Community Notice
It’s time to have yr say if you are a Tennant or resident in the ‘Dewsbury/Garnet/Tunstall Triangle’ made up of the Garnet’s, Oakley’s, Parkside Place, Rawson Terrace and Burton Terrace. After January’s ‘Your Voice, Your Community‘ listening event it has been decided that Leeds City Council will support the formation of a new residents association for the area.
Be sure to have your voice heard at the inaugural meeting where there will be councillor updates, a Q&A and the election of a Chair, Secretary and Treasurer.
Date: 14th April 2025
Time: 6:30-7:30pm
Venue: St Luke’s Cares Charity Shop, Dewsbury Road
Light Refreshments will be available
And now, this month’s post by BasementArtsProject…
“Bow Down before the one you serve,
You’re going to get what you deserve”
Nine Inch Nails: Head Like A Hole
This year I have set myself the task of trying to write an article a month. My aim is to present an honest account of life in South Leeds, one that would resonate with the community whilst doing so from my own very specific point of view. On the whole I want to create a feeling of positivity and hope for a different kind of future, but through a lens of honesty. This necessarily means that there will be negatives involved.
The trouble with writing pieces far in advance as I have been doing since Christmas, is that circumstances change, and on this corner -very quickly. I started writing this on the day after I posted last months article and things have definitely changed, but not for the better. As I sit down to finish the piece, things have changed yet again.
‘Architectural Acupuncture’ was a phrase that I came across whilst working with Keith Ackerman and John Barbour on ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ (2019-22). The phrase means exactly what it sounds like. In acupuncture needles are applied at specific points on the body in order to release pressure on painful areas. In ‘Architectural Acupuncture’ a similar strategy is applied to the built environment by carefully placing things that will relieve the pressure on trouble spots. For three years ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ has acted as an example of architectural acupuncture, taking what had been a magnet for bad behaviour and instead promoting a peaceful haven, far from the madding crowd. Recently, as with many forms of treatment, we have had a relapse, and old symptoms have returned.
The nature of capitalism relies on the idea that 100% employment is not possible. So long as the demand for jobs outstrips the supply side it means that the leverage over wages and employee rights remains in the hands of employers. As technological innovation has increased at speed so too has the race to the bottom in terms of the rights of working people. Therefore to those that run the show this means that 100% employment is also not desirable.
Despite lifelong tendencies towards the socialist mindset, I was late in coming to Robert Tressell’s ‘Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’. I would only recommend this book to people who have the stomach for 700+ pages of Edwardian misery in the painting and decorating trade. When Tressell wrote the book I can imagine it would have been seen as a call to arms, a serious chastisement of the ruling classes and their treatment of the working class, now it reads more like a post-hoc rationalisation of 100 years of failure. In fact the introduction to my edition was written by Labour MP Tristram Hunt, who suggested that it had been required reading for members of the Labour Party. When I look at the state of current political policy I cannot help but think that a different message must have been taken from it by our elected representatives.
The gradual erosion of pay and conditions across the years, driven by the demands of business, has led us to our current position in which work does not and cannot pay. But of course, making work pay cannot be achieved by making non-work unviable, at least not if we are to accept that supply cannot keep up with demand and 100% employment can never be achieved; for this necessarily means that, in the words of Gore Vidal “It is not good enough to succeed, others must fail”.
And in response to the idea, suggested by those currently governing, that they can be “friends of business and friends of the people” I would, even as an atheist, direct them to The Bible and suggest that “A man cannot serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). The worker requires humanity whilst business requires ruthless efficiency. The two are mutually exclusive and their requirements cannot overlap.
Consequently we are led to the concept of what Cedric G Robinson refers to in his book ‘After Black Lives Matter’ as the surplus population, that percentage of the population who by design cannot participate in capitalist society despite being told that they are failures if they do not do so. Whilst Robinson is talking about matters concerning race, he does acknowledge, as does another prominent voice from the Black Power movement -Angela Davis, that this issue of surplus population cuts across all sections of society via the concept of class and it is therefore a product of the inequity and injustice of the capitalist system.
In the many conversations that I have had with members of the community over the course of the last twenty-five years, an overwhelming feeling is that many believe South Leeds to be the designated home of the surplus population.
“Nothing good ever happens ‘round here”
“They’ve left us to rot”
A zone of tolerance for antisocial behaviour, promoted by a plethora of cheap off-licences and fast food joints. A place in which the surplus population can be placated and ignored, cheered on by those paragons of virtue that call themselves Landlords, people who suggest that areas like South Leeds would be cured of all their ills if only people had a work ethic; blithely ignoring the fact that the economy does not permit full employment, and the environment, aided and abetted by economic pressures, shaves literal years of our lives making our latter years prone to illness.
Last week I had one of the saddest conversations of recent times. As I was shopping I was approached by a homeless man with whom I have shared a number of brief asides over the last few years. He had, I suspect unwittingly, been part of the encampment mentioned in the post at the outset of this article. He asked me if I was a stone mason. I know that he associates me with ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ as he had watched it being created over the course of three years. “No” I responded “I just worked with Keith and John, the actual stone masons, on the project around the corner”. “It’s nice that… Jacob’s Ladder… it looks really good.” he replied. “It makes a difference… Thanks”. And with that he shuffled off to help someone with a trolley. This is not the first sign of appreciation that I have had from this person, he has often stood at a distance and listened as I have given talks to groups of students on the land about the making of ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. I like this guy; under the right circumstances I could imagine him living a contented life of minimal fuss, but society has failed him. Unlike the local shopkeepers who do not see the point in art, this guy gets it, he understands why we do the things we do. For him it is not about what can be extracted from the community in the form of profit, it is about the things that we bring to the table that improve the quality of life and provide an environment in which aspiration can thrive.
It is time to suspend our belief and start looking to the things that we have always considered as fantasy. There are indeed difficult decisions to be made and they are being made on our behalf by and for the benefit of those who have less distance to fall if it all goes wrong.
We must not allow ourselves to be assigned the future of a surplus population.
Do not go gently into that long goodnight,
Rage, rage unto the dying of the light
Dylan Thomas: Do Not Go Gently
And so I return to my daily litter picks around what I affectionately term as Ladder Land, speaking to people as I do, chatting about Art, Life, The Universe and everything. Today I have to remove some marker pen graffiti that has appeared in our month of mayhem from one of the benches, produced by the community under the tutelage of John and Keith. I am frazzled and my nerves are shot to pieces, I am down but I am definitely not out. So long as we have breath in us we must use it to bring to bear a better world for the future.
Do not go gently, raise a fist in the air and promise to Educate, Agitate, Organise…
