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Audacious Women Festival & International Women’s Day

From 21 – 29 Feb 2016, the Audacious Women Festival marks its first ever edition, a chance to break down personal, political or institutional barriers, and to celebrate audacious women everywhere. The programme includes an array of events, exhibitions and workshops around Edinburgh, including four fantastic performances here at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

Amongst the festival’s highlights is Bold Daughters on Thu 25 Feb, in which storyteller Alice Fernbank shares folktales of women, girls, goddesses and fairies, all engaging their wit and wisdom for a freer, fuller and happier life. Accompanied by musicians Nicky Haire and Charlie Menzies, Alice will take us on a journey through burning forests, crashing oceans and into the realms of the Gods – a must for anyone with an interest in folklore!

On Fri 26 Feb, Ruth Kirkpatrick leads Sheroes: Women Making Waves, a two-hour workshop on ‘shero’ storytelling. Who are the women who have really made a difference? Do we celebrate them enough and how should their stories be told? Come and learn about some of feminism’s most important figures and explore the ways that they have influenced us personally, socially and culturally.

Later that day, we celebrate the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s in Bonnie Fechters: Songs & Stories of Hope & Resistance. From Edinburgh’s Magdalene to the Vietnam War, medieval witch-killings to the Zero Tolerance campaign, writer and performer Morna Burdon shares inspiring stories and songs about women’s activism, honouring both the main players and lesser-known activists of the movement.

Finally, the festival gives budding female performers a moment in the spotlight at Audacious Women on Sat 27 Feb. The evening is a celebration of the entire festival and all those who have taken part, with surprise performers and appearances from musicians, storytellers, poets or other artists who may never have had the chance to take to the stage before. For more information or to appear at the show, please visit audaciouswomen.scot.

Just over a week after the festival finishes it is International Women’s Day, a worldwide celebration of female lives on Tue 8 Mar.

As well as the Centre’s exhibition The World is My Country – a selection of striking graphic art by Emily Johns depicting opposition to WWI including feminist peace initiatives – it’s a fitting time to see 30:60:80, on tour around Scotland in February and March. Performed by Amy Conway and directed by Victoria Beesley, this engaging piece of theatre spans eighty years and three generations in one family, comparing 30-year-old Amy – single, chancing it and certain about nothing – with her mother and grandmother at the same age. See it at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on Thu 10 Mar.

Download the full Jan-Mar programme here