Image Credit: Photo of Jude Kelly, hosting WOW.

Jude Kelly has spent a lifetime creating spaces where people come together to listen, challenge one another and imagine a better future. Long before she founded WOW – Women of the World, she was a young theatre director in her early twenties who, after repeatedly being told “no”, stopped waiting for permission and founded her own company instead. That decision – to create opportunities rather than wait for them – has shaped everything that has followed.

Today, Jude is one of Britain’s most influential cultural leaders. Formerly Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre, she founded WOW – Women of the World there in 2010, before establishing The WOW Foundation as an independent global movement. What began as a single festival in London has grown into an international network spanning dozens of countries, bringing together artists, activists, thinkers and communities to celebrate women, girls and non-binary people while confronting the barriers that still prevent true equality. At its heart is a simple but powerful belief: stories have the power to change how we see ourselves, each other and the world around us.

We’re speaking to Jude ahead of WOW London Festival 2027 (5–7 March), when the Southbank Centre will once again become home to three days of conversations, performances, workshops, comedy and music. The world’s biggest festival celebrating women, girls and non-binary people returns with a programme that feels both urgent and hopeful. Headlining the festival are French activist Gisèle Pelicot and #MeToo founder Tarana Burke, coming together for a landmark conversation on justice, testimony and survival. Elsewhere, audiences can explore discussions spanning modern masculinity, sexual violence, disability rights, technology, youth activism and the future of gender equality – subjects that demand not only attention, but collective imagination.

Jude reminds us that culture is never just entertainment; it is one of the ways society rehearses the future. Whether through theatre, music, debate or a conversation that changes someone’s perspective, the arts help us move beyond statistics and headlines into empathy, understanding and action.

So, dear Player, start a conversation you might normally avoid. Support an artist or grassroots organisation doing meaningful work in your community. Listen more deeply to someone whose experience differs from your own. Then book your ticket to WOW London Festival 2027. You’ll meet remarkable people, discover ideas that challenge and inspire, and become part of a movement proving that a more equal world isn’t just possible – it’s something we can all help build.

People often talk about leadership as though it’s something you’re born with. Was there a moment in your twenties when you realised you didn’t need permission to take up space – and what helped you cross that threshold?

I wanted to be a director and take charge of telling stories. Particularly the stories of those people who were largely unheard. I had a number of attempts to get men to give me jobs, where I would be able to have that leadership role, but in the end I decided I’d be better served by simply starting my own company and backing myself. I was 22. I made a connection between my human right to realise a dream, and my responsibility in leadership to use my talents to support other people and their dreams. It was the putting together of those two ideas that gave me the energy and focus to stop asking permission and to just get on with it.

Image Credit: Gisèle Pelicot. Photographed by Pascal Ito.

WOW has always responded to the world as it is, rather than the world we’d like it to be. Looking ahead to WOW London 2027, what conversations feel most urgent right now – and why do they need to happen in public?

I think WOW has responded to the world that is, and also – at the same time – tried to build a vision of what we would like it to be. I think it is being both pragmatic and idealistic at the same time that builds stamina, but also momentum.

At the moment I think that we need every area that lives under the stones of shame to come out. We need to discuss all aspects of women’s health that have been under-researched, dismissed, or wrongly labelled, and recognise that we have the right to demand a healthcare service that fully takes on board our different intersectional needs.

Secondly, we must talk about money: women’s right to equal money and women’s right to talk about money and shake off the idea that somehow it’s unseemly for women to control money.

Thirdly, of course, we must talk about violence in all its forms. But I also think we need to talk about redemption and how we build routes back into society for perpetrators and people whose behaviour has been unacceptable. So that we can chart the idea that change is possible. After all, if we want change of all kinds to be possible for us, surely that has also got to be the case for people whose actions we reprimand and condemn. Nobody should be viewed as beyond redemption, in my view. This isn’t a religious position, as I’m not a religious person. But this is a belief in humanity that I think we have to be more courageous about.

Image Credit: Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement.

Bringing Gisèle Pelicot and Tarana Burke together feels like one of those rare cultural moments that reaches far beyond a festival programme. What do their stories teach us about courage, testimony and the importance of changing where society places shame?

Tarana Burke has worked for years as a survivor and with survivors, and the Me Too movement was a particular moment in time that allowed her work to be made visible and accelerated.

My hunch is that Gisèle Pelicot was able to rely on that determination that Tarana had created, to give survivors the right to be public and to move shame from their own shoulders to those who rightly should own it.

I’m excited by seeing what courage looks like in both of these women and that’s why it’s not only a festival moment, but a clarion call to everyone to be courageous in many contexts. And particularly when they have been told that their story would be unacceptable to be heard.

Film credit: Made in 2025, this video celebrated WOW’s 15th anniversary – paving the way towards the WOW London Festival 2027.

For the first time, WOW’s Shameless! and Boys & Men strands will sit alongside one another. Why was it important to bring these conversations together – and what do you hope people discover when we begin to see gender equality as a shared responsibility?

I have been puzzled for many years as to why gender equality has been perceived as something that women have to solve. Obviously gender is a complex multi-faceted reality for the whole human race. We want boys and men to feel excited by a new proposition for how masculinity can express itself. In the same way we want women to no longer feel that there are aspects of women’s experience that we need to be ashamed of or silenced on. These two conversations side-by-side hopefully allow us to bring about these ideas in a shared context.

Movements don’t grow through statistics alone – they grow through stories. What role do artists, writers, independent publishers and the wider cultural storytelling community play in helping ideas travel further, creating context and ensuring important conversations continue long after the event itself?

I don’t believe movements ever grow from data. Although I do think that there are some statistics that stop you in your tracks, i.e. the scale of femicide, male suicide rates, the number of maternity deaths for Black women compared to white women. But humans really respond with their hearts and that is what makes them suddenly shift from a theoretical interest to a personal cause. Artists and creatives of all kinds instinctively know that the simple engagement in a story, music, image or movement stirs something inside us that takes our feelings on a different journey, a more profound one, and lands us in a place where we feel changed.

Image Credit: Jude Kelly, photographed by Ellie Kurttz.

If someone walks out of WOW London 2027 feeling slightly different from when they arrived, what do you hope has shifted – in how they see themselves, other people or the world around them?

I like people to walk out of WOW feeling less alone, accepting who they are without self-blame, and also acknowledging that there are things to unlearn as well as learn. Most of all, I want them to feel joyful and more alive because they’ve been to WOW, and with a new vitality and a more open-hearted relationship to people whose experiences are different from their own.

You’ve spent decades creating spaces where people come together to listen, question and imagine different futures. In an age increasingly shaped by algorithms, polarisation and distraction, what do you think the arts can still do that nothing else can?

The arts are indelibly connected to the human imagination and I think that touches us all in a way that a tech approach to cutting and slicing stories, just does not do. My main experience in the arts has been trying to look for ways that people can share space and understand that we need each other’s experiences to understand that world, and we need to have those experiences in shared spaces.

Image Credit: Photo of WOW Speed Mentoring.

London has always been a city of ideas as much as landmarks. Which three cultural places or communities do you return to time and again – and what is it about each one that continues to inspire, challenge or surprise you?

I very strongly believe in the roots and foundations of an institution being respected, returned to, and strengthened. I think that Southbank Centre being created for The Festival of Britain which was a completely joyful idea of egalitarianism is important to honour.

I think the community in Brixton that grew up with generational ideas of the importance of music, food, community and of maintaining identity is a very important symbol of dignity and an understanding of what creates happiness.

And although it won’t remain there forever, I think Grenfell Tower has been such a painful and important reminder of how easy it is for bureaucracy and hierarchy to produce catastrophe. It is still almost impossible to register the enormity of the Grenfell tragedy in a capital city that is one of the most sophisticated in the world.

Jude Kelly CBE is the founder of WOW – Women of the World

WOW London 2027 Festival
5-7 March 2027
Southbank Centre, London
Instagram: @wowglobal

Info & tickets → thewowfoundation.com