Power To The People: How Did We Get Here?

Over the years it has become apparent as to the opinions that people hold of South Leeds, that it is the kind of place that they do not want to visit because of its reputation. 

(Warning: the following contains images and descriptions that whilst are essential are not for the faint of heart)

Many encounters on social media have left me both angry and despondent as to the perception openly espoused by those from outside of the area; those who portray in their posts the opinion that the entire community is work shy, alcoholic, drug addicted, terrorist-in-waiting or just generally violent and unpleasant. This is not an exaggeration. When talking about a fine art mural project for South Leeds on Twitter recently I was assailed with statistics and aggression by someone going under the name @real_Landlord_ who suggested that 

“Yeah – grafiti will really bring that area to life. Nice one. The unemployment rate of LS11 0AA was recorded as being 18.3% , which is higher than the UK average 18 percent. How about you start some jobs and training / education stuff instead?” (With a link to a stats website)

What followed was a rather unedifying conversation in which neither parties changed their position; neither me nor him. 

In the process of decrying a community’s need for art as part of environmental renewal, and his resistance to the idea that living environment has an effect on how people feel about themselves, he did however state that he believed himself to belong to a set of people providing a service to communities; that of the landlord. The first, and probably the largest, problem with this is that people with disposable income are able to hoover up properties thereby driving prices up and ensuring that the young can never enter the housing market; their captors, sorry tenants, being forever beholden to the whims of the landlords. Only this week I received a photocopied A4 sheet shoved through my letterbox offering to buy my house for cash. As we see in South Leeds the people buying these properties do not live in the area, and the way that they treat the properties, and those who rent them, is not how I would presume they themselves would wish to be treated.

This view of the undeserving poor is what holds areas such as this back. In fact the real problem comes in the form of outsiders, those seeking either to profit from the community; whether it be the landlords who do not attend their properties and allow them to fall in to disrepair instead blaming the tenants, many of whom have mental health, drug and/or alcohol issues, or those just passing through who use our countless fast-food and alcohol facilities, dumping their lunch rubbish out of car windows on to the verges before heading off to, presumably, not make a mess of their own areas. 

Earlier this week I was cleaning the bathroom, and when I looked out of the window I witnessed a chap, who had been sat outside of the house in his car for a long while, wind down his window and drop a handful of ripped up paper and wrappers out of it before driving off. Times this by the amount of cars that park in the street and engage in exactly the same thoughtless activity and that becomes a lot of litter that I end up sweeping up on a daily basis. I am sure that a large proportion of the South Leeds community are familiar with this scenario. It then becomes unsurprising that people living in the area cease to notice things, or more likely block things out to relieve themselves of the misery caused by the selfish and exploitative individuals that we are forced to share our world with. Meanwhile, those aforementioned incomers who create such mess lounge behind their keyboards and twitter such broadsides as “look at them, they live like animals”. 

Add to this the local businesses who on the whole are anything but local, choosing as they do, to live outside of the area in which they locate their businesses. Once again their desire is not really to provide for the community as is often suggested, but to profit from it. They often express to me their contempt for individuals and general disdain for the area in which they make their living. Weirdly this part of South Leeds is not registered as being a Cumulative Impact Area. If it was, this would mean that restrictions could be put on certain activities such as the excessive development of fast food outlets and off-licenses offering cheap booze. It therefore seems perverse not to in an area plagued by on-street drinking, littering, fly-tipping and a high density of HMO’s that house ‘recovering’ alcoholics and drug addicts, vulnerable adults and others who are in need of care and supervision. Instead they are being thrown to the wolves.

A Rising Tide Should Raise All Ships. Each day I roll the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down on me, thereby having to start from the beginning again. Despite my life-shortening obsession with the Sisyphean task of trying to make differences to the issues that I have mentioned, I have no fear of the future; the future is worth striving for and I seek to create a future that is hopeful, bright and aspirational. 

For twelve years with no funding, running on the fumes provided by myself and the artists with whom I have worked, we have invested what we could afford from our paid employment elsewhere, to ensure that we could bring to the South Leeds area the benefits of art and how it relates to the creation and cohesion of communities.

Recently I gave up my paid employment in order to try and focus on how I can utilise my skills in service to the community. Many interactions via the internet would suggest that people do not want, need or deserve what I have to offer but some online comments and all face-to-face interactions tell a different story. I have had many uplifting conversations with local individuals about the things that we have done this far. There are many artists living in the South Leeds area and we need to find ways of ensuring that our vessels are sea worthy so that when the tide turns it raises us all together. We all have a capacity for creativity of one type or another and we must work together to use our collective creativity to solve the myriad of problems that seemingly beset us on all sides.

You can always tell the when drug supply and demand are out of alignment in this area by the quality of human effluence left on display on street corners. Back in February a large pile was left at the edge of the pathway in front of Aldi by someone who had obviously not managed to score: large and liquid as it was. Equally you can tell the value placed upon the people as it remained there, hardening in the sun and returning to liquid every time it rained before finally being removed in early August. Meanwhile in late July, just around the corner outside the front door of the Hands On Recruitment Agency, someone parked their breakfast: this time more of a large solid rock pile, the opiates obviously being more readily available than they had been in February. This remained in place until it had finally been trodden into the pavement of the surrounding area.

My apologies to anyone who may be reading this over breakfast but unfortunately this is the life that I never asked for too. We must find a way to work together to raise expectations and sink the unpleasantness once and for all.

‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and ‘The Corner’ Pocket Sculpture Park was our first attempt at finding a way to create change through art on a larger scale than we had previously conceived. Whilst we still have many problems to deal with we have lessened the impact of other less savoury activities on this corner. 

Even at its worst, it still looks far better than it did pre-‘Jacob’s Ladder’. But this is not where it ends. In fact I hope that this is just the start. Between now and next April we are working with Middleton based Artist/Sculptor Annabelle Richmond-Wright on our second public sculpture for the junction of Tunstall and Dewsbury Road. There is also a third stage involving a specially commissioned artwork by Chloe Harris, a young Artist & Printmaker who exhibited with BasementArtsProject in 2023, and a fourth stage with Pudsey based Artist / Sculptor Dominic Hopkinson. Along with these projects we will be commissioning more sessions that involve the participation of the South Leeds communities, as we have done recently with Annabelle Richmond-Wright’s project with whom we worked at Beeston Hill St Luke’s Primary, New Bewerley Primary, Cockburn John Charles Academy, St Luke’s Cares Charity Shop and The Hamara Centre. 

We take seriously the idea that this [BasementArtsProject] is a project about empowerment through shared ownership and a desire to see the future as a hopeful place.

Here are some useful numbers and websites for reporting some of the issues raised in this article:

999 for reporting crimes as they happen. (This includes if you are witnessing people shooting drugs in public places.)

101 for non-emergencies

Report fly-tipping: 

www.leeds.gov.uk/antisocial-behaviour-and-crime/report-fly-tipping 

Reporting ongoing issues with criminality and anti-social behaviour online: 

www.westyorkshire.police.uk

Police Live Chat: 

www.westyorkshire.police.uk/LiveChat 

Reporting Noise Nuisance:

www.leeds.gov.uk/antisocial-behaviour-and-crime/making-a-noise-complaint 

If you want to urgently complain about noise happening between 5pm and 3:30am, call our out of hours phone: 0113 376 0337 (5pm to 3:30am)

Needle Removal: 

www.leeds.gov.uk/antisocial-behaviour-and-crime/report-discarded-needles-or-drug-related-waste 

 

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