I just know that something good is gonna happen. I don’t know when. But just saying it could even make it happen
I’ve been thinking a lot about the lyrics of Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting. They were used as a sample by the Utah Saints in Something Good which we used as one of the anthems of The Awakening – the opening ceremony for LEEDS 2023 Year of Culture. A show that went down so well I still regularly bump in to people who, not knowing I had anything to do with it, tell me it was all their idea. Forget your 5 stars in the Guardian, that’s the real combat indicator of a successful show.
James Phillips pic of LS18 Rocks
But now these words come back to me as I stand in rehearsals for The Gifting. The closing ceremony for LEEDS 2023 that I’m co-directing with Kully Thiarai. Ceremony is a weird word in this sense- it can mean Stadium show, Security Guards and Drones or it can mean Hooded Monks and Candle Lit repetition of magic words.
The Gifting is more of the latter.
It’s a hard thing to bring something to an end. The last 12 months have held all sorts of endings for me. Middle age personally, and for the company too, coming crashing over us like a wave.
But it is of a different magnitude at LEEDS 2023.
We are currently in the middle of creating a substantial piece of theatre – a show that holds 350 people 2 or 3 times a day, in a non theatre space with none of the infrastructure that an actual theatre would have, like audience toilets. There’s rumours of fire, water and moving parts galore.
And simultaneously the organisation at the heart of the project, the principal producers, LEEDS 2023, is attempting to bring itself to a full stop. Landing the plane whilst dismantling it so all you’re left with in April 2024 is nothing but a pilot’s seat and a grin.
There’s a reason why plenty of these years don’t have a closing, and when they do you tend to hear very little about them.
But that’s one thing I like about LEEDS 2023. Why we’ve been proud to keep faith with them all year. They’re not that bothered about easiest. In everything they’ve done it’s clear to me that more than an easy life, everyone at LEEDS 2023 wants to keep the promise. Because that is what a year of culture is right? A promise.
A year of culture. You breast the tape of any race worth running. This show ends on New Year’s Eve.
It’s not the most efficient, or sensible thing to do. But efficient isn’t the standard anyone is trying to meet. Neither is sensible. When did we decide that sensible was a defining characteristic of art? With ceremonies the where, the when, the who, the how is the core of the meaning.
The best thing about LEEDS 2023 is that amongst the inevitable chat of inward investment, and quantitive evaluation, and engagement with the Business Investment District, and all that comes with every arts endeavour now, they understand that there is still magic in it all. The gesture matters. Words can become spells when you say them with enough heart. Old magic. It’s primeval. It’s in every culture. It’s a basic human thing. Stories.
Stories are the mechanism by which we find the best of ourselves. And overcome the worst things imaginable. People will die for a flag and that’s one kind of story. And they will feed their neighbours and march more miles than they can count and take to the barricades and much more beside for a story they can hear their future in.
LEEDS 2023 pic of Hibiscus Rising
Stories matter. Go see Hibiscus Rising. It’s not a practical response to the endemic racism in our society, or the abuse of power by police, or the mistreatment of the homeless. Although these things are vital. But on their own – without a story to galvanise the heart – they won’t work. Programmes and initiatives are the way we slowly make our society better. But stories are how we even think we can in the first place.
Hope. That’s what Hibiscus Rising is. And every one of these stories told this year. The hope that promises us things can be made better. By us. Together.
Simon K Allen pic
For many years Slung Low lived by the slogan Be Useful, Be Kind. They’re fine words. They made us brave, they energised us. They made us generous. They made us build a foodbank, hang on at The Holbeck and create a football club amongst much else.
And then one day, after the world had come back from Covid, we realised that we had to change again. We were the only (well) funded organisation in the area whose remit allowed them to spend time, and the resources and expertise, to make art at scale.
To turn your eyes to the sky is a tough thing to do in Holbeck. There are so many things that are screaming and fighting for your attention on the ground. Threats and demands right in your face. To dream, to imagine worlds and lives beyond yours is a privilege – too often seen as a luxury. In an existence that doesn’t have enough food, dreams feel foolish to demand.
It was a hard realisation to accept. Being Useful and Kind is seductive. The criticism from within the arts sector, that anyone publicly funded just accepts as part of the background noise now, stopped for quite a while. The criticism from those that think artists little more than publicly subsidised grifters was quietened. People liked us. They prayed for us. And it didn’t matter if we believed in their god, the fact that they did was enough.
It was seductive. The feeling we were immediate and important and liked.
I almost feel sorry for this bunch of Tory ministers being grilled by the covid inquiry. For their whole lives they believed in the primacy of the market, the smallness of government and the importance of individual achievement. And then the biggest crisis of their lives happened and they turned and ran towards big collective, societal-wide unifying intervention. Turned big government advocates overnight, if not actually socialists. A crisis destroyed their world view. Their only tactic was to double down on the other parts of their creed – we’re stopping the boats now, removing the foreign because the entire economic and social element of their life’s thinking had piled in.
And there was a similar moment for us here. We made art and performance all through covid but if we were right, if bringing people together to make performance was profound, useful, justified in its public funding then why were we still a food bank?
For a moment we’d lost our bottle. I’d lost my bottle. Useful and Kind had made us if not bullet proof then less criticised and more loved. And I had grown used to it. I didn’t want to go back to making the argument as people rolled their eyes at our suggestions that imagination and stories could make our shared lives richer. I hid from the belief that in a place that is hungry and desperate declaring that art – with and for and by the people- is not wasteful decadence but the hardest nosed politics. The politics that every life matters.
We all matter.
We got our bottle back with the help of another snappy phrase.
Awe & Wonder.
From now on we said, everything we did must still be Useful and Kind but now it must have Awe & Wonder.
We leant in.
The Easter Bunny left thousands of chocolate eggs all over Holbeck with a little card reminding everyone of the importance of Being Useful & Kind and the need for Awe & Wonder in our lives.
We took the money we’d been paid for The Awakening, along with a generous donation from a local resident, and commissioned Nomad Clan to work with the kids of Ingram Road Primary School to create a new piece of public art. A glorious new mural. The kids would walk to school past broken glass, past used condoms still, but there would be some Awe & Wonder to raise their eyes to the sky on a daily basis.
We made an opera. Putting 180 kids alongside the wonder- full Manchester Collective. We put them in a magnificent costume each and filled northern warehouses of cheering crowds of hundreds and they heard themselves on BBC radio 3. Money that before would have been spent on beans to feed them was now (along with a nice packed lunch of course) spent on making them feel like the stars of an opera that got four stars in the Daily Telegraph that they would become. Kids that we had spent years sending cornflakes to would now be opera stars.
Because we realised this – if we were not willing to declare that the joy that art can bring, the hope that performance can conjure, the beauty that is needed in every life, was worth the effort of our lives then no one was. Without stories you can survive but they are a central part of what it is to live full and beautiful lives.
James Phillips pic of Noah’s Flood featuring 180 kids of Ingram Road Primary School
It is our job to make that case here. We are in short supply of hope. The hope that is required if we’re to overcome all the challenges of the age will not come from the tired politics of our governments, the exhausted mechanics of our social care system, or the runaway egos of our technology companies. We are in need of stories that we can all see a shared future in. It’s never been more important to be a story-teller. We need the story-tellers to reveal to us the Awe & Wonder which could be ours tomorrow.
In Leeds the cultural sector, led by the City Council, have just begin to gather their energies to imagine what the future cultural strategy might be post the year of culture LEEDS2023. We’re just past the halfway mark of the year and there’s been a number of responses to the moment. Below are some thoughts about it all, partly as an artist who has made a piece of work for the year of culture, and partly as one of team who run a small arts organisation in the city who are exploring what all this might mean for ourselves and the community we serve in Holbeck.
Doing it anyway
One of the messages of LEEDS2023 is that in response to having Brexited and no longer qualifying for European Capital of Culture “Leeds did it anyway”. Of course, as I was reminded recently by LEEDS2023 themselves, there’s two ways to see this. The first is as a Fuck You to European government. The second is to understand it as a desire to remain connected to our European neighbours creatively even as we separated politically. The second interpretation seems to me the most natural response of a cultural sector who live and die by making connections and relationships but within the city it is the first that often sets the tone of discussion. We did it anyway.
Outside of the city Leeds declaring themselves a capital of culture despite having been thrown out of the competition is, i’m repeatedly told, the “most Leeds things ever”. “The city that really doesn’t care what other people think” they say as they giggle at the perceived arrogance of that. I’m not convinced.
I was there years back when the Leeds City Council, along with some of the grander cultural leaders, gathered up the arts sector and asked them to commit to supporting the year of culture adventure. For most artists and those who lead cultural organisations in the city this was a sort of risk. The city is blessed with great institutions- a ballet company, an opera company, a producing theatre for example- but it has historically lacked a middle ground- we don’t traditionally keep much of our city’s talent for long, it’s hard to make a long term living here outside of those institutions. Whether that be through commissions in the market or through funding.
For example Slung Low, aside from our Holbeck work, has made two medium sized shows in 12 years in the city (we make 3 to 5 shows a year on average nationally and sometimes internationally) and are funded £9k a year by the city council’s culture programme (just over 1% of our turnover). And we do much better by this city than the vast majority of small arts organisations. A privilege I recognise. And work hard to justify.
Leeds is brilliant at generating & training young talent- through the Conservatoire, our colleges, 2 universities and Northern School of Contemporary Dance- but we’ve found the talent tends to leave within five years and the list of substantial talent which we’ve failed to retain (Rash Dash theatre springs immediately to mind) or support with a properly secure place in the city (the brilliant Wrongsemble being a great example here) is too long.
So a year of culture project years in the future was a big ask of a community precarious in their place in the city. There are easier places to focus on making a living as artists and small organisations. But so many artists and sector leaders did commit. Huge amounts of good will, commitment, talent and of course risk were held in the city in reply to the call to arms.
Much of that has been rewarded. There are always those unhappy with anything like this, and any programme choices leave those rejected naturally feeling that rejection, but we’re half way through the year and anyone who has any experience of these initiatives knows that LEEDS2023 has delivered much of the impossible combination of attention grabbing ambition and community focused programme that it promised- with a good sprinkling of big thinking politics thrown in.
A Good Year
Slung Low have had a good LEEDS 2023 so far. 5 years ago we made none of our theatre work in the city. This year 93% of ALL our of activity is in the city- and the 7% that isn’t is mostly us going places to tell them about what we’re doing in Leeds.
It was a strategic decision. We spent the last five years working hard to bring as much of our work as we can to the city in 2023. We were lucky that in LEEDS2023 we found an organisation with the same cultural politics as us and who knew what we achieved outside of the city in the last decade and so were confident calling on our experience and skills to help deliver some of their most ambitious projects. But it is also true we made a commitment to the city; for every project supported in part financially by LEEDS2023 we matched it with a project that we brought without funding to the year of culture or other acts of practical support. Because that’s what we promised back in the town hall five years ago to the city council.
I’m thinking on all this because there’s been a flurry of criticism of the year of culture. I suppose to mark the six month moment. There always is in every year of culture; things go wrong, there are genuinely good faith differences in opinion, ideas are rejected, it’s a tough world. But the extraordinary thing about Leeds is that so much of the criticism comes from the city council itself and sometimes broadcast nationally.
The very organisation that- long before LEEDS 2023 existed and hired their staff- asked us all to commit to a year of culture. It’s been so bewildering, and so often demoralising, to see politicians and civil servants openly questioning the wisdom of this decision or that. There is a cost to this that it’s important to recognise. Scrutiny and challenge is a vital part of public life but when it passes into something more political and demonstrative then the impact on the momentum and resilience of a sector already running uphill is considerable.
I was the co-director of The Awakening, the opening ceremony of the year. I have worked for most theatres in the country, in actual palaces, for shows directly commissioned by Number 10 Downing Street and on many politically sensitive ceremonies. And I have never had politicians demand to impact the actual content of a show, or the political context of a show. Not even No. 10. Or at least not after the first demand for creative control was rebutted. But in Leeds we did. I stood gobsmacked at the attacks. Bewildered that a city government that had told the world they would prioritise culture in their city and asked their artists to rally to their cause would then behave like this. And equally bamboozled that amongst our political allies no one was willing to say loud and publicly- this isn’t how we do things here.
The Most Leeds Thing Ever
I was recently at a fundraising dinner and was sat near a very nice city politician. She had heard that LEEDS2023 had 45 members of staff and was somewhat amazed by the number.
“What do they all do?”
“Do you know how many Hull 2017 had?” I asked. Slung Low were one of the key theatre pieces of Hull UK City of Culture 2017 and spent 9 months of that year in Hull. “Do you know how many staff Hull 17 had?”
“No,” the very lovely politician replied.
“Nearly four times as many. Do you know how much money Hull had?”
“No,” they replied regretting ever starting this I would imagine.
“At least twice as much. When people say Leeds doing it anyway is the most Leeds thing they’ve ever heard I know it’s not. Because the most Leeds thing I’ve ever heard is attempting to do something with less than a third of the staff and half the funding and still expecting to have anywhere near the same impact.”
She found someone else to talk to during the dessert course. I accept I have howlingly shit small talk.
Because the Others are Watching
When we were at the club I would regularly meet moments of sexism, or racism or general stupidity head on. And folk would always say- don’t bother, you’re never going to change his mind, you’re wasting your time.
But I never did it because I thought the person before me would change their mind. I’m not *that* arrogant. I did it because the others were watching. The rest of the community. Watching to see first whether I’d be fair in my rebuttal and second to see what I would stand for. They would know me from what I was willing to risk and defend in that moment.
Similarly it feels like much of the arts sector is waiting to see how the city council, and the larger cultural institutions of the city, and each other, respond first to the successes and lessons learnt of LEEDS2023 and secondly to those that attack the work and the artists who have rallied to their call.
In every city of culture there is an ebb that follows the year’s flow. There’s always less money in the year that follows, that’s the rule of financial gravity. And a little less energy. The trick is whether you can secure the talent of the year into another year, and another. Or if the circus is driven out of town on 31st December.
The decision currently facing the city and its cultural strategy is whether in the coming years it decides to put its faith in those that heard their rallying call to create a year of culture or to give focus to those who spent more time criticising it than lending a hand. Time will tell. The momentum, achievements and lessons learnt of this year of culture is potentially transformative for all our communities, and for those of us who serve them artistically. Six months in to the year of culture the question is can the city’s cultural strategy seize the momentum? I hope so.
For four years Slung Low ran a Cultural Community College. Pay What You Decide adult cultural lessons in everything from blacksmithing to South Indian cooking, fire eating to bread baking. And much in between. (https://www.slunglow.org/cultural-community-college-overview/)
In the first phase it was about putting on the best classes we could for our communities in South Leeds. We were aware of a lack of affordable adult cultural education in our area. We were sure there was a clear connection between civic engagement and cultural confidence (A blog about that here) and we were exploring that with this college. The idea that learning things made you confident, reduced the number of things in the world to be nervous of and made you walk a tiny bit taller.
In the second phase those attending the classes were encouraged to decide what the curriculum would be next term. If they had always wanted to do jewellery making then all participants had to do was declare it and we would find the best teacher we could. Community programming. It made for a much better, more diverse, more popular college than anything we could have come up with ourselves alone.
And in the final 18 months of the programme participants were encouraged to lead classes. We were testing the belief that everybody has something they can teach their community. This was proved time and time again by participants- who at first would declare that there was nothing they knew that would be interesting to others- who would lead their fellow citizens in classes.
It was this final stage that was the break through. Participants become leaders and the impact was huge. People told us time and time again how leading a class had an impact on their self esteem, their cultural confidence, their general well being. And attendance at the workshops was always excellent- a sense of ownership and support as new leaders were cheered on by their former class mates. Leadership is a transformative act: for those that embrace it, for those that are led by their comrades.
We have a shortage of civic leadership at the moment. Leadership based on values- determined, ethical, generous leadership. Nationally in our politics it is missing- Covid taught us that if we needed it teaching. In our sector we do not have enough- Covid taught us that and we’re still reeling from the realisation. And in our community of Holbeck, and wider South Leeds, we are in need of more values based leadership.
Our experience with the club, as Governors and on a variety of committees & councils is that too often the same people, and the same type of people, are in positions of authority and oversight. Too few people feel comfortable taking on civic leadership roles in our institutions & organisations- the fabric of our community is weaker for it.
At the same time those that find leadership roles thrust upon them have too few examples of good leadership- generous and developed leadership- to use as inspiration: if all you’ve ever known is shouting and bullying then it’s hard to imagine other ways of being.
And this is understandable. What Slung Low has learnt over the years in a variety of contexts is that leadership is something that you learn, a skill that can be taught and something (like any skill) that must be practiced and honed to a changing context.
In response to this thinking, and with the continued support of Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Slung Low are creating a Leadership Academy.
Wild Conference at Temple Newsam
There’s two strands to the Academy.
The first is a 12 week course for Developing Citizen Leadership Skills. One evening a week in Holbeck and a weekend residency at our Kirklees site. Drawing inspiration from leaders from all sorts of world- whether that be from the world of religion, education, the arts, military and politics- the course, made up of workshops, discussions and visits, aims to develop & support the confidence needed to take on leadership roles in our community. The course is supported in the ways you’d expect- contributing towards transport, childcare and other costs to help anyone who wants to to attend.
The first course will begin in September 2023. We’ll recruit locally over the summer but if you’re reading this and think it would be interesting to you then you should drop me an email at Alan@slunglow.org
Future leaders from Holbeck pictured by Antony Jones
The second strand is Developing Values-Based Leadership Skills for Arts Professionals. A week long residency in North Yorkshire, the course is aimed at young leaders looking to develop new skills, experienced leaders looking for fresh approaches and artists planning to move into leadership roles. It combines outdoor adventure training with classes in leadership methodology and studies of examples of inspiring values-based leadership.
Each cohort’s recruitment will focus on a different group of existing and potential leadership. The first programme will be in Autumn 2023 and for that cohort we’ll be working on selection and recruitment with our partners LEEDS 2023 as part of our continuing contribution to the city’s year of culture.
We’ll be shouting loud and far about how you can apply. This programme (like everything Slung Low does) will be Pay What You Decide.
It has been a difficult few years. Nationally. In our sector. Locally. It has been hard to feel like any one or any thing can make a difference. What we have learnt at Slung Low is that the myth that nothing makes any difference is the most dangerous of the lies we are all told. No one is happier when we are tired and despondent than those that hope we don’t succeed. Determined, ethical, generous values-based leadership is not a silver bullet for the problems we all face but the hope is that it will make a contribution- a positive, determined, ethical, generous contribution.
It’s the next development for Slung Low as we continue to try and find ways of being useful and kind.
In Holbeck the hostile environment and its long echo, as enforced by various home secretaries, has a daily effect. Families move around the city and the country at unfeasible speed, a process destined to make it almost impossible for these families to create the sort of human connections that anyone needs to undertake the increasingly difficult job of bringing your kids up and navigating the huge challenges of living in Holbeck and being newly arrived to the country. All at the same time.
It has huge effects; on the under pressure local primary school, on social services, on social cohesion, on the third sector that works tirelessly, with increasingly smaller pots of money and exhausted staff to keep the whole thing on the tracks.
Another one of those moments when the outcome of the irritating interview you just listened to on Radio 4 is seen on the streets around you in the lives and pains of your neighbours. Neighbours of course for now until they are moved on to another part of the country.
One of the less stressful outputs of the policy is the demand to present your passport when being invited to do freelance work. If you get invited in to do a lecture or two at a university you will be asked to send your passport (or other proof of the right to work).
Ask why and you’ll be told it is a legal requirement. It isn’t a legal requirement because if it were then all the universities would be doing it and they aren’t.
Keep pushing the point and eventually an exasperated administrator will declare that they have to be seen to be doing things “properly”.
Properly. Brilliant, I love people who do things properly. Just let me see your risk assessment for holding sensitive and criminally desirable information like passports, a preferred working method for the transfer of high-risk data like this, security measures and protocols to ensure against digital theft of stored materials, insurance against the same and a timeline and method of disposing of the material. Oh you don’t have that to hand? How long will it take you to generate that? That’s not a service you provide at the University? Well your “properly” doesn’t seem to have withstood contact with competence for very long has it?
It’s not a requirement for an organisation to hold your passport, or even to check your papers. If it were then everyone would be doing it, and they’re not. However it is a simple, reasonable interpretation of the demands that Government has put on universities. I get it. Universities have a reliance on Government support, some have a challenging history dealing with international terrorism that brought them to the attention of the scarier parts of the Government machinery and all of them have the sort of administrative burden that results in a bias towards being seen to do things “properly” that results in system solutions and collective obedience.
It’s super clever, they’ve removed the burden of securing and controlling our borders from those paid to do that and made universities the final check of a failed border policy and service. The undocumented might get in but we’ll use punitive action against employers if they are employed. Sure. That seems like something that will work, *Googles cash economy*.
Now large arts organisations have fallen into line. In recent times I’ve noticed that contracts contain clauses that you have to present your passport or you won’t get paid. For a couple of days R&D or presenting to younger artists: passport needed.
Slung Low’s position has been the same for 5 years now. If passports are required then we won’t take the work, ask someone else. It doesn’t matter if you are a national theatre we really want to work with or a university who will pay well for our experience- no thank you. Please don’t misunderstand me. I know that this is likely to make little difference. I don’t fantasise that Suella Braverman is sat there thinking well now Alan Lane has turned down two days of lecturing I really am thinking twice about the whole thing. But that’s the point isn’t it. The system makes our every act feel so irrelevant that we just fall in line. Because it would almost be an act of vanity to not, right? What ego must you have to think that your actions will have any sort of impact?
The Vanity of Resisting
I was struck in the recent Lineker kerfuffle by something Paul Hudson (he’s a weather man for the BBC) said, “I would love to share my views on [Lineker] and how he thinks he’s so different from the rest of us at the BBC and the rules we have to follow but instead I’ll stick to clouds.”
Not a rousing defence of impartiality, or a call to arms for the small boat policy but “he thinks he’s so different from the rest of us.” The vanity of resisting. Imagine the ego needed to think your actions and words should abide by a moral code different from that of the authorities.
Anyway, we have no overblown sense of the difference this action will have, but nonetheless it is our collective position. Wherever we can we don’t want to be involved in any way with the hostile environment. The passport nonsense is the very thin edge of the wedge and it should be questioned whenever it can be.
What is most fascinating is that sometimes the organisation will just reply- don’t worry about it. They just waive through the invoice, no evidence needed.
So it’s optional then. The failure to fulfil this edict won’t actually see the Chief Exec of the Wherever Playhouse sent to prison? Resistance in the current flow. The policy was there because it was the simplest, easiest, clearest way of fulfilling the Government demands. It isn’t a moral position, increasingly organisations are incapable of having moral positions, it is an administrative position.
I make a lot of work with volunteers: citizen performers. I’ve always used the word citizen to mean someone in a place not being a member of staff or customer. It never occurred to me that some folk would, in this context, think of the legal meaning rather than the philosophical one. My mistake.
A recent call-out for a project demanded the right to work before applying to be a part of the show. Knowing the organisation were of good heart I couldn’t understand what was going on.
As is the norm now the opportunity came with travel expenses: one of the ways in which these chances to participate engage with the obstacles in the way. A good thing. But because that would be a payment, and because somewhere in the administrative network there was a policy about the right to work and payments, the logic of those that compiled the call-out was that they were legally obliged to check everyone’s status before handing out the £3:75 for a DayRider.
That’s the not so quite thin edge of the wedge.
Everyone in that chain of thought was just trying to do things “properly”, and to be seen to be doing them “properly”. And the outcome was a call-out (temporarily displayed before we realised and took it down) that implied we’d be doing a border force check before everyone got on with making some art together.
This stuff matters. There are loads of different ways you can ensure that people can get to and from activities without the right to work- we’ve done most of them here, you’d be gobsmacked the things you can do when you put your back into it. But it is true that the simplest, ‘safest’ way of ensuring an organisation meets the demands of the Home Office is this.
And to not take that simplest way, to not do it “properly” is a risk that it is so hard to take, certainly almost impossible by an organisation, an act of ego that leads to people wondering why you ‘are so different from the rest of us.’
It’s just I’m not convinced that the biggest effort and risk in all of this should be taken by refugees, asylum seekers and otherwise displaced, some of the most precarious of our society, and not by the culturally (and sometimes literally) affluent cultural organisations.
Gold Standard Governance and your Insta Pics
“The most basic reason is that some people clearly believe that the role of charities is to address the immediate symptoms of society’s problems by providing direct services to those in need, rather than campaigning for changes in legislation or policy designed to address more fundamental structural issues.” (Why Philanthropy Matters Dot Com)
A while back the rules changed about charities meaning that they were to be less political. If you are a charity that works in the world of poverty for example you can treat the symptoms of poverty but can’t campaign against the causes of poverty if they are deemed to be political. Think of the causes of poverty- can you think of many that aren’t political? Me neither.
What about the RNLI? You can pull people out of the seas, risking your own lives, but you can’t bring attention to the Government policies that cause more bodies to be in the sea in the first place. If you are the RSPB you can look after birds but not campaign against policies that cause more damage to the birds of the nation than you could ever mitigate. And on and on.
The gold standard of governance and structure in the Arts is a charity with a board of trustees. Slung Low isn’t a charity and has faced more questions and scrutiny about this from funders and other parties than any other element of what we do- which when you think sometimes we just go off into the woods and practice petrol explosions is quite the achievement. Which is all to say it is not easy sitting outside that particular structure and nearly all (but not all) arts organisations are charities.
But what impact has this change in charitable restrictions had on the arts? Can arts organisations campaign against the cut in arts in education? Can they campaign against Government policy of arts funding? Can they make plays about the hostile environment? Does art about the failures of Grenfell attract a higher risk in their register when CEOs and boards are thinking about what they do next? Is it easier or harder in this new world to make a play about the manner in which the Government mishandled the response to Covid? Are there any works of art from the past that would not now be made because of these new charity rules?
Or is our position that it has had absolutely no impact at all? Is that our position? With a straight face?
If nothing else I know of theatre companies who failed to get charitable status because the work they made was too political, because they chose to value the lives of ALL the people in the country, to see their mission as being in service to everyone, not just those who could afford a flight here rather than a small boat. Because for them “citizen” meant someone in a place who was not a customer.
Now there are demands that charitable boards are across the social media output of their staff. What standards will those accounts have to meet? The Charity Commission’s? The Government’s? If staff of an arts organisation regularly comment on political issues that their theatre/gallery/museum would not be able to comment on will that be seen as a failure of governance? What action will be taken? Are funders like Arts Council, England expected to police that? Like the universities police the borders at reach?
Or is our position that this change will make no change whatsoever in the behaviour of the arts charities that make up the structure of our arts sector? Is that our position? With a straight face?
I recently gave a talk to the board and senior management team of a brilliant arts charity and I was asked the question: How do you continue to appeal to everyone with your message in these challenging times, how do you hold the centre ground?
Or in the parlance of The West Wing, how are you good for all time zones?
I disappointed most with my answer I think. Which is you shouldn’t be good for all time zones. There are some shocking time zones and you shouldn’t pander to them. There are some absolutely terrible time zones- the time zone that includes the idea that women are inferior to men is a terrible time zone. Equally the one where people say Black people are stupid, that you can’t be British and Muslim, that Jews are Space lizards, I could go on. And on. These time zones are abominable and the people who say them must be resisted. They must be resisted. And there are times, rare times, horrendous times, when they must be resisted in every possible way. Even, in last resort, physically.
Look around you, how far away do you think the last resort is?
Don’t Mention The War
I’d been asked to give a speech about the role of artists beyond the immediately artistic- where is the artists’ leadership role in society?
I wrote a mouthy 3 minutes and practised my words until I could pretend I was making them up in the moment.
At the last minute the lovely people who had asked me to do it said I couldn’t mention the culture war.
The speech was pretty much 3 minutes on the culture war, the cameraman had already set up and so we found ourselves at an impasse.
There began a brilliant argument, the sort we rarely have in the arts but I had been shamed the day before by an accusation of cowardice and they had been dispatched with clear instruction by their bosses and so we went at it. It’s good to have those arguments. We assume too much of each other’s positions when things are left unsaid.
There are dudes with moustaches in Great War coats talking about an invasion of foreigners whilst stood outside of refugee shelters. Police vans are on fire and a couple of years ago we were sending black people to lands they’d never visited even as we issued stamps celebrating the arrival of their ancestors on a big boat.
The culture war is real. We’re losing. In fact I don’t even think we’re fighting because we are too busy trying to be good for all time zones. Staying quiet in the hope we don’t bother anyone.
There is war in Europe, a once in a generation squeeze on the standard of living, a substantial refugee crisis, a fuel crisis, we’re still in at best the afterburners of a global pandemic and the continuing existential crisis of an environmental disaster.
And too much of our sector is obsessed with process and terrified by box office targets and government scowling they’ve turned themselves into Agatha Christie characters organising distracting tennis weekends away for everyone.
The shibboleths of the politically progressive grow ever more complicated, simultaneously ever more certain, ever more hard to understand. And ever more an irrelevant distraction if we’re honest.
Not fat but enormous. Gary Lineker a hero or an overpaid luvvie. These are not elements of the culture war. This is Culture War airsoft.
Foreigners, the queer, the different, they are under threat. And pretending that there is no attack is cowardice. The seductive argument of “it’s important to hold the middle ground” works only if you put a blue helmet on and keep the peace. Otherwise you’re what we call a passive bystander. Complicit in your silence.
The victory is not in being so inoffensive as to be unnoticed but by being compelling, by being clear about the values and standards we will live our lives by and why it matters. Not by checking off Shibboleths- how DO you feel about Lineker- but by letting the power and clarity of our lived argument about a kinder way of living with each other win the day.
I speak from painful experience. For four years I was part of a team that managed the oldest working men’s club in Britain. And for four years we threw ourselves over and over again on the grenades of referring to women as girls, contesting language that excluded those who were different, fighting sexual harassment of staff and on and on. Over and over.
This isn’t vanity. I didn’t have any thought that the person who I was arguing with would change their mind- their lifetime of experience and decades of failed political leadership and broken promises against my rip off JFK. No contest.
That’s not why I did it.
I did it because the others are watching- the vast majority who, wherever they are on a specific subject, are not certain. These people, the majority of people, are watching.
They are watching to see if I have an argument, or am I just checking shibboleths. Do I know why I want to change what we call the toilets- ladies and gents, urinals or stalls- or I have just read something in The Guardian? Sure, they’ve heard me say that the club only works when it’s for all parts of the community but can I explain why? Or was I just going to condemn anyone who didn’t agree with me as a bigot.
And others were watching to see if what I said was true, that it was a safe space for them too. Waiting to see if I would live the values I spoke, could I be trusted? Or would I try to be good for all time zones and say nothing.
Mostly they wanted to know if I was going to fight. And fight fair.
I failed at the club; this much is known. I didn’t convince enough, but that’s okay. It’s a culture war, not a culture battle: it isn’t the only place I fight. But denying it’s happening is not a tactic. It’s cowardice. Being good for all time zones. You can’t be neutral when the culture war is on your doorstep. You have to pick a side.
The vast majority of the country is not certain of anything anymore. They’re waiting for people with the courage to convince them of a future they can hope to be happy in. There are plenty of certain voices convincing them of a future where at least they aren’t the most miserable.
We have to give them better options. Better arguments. Be clear in our values. Imagine other ways of being with each other.
That’s the point of artists I think. The civic leadership of artists: imagining better futures.
pic by James Phillips. I don’t know what im saying here but its safe to say that Testament, Denmarc and Kully are not convinced.
If you enjoyed reading this then I have very good news. The Club on the Edge of Town is the story of Slung Low in the oldest working men’s club in Britain and full of this raging and ranting. A whole book of it! You can buy the book from the excellent publishers here https://salamanderstreet.com/product/a-memoir-2/ or listen to the audio book (I do ALL the voices) on Audible.
We sold the old Army landrover that has appeared in countless Slung Low adventures and shows the other day. She was called Bear. And she was ridiculous to drive, had absolutely no fuel efficiency but she made you feel like a hero when you were bouncing around with the top down entering the square in front of The Crucible, or chasing the sun in the Peak District on The Magician shoot. Davidbaby was furious. I explained that we had other adventures coming, new commitments to the children of Ingram Road primary school, TWO new theatres, a new floor needed and the money from the sale would help achieve those things.
That made him more furious. “If you earned more money,” he shouted, “you wouldn’t need to sell Bear.” And then he did this incredibly flamboyant flop to the floor, like a six year old Peter O’Toole. Which is when I love him the most quite frankly.
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Every arts organisations who applied for regular funding from the Arts Council, England just received an email advising them what to do if successful, and what to do if they were not. In the Arts we’re about to head, one way or another, in to a period of loss. The decisions by Arts Council, England this October will bring in a wave of new and different organisations, or it will consolidate the existing ones.
Maybe ten years ago there was an argument that both roads could be taken simultaneously but the only people now who genuinely think you can grow a pie, and then turn that pie into a cake, have the cake and eat it are the leaders of the Conservative party: and they’ve just crashed sterling and set fire to the bond markets- choices are going to have to be made. In one way or another there are some endings coming.
I once heard an Artistic Director of a theatre (was it Lorne Campbell, I think it was Lorne) say that part of the issue with subsidised theatres was that they were never allowed to lay down any of their responsibilities.
These organisations had taken on so many more priorities and responsibilities since they were born without ever having permission to examine the core of their business- their charitable aims staying pretty much static for fifty years, their business models marooned in understandings of society from yesterday. Well we’re going to need to lay down some responsibilities if we’re to survive in a mostly static funding settlement and a cost of living crisis. We will be known by what we choose to lay down. Endings are coming, but which ones?
We’ve going through a big ending here at Slung Low. For four years we’ve managed the oldest working men’s club in Britain, The Holbeck. For four years it’s been a pay what you decide arts and community venue- a theatre, a pub, a polling station, hosting councillor surgeries, a food bank, a wedding venue, home to a football team and football fans, a church, a rehearsal room- serving and hosting it’s communities in ways that it had never before in its 150 year history.
In the four years we’ve managed the place we’ve paid off it’s substantial historic debt, professionalised the bar, turned a profit with a new business model and refurbished the inside and outside in order to make the place safe and crucially physically accessible to all. We invested hundreds of thousands of pounds and all the energy we could muster.
I thought I would spend my forties being part of the team running this place.
I was wrong.
The reasons why we are leaving are complicated (and also the subject of a new book and I need to leave something to write in it ;-). But broadly speaking we found it… I found it… impossible to convince the elected committee of the club to agree with some our basic principles of how the club should be run. We disagreed about who should be welcome, and how they should be welcome, into the club. We disagreed about when we say “we serve our community” what the word serve meant and who we thought our community is. And we disagreed about how much money should be spent subsidising the beer of a small group of people sat in a pub that too many other people found unfriendly and sometimes openly hostile.
Alongside these disagreements was our absolute belief that the club must remain as a members owned organisation. If this is what the elected committee wanted then it must be so. It isn’t an easy chapter ending they’ve chosen, but they have chosen it. It is theirs, they must own it now. And Slung Low must choose their endings, just the same as everyone else.
Our commitment to Holbeck was absolute, but not to The Holbeck. And the building was as much a burden as it was a tool for usefulness. The Arts Council turned down a second capital application that some had encouraged and revealed that we were not actually eligible for capital funding.
Choices and consequences.
We made our choice.
At this year’s AGM we asked the members to vote us out of the club and, after one of the more stressful meetings of my life, they did.
We found two new homes in Holbeck- you can read about them here. Expanding our capability and capacity. Allowing us to better meet some of our responsibilities and, crucially, lay some other responsibilities down.
Recently there was a new Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. He used to be the head of the Royal Navy and in one of his first interviews he was asked what he had learnt from running the navy that he would take in to his new job of CDS.
He said that there was a tendency to think that change was inherently risky. That in the risk register people would instinctively put an additional point of risk on a new action, simply because it was new. When in actual fact sometimes to stand still, to continue to do the same thing, was much riskier.
In the weeks after we announced we were leaving the club and moving, thanks to new relationships with private partners, to two new venues that have neither asbestos nor racism, the Arts Council added another line to our risk register.
Sometimes to stand still is more risky than to move. In fact, in my experience, inaction is too often confused with being resolute. And it isn’t the same thing at all.
I don’t regret a minute of the time at the club. But I was for a long time frustrated by the idea of leaving behind all this effort, all this capital, sweat and treasure: caught up in a narrative that the failure to convince the committee of a future made pointless the success of the past.
The other night the club committee organised a Freddie Mercury impersonator upstairs at the club that the team and Davidbaby went along to. As it started two young lads in big wheelchairs came up the lift and took front row seats- clapping along to Don’t Stop Me Now and Bohemian Rhapsody. They would never have got up the stairs before. And were clearly having the time of their lives.
The lift is in constant use by people who were previously locked out but if these two young lads were the only people who used the lift how much money would be too much for that moment of joy. That’s what I sat there thinking as I thought about all the time, money and effort we would be leaving behind because I had failed to convince some people of an argument about a changing world. And do you know what? I’d pay every penny. Every penny. Every hour of graft. Every one of them.
What price a moment of joy?
Just because it’s ending doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it. As theatre makers you’d think we’d naturally understand that. But we don’t, not at an organisational level.
Change is coming. Not just in Arts Council funding. Crisis is here, it’s in every news headline, and change rides pillion with crisis.
We must be careful not to be conservative. Careful not to fear change for change’s sake but rather to fight for the type of change we need. That’s the battle, not to protect what we have, but to imagine a better future and then insist on it.
Too often in the arts we assess risk so that change becomes almost impossible: a quieter life to stand still. Even when we know our now doesn’t work for enough of our communities. Even when we know our reality is not good enough, that we must do better. Out of fear we will cling to the devil we know.
But it’s still a devil.
And even worse we convince ourselves that the change would not be necessary if only we were better. Efficiencies will save the day. Income generation. Philanthropy. I’ve lived through enough silver bullets that turned out to be blanks to know that none of them are a substitute for imagining a better future and then insisting on the change to conjure it in to being.
We fool ourselves that if only we were more successful we wouldn’t need to make these decisions.
That is the argument of a six year old. A magnificently dramatic six year old. Don’t be fooled by it. Endings are coming. We have to choose the right ones, it’s how we will ensure the best beginnings follow on. We will be known by what we have done and what we are willing to give up.
There’s not enough wonder at the moment. It’s time for change.
We promised when we announced we were leaving The Holbeck (previous statement here) that this was a story of expansion, a step in the relentless and irresistible march of Holbeck becoming an even better place to live and work.
Obviously our commitment to Holbeck is total and we are so excited that we will be opening two new spaces in Holbeck in 2023. Yep, that’s right, TWO!
We’ll be moving into a large warehouse space in Holbeck’s Jamyang Buddhist Centre, next door to our most exciting creative partner Ingram Road Primary School.
Some of the kids from Ingram Road Primary School, in our movie, like you do. Pic by Antony Jones
This new space will home a 200 seater cabaret space (with the same stage that we have at the club now) alongside a much larger rehearsal and warehouse performance and exhibition space.
In this space we’ll host visiting shows that are larger than we’ve been able to before, and support the rehearsal processes of other artists from the city. Everything we present here (and everywhere) will be Pay What You Decide.
It’s a real expansion for us; it’s the type of venue the city doesn’t have a lot of- big industrial performance space that could fit an orchestra, a huge digital art piece, some large-scale theatre to a standing audience of a few hundred.
The Warehouse in Holbeck allows us to do even more with and for our communities, our audiences and the artists we support. We’re unbelievably excited. We get the keys on the 1st September, renovate the place through the autumn and open to the public in January 2023.
But I said two spaces! Thanks to our property developer pals CEG we’re taking over an industrial space on Bath Road. Yes that’s right: where the HUB was.
On the corner of Bath Road and Water Lane there is a lovely unit that we’ll be moving into this coming autumn. Slung Low at Temple will have long-term office and making space for young, emerging and national artists and companies as well as being the new home for our double decker bus classroom and outdoor stage.
Signal Fires, stories around a fire. Pic by Simon K Allen
We’ll present work here that is better experienced outdoors. This space allows us to support the artists we’ve commitments to, and new ones, over the longer term: it’s part of us getting older as a company and understanding our role in the city’s cultural ecosystem, we’ve all got to pitch in to keep the city nice right? And this place will also help us connect up the two parts of Holbeck- ensuring that all the benefits of the great development down in Temple are experienced and understood by all of Holbeck.
The Holbeck will continue under the management of the club’s committee. Since our arrival we have settled all the club’s historic and current debt- it is debt free. We have made it physically accessible to all with a lift after a huge financial investment thanks to all your support. And this past year we operated the club into a profit- we leave it with money in the bank. Long may it continue!
We’ll leave the club in mid-December, until then you’ll still be able to come along for your theatre fix and for one of the cheapest pints in Leeds.
These two new venues- giving us 3 new stage spaces in Holbeck on which to present work- are such an exciting new adventure. Bigger, more flexible, more welcoming, more capacity than we’ve ever had. More ways to be useful and kind. What a tomorrow!
And we need a little bit of help. You knew it was coming. We’re spending the rest of this year getting the places ready to open. Moving things, building things, cleaning things, painting things. The usual job of creating a theatre, right? We’ve done it a few times before, this is the fun part.
And for some of those fun things we could do with a hand. So we’re having a barn day- like we used to at the HUB- days in which everyone comes down and helps out with what they can. You don’t need to have any skills, or tools, or even experience. Although we’ll put any knowledge you do have to work. No, you just need to turn up, be enthusiastic and do what you can.
We’ll give you lunch and plenty of tea and coffee.
It’s on the 17th September. 10 until 4. Wear clothes you don’t mind getting dirty. And if you can fill in this form then it will help us plan (and make sure we’ve got you the right lunch!). We’ll email you the address and other details once you sign up.
In a time when things seem bleak, when everything seems like it’s shrinking, we’ve decided to get on the front foot, expand out of the mood, fight out of the corner- there’s never been a more important time to be a fully engaged theatre company in this community, never been a time when some wonder is so sorely needed. So lets go.
This was a statement from the company after the members approved our request to leave The Holbeck. It was originally on Facebook and other social media platforms but it’s archived here so I can refer to it elsewhere.
In the years we’ve been in residency in the oldest working men’s club in Britain we’ve hosted hundreds of shows, hundreds of community events and thousands of rehearsals for the city’s artists, professionalised the bar and paid off the club’s substantial historic debt.
We’ve launched a community football club, delivered 15202 food parcels, and secured tens of thousands of pounds in funding for the club. And made so many new friends. And we’ve poured our hearts and soul into this place: we love The Holbeck.
And, thanks to the support of you, made the only public performance space in Holbeck physically accessible to all.
The only public performance space in Holbeck? The only event room in Holbeck? That can’t be right.
A place like Holbeck, as brilliant as Holbeck, surely has more than one palace of fun? No?
Well hold your horses.
Slung Low will be creating a new creative cultural space in Holbeck: a fun palace. A place designed to welcome all our communities to exciting, engaging, thrilling events. The biggest we’ve ever run, capable of more creativity, more usefulness, more adventures.
And The Holbeck? The Holbeck remains a brilliant wonderful space that we are sure to return to over and over. It remains the oldest working men’s club that is so important for so many. It remains accessible. It remains owned by its members. And it is debt free, recent grants safe in the bank, ready to embrace its next 150 years. And with the recently minted committee it has a group of leaders vocal and certain in a new direction.
This morning the members approved Slung Low’s motion at the AGM for management control of the club to return to the Committee at their most advantageous time before 31 December 2022. Over the next few months we will work together with the club’s committee to create a timetable to see us withdraw from the club in a manner ensuring it can continue to thrive without us and we can continue to meet our responsibilities to all our communities.
This is a story of confidence and expansion. Holbeck, a place that should have more than one event space. More than one stage. So that the families, the artists, all the residents, all the communities of the area can have the best cultural life possible. It is a story of a community bold and growing. Slung Low’s commitment to that story, to Holbeck, is absolute.
And the new Slung Low venue? Well the details are coming soon. And then we’ll have to have you down. All welcome. Wherever we are, all welcome. Always.
In September we hosted The Conference of Holbeck Moor.
The idea was to bring arts leaders and future arts leaders together to hear from (mostly) non-arts leaders about inspiring models of leadership, managing change and being values based.
We heard from chefs, teachers, pirates, football fans and much more. The talks were curated by Nima Taleghani, Pia Richards, Claire Graham, Keisha Thompson, John Battle along with members of the Slung Low team and with input from Arts Council staff too.
You can see a video by Brett Chapman to give you a sense of things
The talks are recorded and held here in archive here. There are a few missing because there was a biblical storm and we abandoned camp back to the club: the recording equipment didn’t make it as part of the evacuation.
The event was Pay What You Decide. There was a creche. Access issues were engaged with on a personal basis: e.g. if you requested a sign language interpreter then we would hire two interpreters to spend the conference with you personally so you could experience any part of the conference rather than having interpreters on stage centrally interpret the events.
There were ticket, transport and accommodation bursaries. Primarily these were done through partners Arts Emergency and Spark. Although some people got in touch with us directly. I don’t think we turned anyone down for help when asked.
The figures are below. I know there are arts people who are interested in it.
The two most noticeable differences from the previous events were;
The number of new access requests were noticeable. Not requests we had previously received e.g. wheelchair access or interpreters (they were noticeably down for a number of covid and non-covid related issues) but people requesting safe spaces, prior walk through of the event, quiet rooms etc.
There were groups of people who were unwilling to attend; not only but noticeably colleagues from the disabled community were less well represented than previously. We spoke to the brilliant Mandy Colleran about that and I would recommend listening to that conversation here.
However those who did attend were much more enthusiastic than we expected: some of this is that the previous event had gone well and word had spread but a lot of it was to do with the fact that for many this represented the first real opportunity to be amongst friends and allies in real life for a long time. We took that Responsibility seriously and tried to take care of everyone the best we could.
Actual Attendees (350 capacity sold-out); Thursday: 290 Friday: 248
The drop off was a similar percentage to last time but delegates were noticeably better at telling us than in the previous year. Life is chaotic at the moment, this was much better than we feared.
Total number of Delegates supported with travel / accommodation: 25
In total 343 people on site over the two days.
A number of local residents entered the conference during the two days as they were passing or because they’d heard about it at the club: this was one of the key reasons for hosting it in Holbeck so was particularly pleasing to see happen.
Pay What You Decide
Number of people PWYD £0 = 42
Of course some people just walked in and didn’t pay anything , they’re included in the total numbers attending but not the PWYD £0 allowance.
Average PWYD contribution was £58.21
Of those that paid anything (so if you minus 42 PWYD £0), Average PWYD contribution was £69.23 (gross). This was pretty much the same as the previous event 2 years ago.
It was much harder to organise than previously: constantly bumping up against Covid and Brexit caused issues. But it felt like it was more useful to more people than the previous event: sign of the times and lets be honest for many people they were just happy to be out of the house. So were we.
There’s a great and pernicious story told in the last twenty, maybe even forty years, maybe it’s always been told, about the nature of power. Or what it is to be powerful.
We are full of stories of Ironman, mega-stars and extraordinary individuals doing extraordinary things in extraordinary moments. We don’t tell many stories about groups of people managing to make things together, working together, day in day out to have an impact but we’re full of tales of individuals throwing hail-marys to win the day.
The idea that it is only the special individual capable of provoking genuine change in the world, the superhero narrative, is one that keeps most everyone else in a state of not being arsed.
It’s a lie.
We are all capable of extraordinary power. Each and every ordinary one of us. As a team of ordinaries we are capable of profound impact.
30 volunteers deliver at least 300 boxes of food a week in 2021 from the Slung Low foodbank. We know, we absolutely know, that one of those parcels will reach a house at the end of their capacity. A house that has no food. That feels it has no more options. That is scared of how the children are going to be fed in the morning. And that fear, that rising panic, will force out the ability to make good choices, the fog will come in. And, knowing we have unusually high levels of domestic violence in the ward, maybe, maybe, that panic becomes a closed fist.
We can be absolutely certain that one of these parcels, maybe more than one but at least for certain one, will arrive at the right moment and that rising panic will dissipate.
That maybe-fist unclench. Those tears not start. Full bellies go to sleep knowing that in the morning there is breakfast.
A bounce in the step on the way to school. Who knows what happens then?
What moment of learning or realisation happens because of all that set in motion by the arrival of a box of food. Or the parent coming home from school drop-off catches a leaflet for an adult education course and thinks, why not? Or anything else that might bring a moment of joy into someone’s life.
Maybe all that doesn’t happen this week. But next week there’s another 300 food boxes and we’ll take our chance again with those.
And we know, we don’t have to be statisticians to know, that it will happen. The numbers are large enough to ensure that it does.
So those 30 volunteers, all the team at Slung Low, all our partners, and food suppliers, and the gang at Voluntary Action Leeds and the City Council, and all those tens of thousands of donated pounds spent on food, and all that theatre made and funding applied to get that money, and the 150 years of the club being here and every single van of wholesale deliveries emptied box by back breaking box – all of this – made that moment. That moment of profound change. That moment of panic subsiding and there being just enough room in someone’s chest and mind for that glorious moment of realisation, or joy, or learning that might lead anywhere. And isn’t that worth it? To be certain that you have given someone a moment’s peace, what would you give? What would you do?
Well, for that moment, we’d do all this. 16 months of it.
And they have the audacity to think we are not powerful. All of us. Powerful and capable of making real and extraordinary change in the world.
Will the kids sat on their bikes, literally in the gutter, watching the opera dress rehearsal in the car park of the club last summer be changed by that experience? Will one of them or all of them or some of them grow up with the great joy of putting on a recording of Hansel and Gretel and letting it transport them back to a happy sunny sweaty day when they were young and they sat in the road and listened transfixed. Will the music of that day bring them comfort as their heart is breaking sometime in the future?
Yes all of that is capable of being true. Or something so similar to it that it’s the same thing.
But we don’t get to be there when it happens. That’s the rub. That’s why you have to carry your certainty with you. Makes speeches and write blogs to remind you of it. To have faith unconfirmed. Because we wont be there when it happens. When the fist unclenches because of some white bread you unloaded from a van 2 days before. Or the heart soars in twenty years time as they listen to an old opera and remember. Or any of the other things that are absolutely a result of the efforts and determination of all those who worked with us through the crisis and did their best. We wont be there. But that doesn’t mean they don’t happen. It doesn’t mean we didn’t help them to happen. That we are not powerful, that we are not capable of changing the world one person, one moment at a time.
It’s just there’ll be no curtain call for all of it, no round of applause. No moment when we look at each other and say “we did that” and feel our efforts are worth it. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t do it. Because we did. And our world changed.
It’s been 15 months of foodbank. 15,000 referrals. We are exhausted by it and must move on. But we are changed. Forever.
We launch our football club tonight- Holbeck Moor FC. A team for everyone. A new adventure. We go again tomorrow pals.
He was in the RAF his whole adult life. Like my dad.
Grandad Ken received a BEM. The British Empire Medal.
The working class gong they call it. It’s given to lollipop men, dinner ladies, posties, scout leaders. And Ken.
I keep my grandfather’s BEM in a box, along with my father’s medals. I showed them to my son, David, the other day. Along with this picture of the boat my granddad served on. In which he hunted pirates.
You can imagine how Davidbaby likes that story. His dad’s dad’s dad got a medal for fighting pirates.
It’s been a hell of a year. Not quite fighting pirates though.
For the last 8 months the Slung Low team, along with so many volunteers, has responded to requests from our ward of Holbeck and Beeston. 8000 referrals. We’ve done laundry, made befriending calls, walked dogs. And delivered thousands of food parcels. The team of volunteers who have done that with us are extraordinary. Hundreds of engaged brilliant citizens. I am so proud of them and everything they have done this year.
I’ve made dozens of speeches to conferences and groups about what we’ve done, why we did it and how. That’s my job, my best contribution to the team effort- the amplification of what we do widely to the arts sector and beyond- to provoke change in people’s mind as well as immediately in our community.
I’m asked a lot why we opened the food bank. I’m asked a lot how we did it.
And it takes lots of things. It takes those volunteers. And the Real Junk Food Project. A fab Voluntary Action Leeds handler. Great councillors and City Council staff. Thousands and thousands of donations. And a team of determined, practical, political, empowered artists driving a company that are willing to pay the price of their promises, the cost of their commitments.
And it really helps if one of the team is a Reserve Officer in the Royal Engineers.
I was meant to join the army twenty years ago until cancer made that impossible. I waited the length of time you have to wait after cancer then tried to join the British Army Reserve. I had to lose a third of my body weight to get in. I became vegan. It took a year to lose that much weight. I ran a mile and half every day until I was thin and fit enough. And six years ago I got in.
I joined as a soldier, not as an officer. Like my dad David and grandfather Ken before me. I spent four years as a sapper in the Royal Engineers’ Reserve. It’s a minimum 28 days a year commitment, but it tends to be a good deal more- it took some juggling. And then like Sharpe before me I rose from the ranks and became an officer. He was made an officer after he saved Lord Wellington’s life in battle. I didn’t do that. I did more running. Tests, exams and then success. Then two months training at The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS). That’s some intense training in leadership, determination, communication, managing under pressure and team work. And sleep deprivation.
I am responsible for the careers and well-being of my troop of combat engineers. A brilliant group of men and women who are by day social workers and builders and firemen and engineers and, in what is laughably called their spare time, train to learn the skills needed to be useful combat engineers. The operation my regiment led on for the last few years was building hospitals for the UN in South Sudan: this was where my troops trained to go. I am proud of them. They are engaged citizens.
The work Slung Low has made over the last six years has been influenced by my Reserve service: just as it had been by a childhood around the military. And as hard as it is to believe the same is also true the other way. I’m not the only person from theatre to be in the Reserves: we’re useful people.
But the Reserve experience has never been more useful than this year. The time at Sandhurst was central in providing the structure, the strength and confidence to build that food bank in the way we did.
There are other ways of doing it of course and other influences, but this was my contribution.
I’ve never lied about my Reserve service. But I’ve never been in a hurry to let it be known beyond the small team at Slung Low. Some of that was at first a security concern. But also because I have always understood that for some in theatre it will inevitably be beyond the pale and it will generate scorn in others.
The Reserve now makes up nearly a third of our armed forces, it operates all over the world and the last serving British soldier to be killed by enemy attack was a reservist so the scorn doesn’t bother me.
But I’m also responsible for the livelihood of the Slung Low team and we’ve always assessed that wider knowledge of it would impact our ability to get work in the industry: and that was something I wanted to avoid. But circumstances out of my control mean it was likely to become public knowledge soon enough so better on the front foot with it. Time to tell this story.
I am proud of how my family, and my Slung Low family, have put up with the impact on their lives of this, finding ways to bring positives from it, supporting me through it, grabbing at the new learning.
It is not always easy to balance it with everything else.
I do it because I genuinely believe in service. This nation has decided that a large part of its armed forces will be a citizen reserve force and I think if I can serve in those circumstances I should. There is no organisation that is not without its challenges and its problems. I am clear-eyed about those in the British Army Reserve. But it is impressive in many ways, striving to be a better, fairer and more just version of itself all the time in a practical and rigorous way- and that can’t be said about all parts of every sector I work in.
I believe in service. This is my way of serving.
I know for some on the left and in the arts this will seem like a betrayal. I am betraying no one. The values that I passionately speak about are the lived values rooted in everything Slung Low does, which in turn are the same values that drive my military reserve service. I am genuinely sorry that you may be angry I haven’t met your standard, but I can’t help that, I’m working too hard to meet my own.
A few weeks ago I received an email asking if I would accept a BEM. I thought of showing the medal to Davidbaby. I thought of him showing it to his children perhaps. The citation says “for services to the community in South Leeds during Covid 19”. I believe in service. I also believe in medals.
I wanted to accept. My only worry was that it would disturb the balance of Slung Low somehow. I need not have worried the gang were generous and pleasingly proud. It’s still a team sport.
I hope it makes the members of The Holbeck proud- their club has provided the basis of so much support and hope to Holbeck and Beeston this year. Along with the many other plaudits that recognise the club and the volunteers I hope this one makes them proud.
I remain in service. Now with a shiny medal to show my son. To put in a box and hopefully to come out one day along with an older one like it. With an old beer mat from a working men’s club, and a picture of a boat a man named Ken used to hunt pirates in.
(This beer mat was designed by Heledd Rees: a stunning theatre designer who has an equally brilliant store of beautiful things at https://www.celfheleddart.co.uk)
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