WOW, what a weekend!

As I write this on a freezing Tuesday morning, I’m still basking in the toasty afterglow of a fabulously feminist few days.

On Saturday morning, I was up with the fairies to catch the Megatrain to London, where I spent a zinging weekend at the Women Of the World Festival (WOW) at the Southbank Centre. On the train up I was reading a review copy of the forthcoming Virago anthology Fifty Shades of Feminism, which had only arrived the day before, and in the evening I watched Made In Dagenham in my mini B&B room. I was Not Doing Feminism By Halves. No, siree.

Being at WOW was a wonderful experience. 2013 marked the third WOW festival but the first that I’d attended, and my reason for going was that the women’s comedy event I run, WhatThe Frock! Comedy, had been invited to put on a show in the Royal Festival Hall’s ballroom on the Sunday afternoon. That wasn’t an opportunity I was going to say ‘no’ to. Putting on a show (only our sixth ever) to 500+ people in the UK’s biggest arts centre? Err, yes please.

I headed up a day early to make the most of the festival and to see as much as possible. I lived in London for most of my 20s and still feel very fond of the place, so it’s always nice to have an excuse to go back. The Southbank Centre was somewhere I spent a lot of time in my London years as I both lived and worked nearby, plus I love the heritage of the place and the reasons why it was created in the first place.

To see the buildings (Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall) filled to the rafters with women-friendly stalls and events promoting women in business, women in comedy, women in fashion, women in charities… was brilliant. The buzz in the whole centre was electric, and the atmosphere was nothing but warm, welcoming and inclusive.

I saw several talks over the two days, but with up to 10 events happening simultaneously, I inevitably also missed a great deal. But I did catch a brilliant session celebrating women who don’t have children (whether by choice or by circumstance); debating the outcome of the Levenson Report into how the media continues to view women; the brilliance of Jane Austen. I saw Ruby Wax’s soloshow Losing It, in which she talks frankly and hilariously about her very real mental breakdown and ongoing problems with depression. And it was great to finally see Michael Kaufman talk, having interviewed him a few years previously for his book A Guy’s Guide To Feminism – and he didn’t disappoint.

All three pictures, copyright Southbank Centre

Of course, my main focus was putting on the What The Frock! Comedy show on the Sunday afternoon. With a one-hour timeslot, I’d booked Rosie Wilby as MC, and Shazia Mirza and Danielle Ward for 20-minute slots. It seemed a tough call – the ballroom turned out to be not a ‘room’ but a huge sunken space within the main foyer, meaning there was a lot of background noise and distractions. But it also meant that as well as filling our 500 seats, we gained about 200 extra audience members who were standing around the edges, sitting on the floor at the front, and pulling up chairs to peer over the balcony to watch. It was fabulous. And where else was I going to put on a show where our ‘warm-up act’ was Woman’s Hour’s Jenni Murray (who had done a piece on What The Frock! earlier in the week), and where we were succeeded by Sandi Toksvig?

The tweets and messages I’ve since received from people in the audience, who previously didn’t know about What The Frock! but who had a wonderful time, and who also discovered one or two comedians they didn’t previously know, has made it all so worthwhile. Putting on any show is never a piece of cake – there are contracts to sign, money to be negotiated, publicity to garner, and inevitably technical hitches on the day. But the buzz of the day and the resulting feedback is what always makes it worthwhile. Even as I sat squashed into an uncomfortable corner of a bumpy coach for three hours going home, I was still basking in the glow of a weekend where the women deservedly won.

So, thank you to everyone at WOW and the Royal Festival Hall for inviting What The Frock! along and for taking a punt on an up and coming comedy event. I had a ball, and whether or not What The Frock! comes back for WOW 2014, I’ll certainly be there, come hell or high water.

Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman

In a much-publicised move, Turner Prize winning potter Grayson Perry – who is sometimes known for alter-ego Claire – has curated an installation that combines his own new works with objects from forgotten craftsmen that have been tucked away in the expansive archives at the British Museum.

The British Museum is always a delight to visit, whether marveling at the magnitude of the space it occupies in Bloomsbury, standing in the foyer with your head tilted back to admire the huge glass roof, or wandering around the many galleries to take in the history of the world.

But up the staircase to the Perry’s gallery, he takes visitors into the world of forgotten craftsmen, which the publicity is calling “a sacred journey” – perhaps in tribute to Perry’s own 10-day pilgrimage through Germany with his teddy bear Alan Measles. And the beautifully decorated motorbike, complete with reclining Alan, is on display as you enter the exhibition. It’s wonderful, so intricate.

Unlike some contemporary artists, Perry actually makes his work himself, and is clearly skilled as a potter. His famous vases are decorated in witty captions that contrast well with the ancient pieces from the archives that they sit beside. And the first thing you see on entering the gallery is one of Perry’s pots that is decorated with images of the different types of people who he imagines may have come to see his exhibition, and what they would get out of it (“I’m here as it’s the sort of thing people like me come to”, “I heard about it on Twitter”). 

But Perry is more than a potter. One of my favourite of his pieces is an enormous, meticulously crafted tapestry (extract above) that is modeled on the design of the British Museum building, yet incorporates a unique map of the world. Other highlights of Perry’s creation include his pencil drawing showing his pilgrimage to the British Museum and, of course, the centerpiece: an enormous and beautifully decorated cast iron coffin-ship.

Unsure what to expect from Perry’s exhibition, I came away impressed. Aside from the fact that the bulk of his work is actually made by him (or so it seems), the attention to detail and ribbing of contemporary life sits perfectly against the artifacts he has chosen from the last two million years of creativity.

The exhibition is showing until 19 February, 2012. For more information, please visit the British Museum’s microsite for the exhibition.

Celebrating the Southbank

It’s impossible to be bored in London – if you have a spare half day to while away, you will never be short of mind-blowing things to do. What’s really caught my attention in London lately is the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain. So much so that I’ve been twice now, and plan to go again before it closes on September 4.

The Southbank is one of the most exciting parts of London regardless of season. Obviously riverside, in it’s vicinity (even if not a part of the Southbank Centre) is the London Eye, a plethora of iconic bridges, City Hall, the National Theatre, the BFI, the famous Southbank Book market tucked neatly under Waterloo Bridge, and so much more. The Southbank Centre itself sits amid all this, and includes the Royal Festival Hall, the Hayward Gallery and Queen Elizabeth Hall. A mixture of architectural curios and monstrosities, the Southbank Centre is defiant and proud – and there are many arguments for seeing beyond the concrete ugliness of the brutalist construction and embracing the structure for what it brings to the art it displays.

Visiting the Tracey Emin retrospective in the Hayward recently, I had every opportunity to give the ugly building another chance and see what else it had to offer. It’s a clunky, chunky, raw and exposed space, and no matter how many of Emin’s appliquéd blankets (with heart-tugging messages of abortion and rejection) you display on the walls, they’re never going to be softened. It’s a landmark building though, and one that (since it opened in 1968) has firmly embedded itself into the Southbank’s skyscape. Like it or not, the Hayward deserves to stay.

Currently crouching near the roof of the Hayward (on the terrace above the neighbouring Quen Elizabeth Hall) is an enormous urban fox made of straw bales by Pirate Technics. First viewed as I took a bus along Waterloo Bridge on evening, I revisited the fox the next day in glorious sunshine and marveled at his size, his beauty and his simple splendour.

Further round the rooftop walkways is a display called The Lands, that features a variety of stone walls and piped in soundtracks to recreate the wild noises you’d hear if they were in their traditional habitat. For me, this wasn’t entirely successful. But they were located close to a glistening chamber of polished Welsh coal, which is confusing at first glance but rather pleasing to the touch and senses.

Back on ground level, the outdoor display that most caught my attention was of poems written on paper planes suspended in the sky on wires from a temporary structure up to the roof of the Royal Festival Hall. The display is intended to represent the former Lion and Unicorn Pavillion, which was a part of the original 1951 Festival of Britain but long since demolished. Utterly beautiful to look at and admire from every conceivable angle, this was without doubt the most stunning of outdoor artworks on show at the Southbank.

The Spirit Level basement of the Royal Festival Hall has been dominated by a free exhibition curated by Hemingway Design to create a vibrant collection of memorabilia, artworks, personal histories, models and memories from the original festival. Free to enter, the museum needs a good hour or two of your time to be enjoyed properly, and the attention to detail is overwhelming. The highlight being, without a doubt, the recreation of a 1951 living room, complete with all of the iconic fabrics used in the original festival (and many preserved today) by Robin and Lucienne Day. As an aside, I was particularly struck by the ladies’ toilets on the basement level (not a part of the museum, but a permanent fixture), which still has a separate, golden wooded annex for the sole purpose of women to touch up their make-up and hair. It’s a beautiful reminder of a more gentle time.

There’s more to the celebrations than I’ve had space to mention, and there’s more going on than I’ve had a chance to see. But if you have time in London over the next month, there’s nothing better you can do than head over to Southbank and soak up the celebratory sights there. This is truly a celebration of all that was great about the festival, and is a promise of all the achievements and performances that will take place there in years to come.