Women of the World festival

This week the Women of the World festival took over Festival Hall on the Southbank. Listed as "a festival of talks, workshops and performances celebrating women and girls – WOW is now five years old and has become a global phenomenon."

Tonight, being International Women's Day and all I attended an event called 'Mirth Control' with the girls from work.

Mirth Control "is an electrifying night of comedy and music inspired by great women and hosted by Sandi Toksvig. Join us for an evening of fun in which Sandi presents an all-female cabinet for her dream political party. This year's line-up includes a special appearance by actor Hugh Grant, award-winning comedian Sarah Millican, opera-singing sensation Angel Blue, West End star Sharon D. Clarke, classical music conductors Sian Edwards and Alice Farnham, and MOBOaward-nominated singer/songwriter Ayanna Witter-Johnson. Also featuring music from Southbank Centre's vocal initiative Voicelab, all-female pop choir Lips and the WOW Orchestra. Directed by Paulette Randall.

Tonight was all about the upcoming election and the fact that something like 9.1 million women didn’t vote in the last federal vote in England. 9.1million! That's an awful lot of options and ideas going unheard in the shaping of this country. And in a country where it isn’t mandatory for people to vote, her message was very important.

All guests this evening were chosen to shine a different light on this message. The amazing all female orchestra as just amazing, a variety of stella guests including the only male guest of the evening was Hugh Grant who was there for a bit of poetry reading, there were comedians, a game of true or false and the presentation of Sandy’s political party.

The poem Hugh Grant read out was really special. Sometime ago a woman wrote to Sandy saying that she had seen her show and was inspired to go and do what she had always wanted to do and loved and that was write poetry. She included many of her new poems in the letter. The poems were fantastic and Sandy asked her to write one for tonight’s show. The woman didn’t want to read it, or something like that, so old mate Hugh did!

Sandy’s political party was fantastic and it really inspired, at least me, about going out there and demanding more from the politicians and the people that run our countries. Unfortunately, I can’t remember their names but they varied from a mother who fought against the system to gain equal justice for her son the UK, to entertainers and heads of charities.

Our special guests of the evening were very special indeed. My favourite two were meeting Slyvia Pankhurst’s granddaughter and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch.

I’m not sure if you know who Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is, but this is how they introduced us to her….

“Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was the youngest member of the all female orchestra in Auschwitz. If it weren’t for her musical talents, she would’ve been deemed to young and gassed very early on. Apparently cello players were difficult to replace and thus gave her entrance into the 40-piece orchestra.

Before she entered the camp, her sister and her worked in a paper factory where they began forging papers to enable French forced labourers to cross back into France. She was quoted as saying: I could never accept that I should be killed for what I happened to be born as, and decided to give the Germans a better reason for killing me."

After the War Anita to moved to Great Britain with her sister and cofounded and joined the English Chamber Orchestra, where she spent her time performing and travelling around….

All the while this happened the youngest member of the orchestra walked to the front of the audience holding a single red rose, while another member played one of Anita’s songs. Then they announced that Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was with us this evening and while the young musician handed her the rose the whole auditorium gave her a standing ovation – it was just beautiful!

I also learnt this evening that women in Britain first got to vote back in the 1880s. This was of course by accident. In 1867 a woman named Lily Maxwell was a shop owner and as such met the property qualifications to vote. Her name was added to the election register and she voted in a by-election. Her vote was thrown out after this fact was discovered, but it gave great rise to the suffrage campaigners.

Its stories like this and I find myself asking why were / are women treated to so poorly. If Lily Maxwell could own and run a shop then why couldn’t she vote! Today it may not be about voting, but there are so many other situations where women are disadvantaged, it’s such crap!

I certainly left this evening feeling much more empowered and inspired for my sex – go women!

Links:

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/mirth-…Read more