Amy Letman, Creative Director Transform writes...

Over the last few years at Transform we have been thinking about the future of international festivals, who creates them, participates, and leads them. Festivals are by their nature transitory and temporary. Transform festival is known as a flurry of international performance and events that explodes into the cultural scene and then fleetingly passes. However, many of our projects leave lasting impressions long after the festival has culminated.

Immerse yourself in the atmosphere of one of Yorkshire’s historic worsted mills.



The mill’s archive contains over sixty thousand lengths of cloth, eight thousand fabric designs, five thousand dye cards, guard books and artefacts associated with nearly 200 years of cloth production. A source of inspiration for anyone fascinated by heritage and textiles.

Leeds 2023 and the WOW Festival have brought together 300 women and non-binary people for a giant construction project to build a barn on Cinder Moor and I’ve volunteered to be one of the Barn Builders.



Full disclosure, this isn’t the first time I’ve built a traditional timber frame building. Seven years ago, armed with two books bought from the internet and some basic woodwork skills, I set about designing and building a workshop in my back garden. It took me a year and I learnt a lot along the way, but that’s a story for another day.

The participants on our epic citizen films The Good Book and the Magician told us they wanted more specialist skills in backstage areas and we were so excited to oblige for those more interested in learning from the professionals in production areas. 

Leeds artists and creatives are invited to pitch ideas for short-form film projects for broadcast on Sky Arts, as part of the LEEDS 2023 Year of Culture.

We are asking artists to submit ideas that respond to the question:

Future Perfect: What’s worth fighting for?
 

In this photo blog Leeds based international photographer Casey Orr takes us through the evolution of her pop up portrait studio documenting youth culture which started in 2013...

As a part of their signature programme, LEEDS 2023 are working with 33 Neighbourhood Hosts to create a mini-festival in every ward across the city. Over the last two months, they have received over 400 applications for the Community Grants, and they’re reopening the scheme for six wards that have received less applications than others.

This April the Henry Moore Institute is celebrating 30 years since it opened. They are marking the occasion with a new display in their library, A Site for Sculpture: Building the Institute, exploring the history of the building, a creative competition inviting you to reimagine the building and sharing memories from the last three decades.

The highly anticipated full programme for the Leeds International Festival of Ideas (LIFI23) has been released, featuring an impressive line-up of speakers, performers and thinkers from all corners of the world. The festival will run from September 27th-30th at Leeds Playhouse and promises to be an exciting and thought-provoking event for all who attend.

The Out of Many Festival, organised by the Jamaica Society Leeds, takes its name from Jamaica’s motto Out of Many, One People and launched in 2022 to celebrate 60 years of Jamaican independence. The festival continues into Summer 2023.