Salient

Women’s Fest 07

By Ali Egoz | 9 Jul, 2007

Women make up more than half of students at Vic and Women’s Fest is the annual event where we celebrate them.

Here’s the thing about women at Vic: aside from our gender identity and the fact that we’re all students here, there’s pretty much nothing we have in common. We all have different interests, different passions, different opinions on what it means to be women.

Gabrielle (your women’s rights officer) and I (the women’s rights coordinator) could organise Women’s Fest all by ourselves. We’d organise a festival that we would love, and that our friends would love, but YOU might hate it. That’s why it’s so important that you, yes all of you, get involved in organising Women’s Fest and make it the kind of festival you want it to be.

I know what kind of festival I want it to be. I want to celebrate all the energy and creativity and passion of women in Wellington.

There are so many talented female musicians in this city. Wouldn’t it be neat to get them all together in one room for a night of women who want to scare you? Women’s Fest is your chance to organise the show you’ve always wanted to go to, and invite all your favourite local women musicians to come along.

Wellington’s also full of amazing women who are working to make the world a better place to live in. Women working to stop sexual violence, women fighting for reproductive rights, women planting community gardens, building community spaces, writing women’s stories. Women fighting for the rights of Maori, of workers, of queers, of refugees and migrants. Their work is inspiring, and wouldn’t it be neat to be inspired? We could bring all those inspiring women activists together to tell us about their work and motivate us to join them.

But I don’t just want to be inspired and motivated, I want to be educated too. Isn’t that why we’re all at university? There are lots of things I want to learn to do, and skills I want to share with other women. We could organise some grrrls’ DIY workshops on skills like sewing, skateboarding, guitar tech, belly dancing and zine making.

Then there’s all those life skills no one ever teaches you, like how to support a friend or lover who’s been sexually abused. If you have skills or experience you could share with other women why not volunteer to run a workshop at Women’s Fest?

There’s lots of other things I’d love to see happen for Women’s Fest. We could have a craft fair or a women’s open mic night, or a fashion show, or a formal ball, or an exhibition of women’s art. Maybe we could do all of the above.

Now you’ve got a pretty good idea of the kind of Women’s Fest I’m likely to organise. Hopefully it’s given you some ideas of your own about what you’d like to see happen. Now come along to the organising meeting next week and make it happen.

Women’s Fest organising committee meeting Wednesday July 18, 12pm in the Women’s Room, second floor of union building.