WAAW World!

Women Artists’ Art Week (WAAW) is a female-lead social impact initiative, addressing the issue of extreme underrepresentation of female artists throughout the the art world. A world, where women artists are estimated to have made up as low as 4% percent of global art sales between 2008 and 2019, and represent on average less than 15% of artists in museum collections in the UK and North America.

WAAW was conceived as a masters thesis project, in response to the founder Annya Sand’s dismay at those statistics, as well as personal experiences of balancing motherhood and a career as an artist. The idea was to create an annual event over one week in June, during which participating venues would dedicate exhibition space solely to art produced by women.

Three years on, WAAW has grown into a multi-venue international initiative, with more than 50 participating spaces in 8 countries, with recognition by the Arts Council London and the UN. In 2024 there were 49 solo and group exhibitions under WAAW umbrella, which included shows by such trailblazers of the womens’ arts’ movement as Judy Chicago, as well as those showcasing emerging talents.

Official recognition, growing public interest and WAAW collaboration with bigger names, such

as the V&A Parasol Foundation, Somerset House, Sarabande Foundation, Saatchi Yates, ICA Miami and the Serpentine Gallery, mean that the impact of the initiative extends beyond the events of the week. We are changing the conversation around the different realities facing men and women in the Arts and initiating sector-wide changes: gallerists are refocusing their attention on female talent when expanding their rosters, artists are finding representation, galleries are finding new audiences, more attention is brought to smaller venues and new opportunities are brought to unknown artists, which otherwise would not have been available.

We are incredibly encouraged by Women Artists’ Art Week’s runaway success, which to us signals a significant and promising change in attitudes, and we are ever more determined to foster this dynamic, growing community. However the scope of the initiative has dramatically outgrown the capacity of the our small team of like-mined volunteers, and we are currently looking into several different fundraising avenues, working on establishing long-term sponsorships, developing a membership scheme for patrons which will launch in time for WAAW2025 and engaging our community through crowd funding.

Your contributions will go towards covering immediate, day-to-day expenses, such as running of the website, and will allow us expand our team (covering part-time administrative staff, as well as a part-time public and press relations professional further down the line). Most importantly, fundraising will enable us to commission and launch the WAAW mobile app, which will facilitate contact between exhibition spaces and artists and give the general public an information resource featuring female creators, institutions, initiatives and events with aligned values.

WAAW will remain a not for profit organisation, uninvolved in the selection of artists chosen for representation by participating spaces, our commitment will remain focused on amplifying the debate round the issues of gender inequality in the art world and systemic failures which prevent women from pursuing creative careers.