“That Leeds 20-summat” — An Open Response to Leeds 2023
(This response has been collated from the experiences of multiple people: audience members, employees, organisations, freelance artists and citizens of Leeds. It is our hope that by sharing our displeasure, it will discourage funders from spending on similar projects in future.)
Outside the Leeds 2023 office, two gardeners are trimming shrubs. One lifts an ear muff and calls to the other: “Have you done over there by that Leeds 20-summat?” A perfect introduction to what Leeds 2023 has meant to the working people of Leeds.
2023 started with “The Awakening” — a large-scale event at Headingley Stadium. Audiences were invited to submit a piece of artwork to claim a ticket and join in “letting culture loose”. A nice idea in theory; ultimately destined to place a barrier in the way of access. The opening gambit of the year was effectively “we’re letting culture loose, but only if you’re already comfortable sharing yours.” According to the Leeds 2023 website, 2,421 ballot entries were received, out of a maximum 10,926 tickets allocated. The ballot was followed with a flurry of desperately trying to give free tickets away. Eventually 9,320 tickets were claimed. 5,102 people actually turned up — a reasonable number until you realise that the population of Leeds is somewhere near 800,000. 0.6% of the whole city engaged. Even Slung Low’s spectacular presentation couldn’t disguise a half-empty stadium.
It could be because it was hosted in cold, dark January. More likely it was because the line-up was so bafflingly out of touch with what actually excites Leeds (we’ve never heard the working people of Leeds cry “oh brilliant, Simon Armitage!”) Although names like Corinne Bailey-Rae, Testament and Hope and Social helped root the event in our city — they’re names we already live and breathe, and could absolutely see somewhere and sometime else — you know, like, in summer. Or indoors.
A lot of families and people we speak to simply can’t get to Headingley without catching multiple buses. Most hadn’t even heard of “The Awakening”. Marketing seemed to be largely aimed at those already engaged in the arts. Leeds 2023 data suggests the highest number of attendees came from the closest surrounding areas, which also happen to be some of the more creatively-engaged areas of Leeds (Headingley, Chapel Allerton, Weetwood, Horsforth). What was celebrated by Leeds 2023 as an event for all of Leeds was actually an out-of-touch spectacle lost in a social media bubble.
Since The Awakening, you’d be entirely forgiven for forgetting Leeds was having a Year of Culture unless you were directly involved in it. The number of times we’ve seen comments on social media saying “I had no idea this was happening” or “I saw a barn on the moor but didn’t know how to engage with it”. There was little attempt made to contact those already based and working in the city. It would later emerge that this was a conscious decision by the Leeds 2023 team to “bring people in from outside” instead of working with companies based in the city. This led to such joys as Children’s Day: a reimagining bearing little resemblance to the original event, held on a Friday evening in a time slot ironically past many children’s bedtimes, attended by a smattering of people looking sad in the rain. It might have helped if it had been made with local organisations, but instead it was headed by London-based Fevered Sleep. A social media post celebrating it was so ridiculed by the public that it was deleted, and the photographs quickly replaced with cropped images where the scale of the flop was less evident.
Then we had The Planks. Sorry — “Making a Stand”. Audience response was pretty divisive on this large scale…thing. Nobody could decide whether it was awful because it looked like a load of scaffolding, or because it had cost a fortune and was covering up a significant Leeds Landmark (The Black Prince.) Supposedly a comment on our destruction of forests, referencing the fact that Leeds was once the site of Leodis, it was about as attractive as a building site and markedly less interesting. Leeds City Council seemed to shoulder most of the online blame for “wasting local money” on the Planks, and the vast majority agreed that the sculpture — made by Scottish artist Michael Pinsky — was ugly. It did at least gift us our second metaphor for Leeds 2023 — a year of covering up the culture already present in Leeds with some new culture nobody asked for.
The Neighbourhood celebration events, in theory, were a chance for good — investing in local people and communities to host creative events representing their wards. Unfortunately — much like everything else in 2023 — they were under-resourced and under-supported. We’ve heard stories of mountains of irrelevant training, Leeds 2023 undermining the choices of hosts as to which commissions they wanted to accept for their events, first meetings with production managers one week before big community events, hosts feeling “abandoned” by 2023. Still — at least some of the budget was spent wisely, commissioning Keith Khan (London) to make some fabric banners produced by Burberry (Keighley) Each one incorporating a motif representing a ward of the city. Unfortunately, the motifs seemed to be based on Keith having “a quick stroll” in each area and not actually talking to any local people — at best they were patronising (nobody in Seacroft is walking around saying the high-rises are one of “Leeds’ amazing panoramas”) and at worst — utterly indecipherable.
Underpinning these projects sits the experiences of the local artists and companies who did manage to work with 2023. We’ve heard people describe partnerships as “a nightmare.” We’ve heard stories of wildly fluctuating fees for artists working on the same project. Cancelled events, last-minute confirmations, programmes still not confirmed a week before the sessions, key members of staff leaving mid-project. Speaking of staff: we’d like to take a moment to say that we’re not pointing the finger at any individuals. The 2023 staff members we’ve worked with have always seemed diligent, but ultimately have been working part-time to try and accomplish things far beyond that capacity. Possibly why the turnover of staff (for a one-year project) has been so ridiculous.
As 2023 came to an end, we watched a desperate attempt to sell £15 tickets for “The Gifting” — an indoor spectacle event this time made inaccessible by both price and location. The event sold out just two performances out of seventeen. One attendee described it as “spectacle over substance. Embarassingly self-congratulating after upsetting so many artists and community groups. 5/10”. Mostly, the cultural community of Leeds just didn’t seem to care.
2023 would be more forgivable if it wasn’t for the cost and context. In March 2023 it was reported that Leeds City Council had committed £5,731,893 to the Year of Culture, the total fundraising target appearing to be £21,000,000. We live in a nation where the phrase “Cost of Living Crisis” has been invented to demonstrate how much people are struggling to survive. Those who have contributed to this open response see Leeds families struggling week-in, week-out to feed themselves and pay the bills. In the arts: we’re currently at around a 20% success rate for artists to attain Arts Council England funding through a broken model that forces artists to leap through hoops in order to make work. Yet here we are watching Leeds 2023 spend £21,000,000 on out-of-touch events spearheaded by artists not from the city it supposedly celebrates.
Leeds has always had culture. Chapeltown Carnival. Leeds Art Gallery and Library. The incredible local music scene: The Brudenell, The Academy, Live at Leeds, the Cockpit (RIP.) Every open mic night across the city. The burlesque, the cabaret, the working men’s clubs, the schools, charities and organisations. The sporting culture of Leeds United and Leeds Rhinos. The local crochet groups, life drawing groups, theatre groups, writing groups, football teams, cricket teams, book clubs, dance schools, film-makers and musicians. We’ve never needed it “Gifting” to us. It was already here.
