Transform, the UK’s leading festival for inclusive, international performance, will be taking over the city of Leeds for five days from Tuesday (21 October 2025). Transform 25 will present 14 bold, socially conscious performances that reflect and respond to a rapidly changing global landscape.
29 artists from all over the world – including Australia, Brazil, Jamaica, Palestine, The Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and the US – assemble alongside artists from Leeds and across the UK to present visceral performances, intimate installations and moments of assembly which will be presented in unusual locations and iconic venues throughout Transform’s home city of Leeds. Exchanging ideas, memories, stories and history, these 14 performances that sit at the intersection of different artforms, will challenge perceptions and invite audiences and artists alike to imagine a different kind of future.
Three shows take place at The Warehouse in Holbeck, Crosby Street, LS11 9RQ:
● Eve Stainton’s unnerving choreographic performance explores societal suspicion with The Joystick and The Reins, accompanied by a soundtrack featuring music from an 80s horror film performed live by the Airedale Symphony Orchestra.
● A vulgar, visceral and vampy whirlwind performance from Samir Kennedy and Sean Murray, IT’S GOT LEGS!!!!!!! uses the basic tools of theatre and DIY performance to explore the peculiarity of constructing performance and of constructing the self. A UK premiere.
● Surrender is an experimental one-off event of entertainment, food and conversation by performance, possession + automation with an exciting line-up of artists exploring what happens when artists surrender themselves to forces they can’t control.
Doomsday Disco is a party at the end of the world as we know it…or the beginning of a new dawn. Transform 25’s grand finale is hosted by the creators of the iconic Leeds club, Love Muscle at Testbed in Hunslet.
Creative Director, Amy Letman says:
“Two years on from our last major international festival, the artists at the forefront of Transform 25 present performance works that respond to our complex and challenging moment. Transform 25 invites us to pause and reflect on our own responsibility for where we’ve been so far, and where we’re heading next.
“The festival features productions by intrepid individual performers, large-scale portraits of people and place, an intimate one to one experience, and the chance to resist and summon collective joy together through celebration and community. In a moment that feels so unrelenting, we need more than ever to create space for reflection, connection, hope, and to dream up new possibilities. It’s in this spirit that we assemble Transform 25 and build towards this October.”
Full details of all events and tickets at: transformfestival.org
Transform 25 is supported using public funding by Arts Council England and funded by Leeds City Council & UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
This post is based on a press release issued by Transform
Photo: IT’S GOT LEGS!!!!!!!
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