about us
The Women in Comedy Festival is the only all female festival in the UK, held in Manchester across 10 days in October. We have a rich mix of stand-up, musical comedy, Improv, new comedians doing their first shows, work in progress and Named acts doing their national tour.
Our Mission
Is to keep this festival a non-for-profit so all acts keep ticket revenue and have
a safe space to preform.
A Brief History
The Women in Comedy Festival was founded in 2012 by Hazel O’Keefe who at the time also ran Laughing Cows. Since then, Jessica Toomey, Director of the Frog and Bucket Comedy Club and FAB Comedy Management now runs the festival with the shared ethos and vision as Hazel.
Hazel continue to be a Patron of the Festival.
Festival Patrons
In order from left to right. Maxine Peake, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Dana Alexander, Isy Suttie,
Lynne Parker – Funny Women CEO, Jo Enright and Susan Calman
resources for women
WalkSafe+ is the UK’s leading personal safety app which combines journey-sharing features and a national Safe Space map
Chatting with women in the industry about their careers and how they got into comedy.
The owl network is a uk-wide support network ran by Tegan Marlow, Daisy Earl & Alex Stringer.
They run a private Facebook group as a safe forum for female/nb acts.
If you’d like to join, there are a few initial admin requests (questions to answer) before your invitation is accepted. For the link to join, please email
The WICF is a supporter of Get Off Live Comedy. In order to make the organisation relevant and industry led we surveyed over 800 workers and held 4 sets of focus groups with a diverse group of comedians and promoters.
Funny Women is the destination to discover, connect and grow with humour. From our Comedy Crash Course to our Stand Up to Stand Out workshops, performance is encouraged, participation mandatory and laughter absolutely non-negotiable!
Comic Alice Flick, academics Sophie Quirk and Oliver Double, and graphic design lecturer Matt Dixon have put together a booklet to offers tips to stand-ups on how to protect themselves, while another gives tips to promoters on what they can do to make their gigs safer.