24 December 2014

Introducing our Advent Calendar – here’s the penultimate post in a cultural countdown to Christmas.

Right now, you should be sitting in front of the TV, piles of wrapped presents sitting shiny at your feet, a glass of something fizzy in your hand. If, however, you are still wrapping, cleaning, cooking and fretting – well, join the club. Deadlines and Christmas have always made for uneasy bedfellows. We have had time, however, time to rustle up one present for you: the announcement that Wonder Women returns in March 2015.

What this means is that, from Cornelia Parker and Sex and the Stereotype at the Whitworth to Helen Storey, The Unthanks, Emma Jane Unsworth, No More Page 3 and a special after hours event at Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester’s feminist festival runs across the city from 1-31 March 2015. Over 35 organisations are taking part, including almost all of the city’s museums and galleries, with the month-long event featuring new art, documentary film, museum exhibitions, football, performance art, theatre, dance, architecture, guided walks, fashion, political debate, stand-up literature, cinema and much more.

There is no better place than the city that spawned the suffragettes to celebrate how far women have come – and to ask how far we have yet to go. So our festival celebrates female creativity and ingenuity, commemorates the suffragette movement, coincides with International Women’s Day and is part of the Wellcome Trust’s Sexology Season.

Jointly organised/agitated by us here at CT and our friends at the People’s History Museum, there will be fun, there will be games, there may be tears, tantrums, dancing and gin – but one thing is for sure: there will also be a city, out there, at large, talking and thinking about the wonder that is women. We’ll release the full programme in January. Until then – get back to that wrapping!