British Council brings WOW festival to Bangladesh

The British WOW festival in which women and girls’ strengths and challenges are showcased is coming to Bangladesh.

The two-day festival from Apr 5 will be held at Bangla Academy premises in Dhaka. Men and boys are also invited for the show that advocates gender equality across the world. Entry is free.

The British Council at a press briefing on Monday said that they are bringing this festival to Dhaka for the first time in partnership with the WOW Foundation, UK. WOW means ‘Women of the World’.

Panel discussions, workshops on different issues, speed mentoring in which experts of different sectors will meet participants, under-10 feminist corner to enlighten children with boys and girls’ equal rights, musical show and pop-up performance such as curated exhibitions as well as film show are the highlights of the festival.

“The WOW festival is a crucial platform in advancing our work on women and girls’ empowerment under our Arts programme portfolio in South Asia,” Andrew Newton, Deputy Director, British Council said.

“At the British Council we believe that achieving gender equality is crucial in creating an inclusive, open and prosperous society, and the advancing sustainable development goals, in particular SDG 5 - Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.

“The festival is an engaging and impactful way of strengthening cultural understanding by sharing practices and experiences from the UK yet grounding them in the local context,” he added.

“It advocates to create access and opportunity for women and girls around the world and build their skills and confidence to achieve their potential and have more influence over decisions that positively impact their lives,” Newton was quoted as saying.

Nahin Idris, Head of Arts, British Council, said their plan is to reach more than 1 million people through a “spirited and far reaching celebration of the women and girls’ achievements, and by encouraging sharing of hundreds of women’s stories to explore the obstacles that prevent them from achieving their full potential.”

He said the Bangladesh episode of the WOW festival would be different “because we have involved people of all strata through our divisional level programmes last year ahead of this festival”.

“Success does not mean only corporate world successes. You will see once you come to the festival what’s going to happen here. But for example, during our divisional programme we held a panel discussion on women’s economic activities and the panelists involved female lawyer, female professor, housewife and even a housemaid,” he said.

“You can understand that we are not focusing on any specific area. We believe that each has his own success stories. Success does not look on only one way. It can come in various forms,” Idris said, highlighting the inclusiveness of the event.

WOW is the largest women’s festival in the world.  It started in London in 2010 and is now a global festival expanding across five continents.

Actress Sara Zaker, who is one of the curators of the festival, was also present at the press briefing at British Council.