POW! news May 2020 - Calling all Creatives
Calling all Creatives
Would you like to be part of POW! 2020? Next week, POW! will be hosting our Open Forum Meetings, for all creatives living in and outside of Thanet who are interested in submitting ideas for our 2020 festival programme. They are being hosted in Ramsgate and Margate across two days.
On Monday 20th May, we will be in South Thanet, welcoming creatives at Ramsgate at Townley’s www.townleysramsgate.co.uk from 6pm. Then on Tuesday 21st May, we will move location to Margate Arts Club www.margateartsclub.co.uk in the North Thanet district, also starting at 6pm.
If you’re interested in POW! it’s a great way to meet the organisers and other artists, hear more about the festival, submission process and find out our theme for 2020 which is likely to revolve around diversity in all its forms. However, if you’re unable to attend, you can still submit proposals via email. Contact info@powthanet.com for more information or to RSVP to one of our Open Forum Meetings.
A Fond Farewell
At the end of April, our festival founder Christina Clark-McQuaid, said her final farewells to POW! after setting up the enterprise in 2015. Having noticed the lack of events celebrating International Women’s Day in Thanet and the local area, Christine posted a call out for interest on Facebook, which thirty women responded to and after a subsequent meeting, POW!’s first steering board was formed.
The festival, started on a budget of under £8,000, was entirely volunteer led, and featured a small number of free entry events in the three principle towns of Thanet; Ramsgate, Broadstairs and Margate. Four years later, POW! 2019 attracted almost 10,000 audience members and participants across 68 individual events, and the enterprise has achieved charitable status, employing several women professionally.
It goes without saying that Christina is leaving POW! on a high, and the management team and trustees couldn’t be more grateful for her work over the past four years.
News from elsewhere
Two of the banners featured in POW! 2019’s opening procession 'Still We Rise' were recently shortlisted for the Turner Portfolio Art Prize 2019. The selected groups were Ageless Thanet and SpeakUpCIC.
LGBTQ activists in Cuba have defied their government by holding an unauthorised Pride march, following the abrupt cancellation of Conga Against Homophobia (Cuba’s version of Pride festivals)
Alabama has become the latest US state to move to restrict abortions by passing a bill to outlaw the procedure in almost all cases.
Theresa May has set out plans to enforce Local Authorities by law to provide safe/secure refuge for victims of domestic abuse in a bid to raise standards of care for women and families universally.
BBC series, Suffragettes, starring Lucy Worsley, won a BAFTA on Sunday under the ‘Specialist Factual’ Category
