Creating our WOWsers Programme

THE WOWsers Programme 

Creating our WOWsers Programme as Trainee Festival Makers

 

WOW Festival was an exciting, women-led festival that took place in Rotherham on the 10th June. Its aim was to showcase the amazing achievements of women, girls and non-binary people in our vibrant community of Rotherham. A big part of WOW Festival was the WOWsers programme, which was a youth led programme to showcase the work of young people locally.

Abi from RMBC and Sophie, Lottie and Maria are the Trainee Festival Makers responsible for planning the WOWsers programme. They are working under the Children’s Capital of Culture to support Flux for a year with planning festivals and events locally. One of their first tasks was to plan the WOWsers programme for WOW Rotherham and they excitedly took on the opportunity to challenge themselves and create a programme they were passionate about. They were all particularly interested in dance and wanted to bring a fun, high energy programme to the Festival.

For the programme, they partnered with Rationale Arts, a charity based in Rotherham, whose aim is: “to promote, improve and maintain public education and appreciation of the arts, specifically but not exclusively the Art of Dance, Music and Theatre by the presentation and the provision of workshops in dance, music and theatre.” The dance piece focused on body positivity, self-confidence and gender expression which were all key themes at WOW Big Think Ins.

Overwhelmingly, one of the themes that kept coming up for WOW was how parents can support their LGBTQ+ children, and the Trainee Festival Makers believed who better to ask this question than people with lived experience. Which is why they decided to run this programme with Early Help, which is a Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council youth group run by Claire Haddon whose mission is to: “support LGBTQ+ young people to socialize in a safe environment, alongside providing positive activities and opportunities, and relevant support and signposting.” When the Trainee Festival Makers approached them to get involved in this programme they were ecstatic and jumped at the chance to be involved. Over the course of a month, the youth group met on a weekly basis to choreograph their routine, each carefully coordinated dance move has been designed by marginalised young people which perfectly encapsulates the meaning of the WOWsers programme.

On the day of WOW Rotherham, the WOWsers arrived, nervous but excited to show off everything they had worked so hard on. The dance routine took place in All Saints Square and drew a buzzing crowd of excited locals all cheering our WOWsers on. Trainee Festival Maker Sophie commented, “it was so lovely to see their development from the first few sessions of creating this routine to the performance day. The youth group took a huge step to perform in front of our WOW Rotherham audience and their joy whilst performing this routine was infectious. It was a real honour to see our work as Trainee Festival Makers have such a huge impact on our community here in Rotherham.”

You can check out more about our WOWsers programme 2023 HERE

- By Sophie Ellingham, Trainee Festival Maker at Flux Rotherham