Alloa Womans Festival - the radical feminist alternative to the curated feminism of FiLia?

I got confused - I went to the Falkirk event yesterday and it was fantastic. I feel really good today, some amazing stuff is going on in Scotland. Good cakes too.

To be honest, I find the various groups quite hard to keep track of.

As I understand it the problem some have with FiLia is not so much that they organize an event, but that their main organizing personalities sometimes seem to act and speak as if they are the ones who get to decide what is feminist and what isn't, and what political strategies are legitimate and what aren't, and who it is ok for feminists to speak to, and who isn't. The kind of thing that has pushed a lot of women out of wanting to be involved in organized feminism.

She feels that smaller, more grass-roots groups remain more authentic and less top-down.

That being said, I'm not sure it is necessarily going to be welcomed by the organizers that they seem to be pitted here against another organization in the thread.

This thread is interesting, lots of things I didn’t know, eg “we need to wean ourselves of the idea that being a feminist means waiting for someone to organise something you can consume.” I don’t really understand what the alternative is?
if there was a really beautiful singer in this sort of group, then, am I right in thinking, that nobody would make special efforts so that we could all hear this singer? Instead anyone could sing and the amazing singer might not be heard? What is the benefit of this?

vivarium I panicked there and thought I’d got the date wrong for the Alloa event!

I don't understand the comparison with Filia. Both seem to involve speakers/panels. Both sound amazing.

I'm looking forward to Saturday. Who's going? Do we need a secret MN signal? I imagine that most of the women going are on this bit of MN

FiLiA’s ultimate aim is women’s liberation and they actually do so much more than the conference. To say that their way of raising women’s consciousness through access to speakers (amongst other things) isn’t in line with how other women sought to achieve this 50 years ago and therefore isn’t valid is just nonsense. But your post wasn’t - just - an attack on FiLiA. You compared it to Alloa and said that the latter was the ‘radical feminist alternative’. Again, what’s the difference between the two?

https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/womens-history/taking-photos-of-the-first-womens-liberation-conference/

What a bizarre claim. That's not true in relation to Women's Liberation meetings / conferences back in the 70s / 80s where women met, organised, tabled and spoke to papers in large halls. There were of course countless other types of WLM meetings, consciousness raising, women's groups focusing on all sorts of similarities and differences

Not sure why you're trying to rewrite women's history like this? The WLM has a long, complex and proud history and didn't all revolve around consciousness raising meetings. At a time of massive social change women organised around sex, race, motherhood, our bodies, sexuality and countless other issues, sometimes using "conventional" conference structures and sometimes in smaller groups having a look at our own cervix 😃

But you still only have room for X number of sessions, Y number of speakers. It's not going to be a complete free-for-all. Therefore there will be some selection/curating going on.

Surely any festival/conference is curated, in that you plan an series of speakers/activities? It's rather what I'd expect from an event like that.

And again. How is FiLiA different to Alloa?

Your post seems to pit one women’s festival against another. Not sure why you mention FiLiA if you just wanted to promote Alloa -and like other posters just looking for clarity. Other than scale, what do you see the difference as? Both ran by volunteers who themselves decide which women they will ask to speak / have stalls etc, neither receiving any conference funding and the same speakers have appeared at both. Why is one a ‘radical alternative’ and the other a ‘curated feminist event’?

I'm one of the women who helps organise this event. Thank you @IwantToRetire for highlighting #AlloaWomensFestival.

We're a group of grassroots feminists who do this as well as our day jobs and caring responsibilities because we feel passionate about women's rights.

I have to say it's been a whilst since I've been on mumsnet. I moved over to twitter, changed phone, lost my password and lost the habit of checking in. It was mumsnet that highlighted the issues for me, so many eloquent women on here #radicalisedbymumsnet.

FiLiA was amazing. Loads of great speakers and opportunities to network. Alloa is no where near as big, nothing in comparison! I'm sure the Gaithering will be good too.

We will try and live stream on the day (if the tech goddess is with us) and if not videos of the speakers will be up shortly afterwards.

Off now to a prison Protest. Thanks again!

Great that this festival is happening. Room for plenty more every day/week/month across the UK and beyond. But no need to diss a festival that does what it does, sells out every year, has great speakers and participatory workshops attended by thousands of women and with which you are not in competition. The best conversations at FiLiA happen in the breaks. Where is your sisterhood and solidarity op?😡

Love the notion of a feminism sponge! And definitely agree. The Falkirk festival is a split off from Alloa and from social media posts, the Falkirk group transferred the funds women donated for Alloa this year into one of their own bank accounts! Hope it’s being used to pay for the Falkirk event - but a shame it was taken from the Alloa festival. Fair play to the Alloa lot for putting this on despite having no funds to kick it off. Alloa had a stall at FiLiA and think they volunteered there. The Falkirk ones weren’t there and aren’t involved with FiLiA.

I loved FiLiA Glasgow - not just the amazing speakers but also the connections made with other women. Can’t wait for the next one

I think there is a difference of views between the Alloa and Falkirk organisers but both work with Filia.

To be honest, I am not interested in inter-group rivalry, I want to hear women's perspectives and lots of them. I'm like a feminism sponge and can't get enough.

It sounds like a great event. But I think it's weird to post it as a dig at a completely different event.

If you don't like events where someone's taken the time to curate an agenda, brief and support speakers etc, don't go to them. 'Anyone can speak' events can be great too, but they can also be 'hit and miss'. At FiLiA I very much appreciated the time and effort which had gone into putting together an interesting agenda with lots of choice of topics and speakers. It looks like this event has also put in the same kind of effort and preparation, with an interesting list of speakers. I'm too far away to attend but will look out for video.

(Aside - there wasn't enough (indeed, any) space for self-organised networking in Glasgow, which I put in my feedback. That was largely an issue of the venue though - amplification across one huge space meant there were no quiet corners for get-togethers the way there had been in the Cardiff venue. I hope the 2025 venue is better for this, but venues are difficult. And lots are closing down, so the choice is getting more limited.)

Alloa has a train station by the way, a short walk from the Town Hall, frequent trains from Glasgow via Stirling ( takes about an hour).

I don't understand what the difference is? Both conferences have speakers organised?

Genuinely asking, I'm not being sarcastic.

I've never been to either but I'd love to be able to attend a feminist event one day.

Thanks. I was pretty sure it wasn’t written by one of the organisers but just strange to say ‘join us’ if you’re not involved in organising it - or going. Very glad the festival has been highlighted here as great for women to hear about it who might otherwise be unaware. The poster clearly has an agenda against FiLiA however and it’s not helpful to suggest this is shared by the organisers of Alloa

The way your first post reads - ‘join us’ -it sounded like you were one of the organisers but later I think you say you might not get there as it’s far away. Is this cut and pasted from somewhere else then?

Yes, I think OP was just highlighting it for people, she's not one of the organisers.