The Lake District is host to the Women’s Arts International Festival. The first one was in 2007 and included Patti Smith, Marianne Faithful, Germaine Greer… This year the full festival could not go ahead due to funding cuts, however they still were able to continue with a few fab women performers, as below:
Zena Edwards is a fab performance poet/singer/actor/dancer
Totally gorgeous bluesy singer from Cuba
And another video, just cos she’s so gorgeous!
The Paperbirds, In a Thousand Pieces
The Paperbirds are a women’s collective theatre company. This theatre production told the story of a young woman whose journey to Britain to look for work ended in her being trafficked as a sex slave. This play was the most moving production I have seen (the you tube does have some scenes you may find disturbing).
It explored the naive expectations of eastern european women who wish to come to Britain to work, and also the shamefully ignorant and dismissive opinions Britons have to trafficked women. It was so disturbing in the way it forced you to admit that you know about such women, but ignore and forget them. It forced you to admit your guilt, in acknowledging that you too are guilty of sexualising their bodies as they stand before you near naked, or judging the size of their breasts compared to your own, even if only you thought it for a second. I cried as the women thrashed their bodies about as being raped in a brothel, and stared into your eyes with a tortured fear that still haunts me now. And as the production ended with the women standing half-dressed,and staring motionless back at us, we had to turn our backs and walk away, as we do in everyday life as we conveniently forget they exist.
Also part of the festival but who I was unable to see were the musicians Eliza Carthy and Julie Fowlis and the female led theatre company Foursight, who, as they state, explore history through the eyes of women.
