOW Foundation, a charity that now runs WOW year-round. 2019's London festival was dedicated to two huge conversations: WOW - What Now? and WOW - What Next? to review the state of gender equality, and discuss what had to be done over the next decade. 

Since launching in 2010, the festival has reached over two million people in 17 countries on six continents. Festivals and have events have taken place in Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, Finland, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Somaliland, the USA and across the UK.