Sorry chaps, this festival really isn’t for you

THERE will be basket-weaving, feminist debates and some distinctly unusual practices suitable only for women – so it is little wonder men are not welcome.

Women Fest, the latest event on the summer festival circuit, bills itself as the country’s first ‘all-women radical participation festival’ celebrating the ‘power and magic’ of womanhood.

Organiser Tiana Jacout, 30, said her inspiration partly came from her mother, a Greenham Common anti-nuclear protester in the 1980s.

She added the festival aims to give women space, without men, to share experiences and ideas. All women are welcome, including pre- and post-opera- tive transgender women. ‘We don’t mind what you wear, who you fancy, or where you’re from, as long as you identify as a woman, then this festival is for you,’ an advert for the event says.

Arenas will include the ‘expression stage’, open to anyone wishing to perform, and a ‘creativity tent’ where festival-goers can run workshops in skills such as basket weaving and cloth making.

A ‘women circle’ area will invite guests to share stories, songs and prayers, while a space called the ‘Womyn Rising Tent’ will be set aside for ‘healing and learning’.

The ‘sacred womb’ tent will be a space to contemplate modern feminism and women will be urged to ‘delve into themselves... to learn and love through discussions and workshops’. Meanwhile, circus, dance and yoga workshops will be held in an ‘embodiment tent’.

Among other attractions are masseuses and therapists, a spa centre, sauna and hot tubs, and ‘yoni steaming’ – a vaginal herbal cleansing process promoted by actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Some 400 tickets costing £225 each have gone on sale for the four-day festival, which will be on a farm near Frome, Somerset, in August.

Some of the profits will be donated to the feminist tree-planting charity Tree Sisters. Miss Jacout hopes to create a new kind of festival, telling The Observer: ‘Instead of people saying, I paid for a ticket now I’m going to be entertained, we’re asking them to think about what they can contribute: what’s the gift, knowledge, craft or skill they can share.

‘The festival will celebrate women’s creativity and potential… [It] will open our minds and help us tackle the everyday battles we may face with the strength of the sisterhood behind us.’

Before deciding to organise the festival, Miss Jacout, who lives in Bath, set up a small women’s sanctuary in a Somerset wood where ‘where we sang songs, cried a lot, grew vegetables and brought our lives back to basics’.