THE WOW festival came to Bradford with a wow factor at the weekend.

The festival, founded in 2010, is the biggest gathering of women and girls across the globe, reaching more than 1.5 million people in 20 cities across five continents.

It is designed to celebrate and recognise the achievements of women and girls, taking a frank look at what stops them from achieving their potential.

Bradford was the first city in the North to host a Women of the World festival.

The programme included a line-up of more than 45 different talks, discussions, performances and workshops.

On the bill this year were Kate Tempest, Munroe Bergdorf, Emma Dabiri, Malia Bouattia, Harriet Wistrich, Ailbhe Smyth, Leyla Hussein, Natasha Nkonde, Jasvinder Sanghera, Dina Mousawi, Penny Wangari-Jones, Fiona Broadfoot, Shay D, Jordan Stephens, Asma Elbadawi, Reeta Loi, Jess Thom, Kat Pemberton, Razan Alsous, Agnes Harding and more.

The programme was inspired by a series of ‘Think-ins’ in March of this year, where Bradford residents and communities came together to share ideas about what they wanted to see at the festival.

The festival took place at Kala Sangam, with some events also taking place at Bradford Cathedral.

This year marks the final year of three years of funding allocated for the WOW festival in Bradford by Spirit of 2012 but it is hoped it could return in the future.

Topics covered at the festival ranged from international activism to austerity, all focused on the battle for gender equality.

One panel, titled Listening Through the Decades, brought together women from Bradford from every decade, aged ten to 70, to learn from one another, share stories and celebrate.

As well as focusing on fun and enjoyment, the organisers also aimed to spread the message of coming together, creating dialogues and celebrating people’s differences, and hoped this would have a lasting impact on people after the event.

Saliha Rubani, festival programmer, also said they hoped the WOW Festival would help change some people’s perception of Bradford.

She said: “I couldn’t care less about what people say about our city and our women.

“Through WOW Bradford, we’re showing them that we’re going to do it our own way, and we’re going to have a blast doing it!”

The WOW Festival is organised by the WOW Foundation in collaboration with the Southbank Centre and it also runs 30 sister WOW events across the world, including in places such as New York, Nepal and Somalia.

Based on the banks of the River Thames in London, the Southbank Centre is the UK’s largest arts centre.