Leeds Summat – Live

All

Respect

End of the Day

The fun and games go on through the evening over at Notre Dame with a good old-fashioned tea party, lots of music and general good-natured revelry. It’s been a great day, but you don’t need me to tell you that, whether you were there yourself or following online….

@TJSeacroft: Great day @ #Leeds #summat. Highlight def Maurice Glasman – some great insights.
@SilenceBreakers: Had a good day at #Summat – thanks so much to @LeedsSummat for a great event! Was good to meet so many interesting people.
@Bagpus: #Summat @PeterTatchell with some practical alternatives to the current system of economic dictatorship. But how do we work towards this?

@caseymorrison: David Barie: we need to aggregate community demand so the electrorate is talking to power. Critical mass comes from networked power. #Summat

@g_dawson: #Leeds #Summat Summary -lots of loveliness &positive things, there is a lot the fuck wrong, it’s all connected, why aren’t we doing more?

 

 

 

 

5.00pm   –   Leeds on Trial

Never mind the political classes or the 21st century economy – in the Lounge it was Leeds on trial, in the dock over its allegedly proud history.
 
A troupe of actors quite literally held court, led by a bright and impassioned young man making the case for Leeds as a great city built upon the backs of huge men and women who gave their heart and soul to their work around town, set against a female lawyer who calls to account the dark underbelly too long and too casually airbrushed out of our civic story. We speak proudly of Brodrick’s Town Hall, but less about the public hangings to which it once bore witness. Nor about slum living, prostitution, or racism – all of which linger in some form or other to this day.
From history old and recent, witnesses were called: Friedrich Engels, who saw for himself and reported on the conditions faced by factory workers in the city, through to David Oluwale, an African immigrant who in 1969 died and had his corpse recovered from the River Aire having suffered harassment at the hands of local police officers.

Every city and every nation – even every household! – has a chequered history: times remembered fondly and with pride, times they prefer to forget. Leeds is no different.

The presiding judge left the verdict for the audience jury to make. To me, I think our worst moments help understand and make our best. The death of David Oluwale and the poor treatment suffered by early black migrants to the country is made all the more stark and poignant, significant and yet contained, when we visit the Carnival in Chapeltown every August bank holiday or see community leaders of every colour and creed marching through town to make a stand against violence and social injustice. The strife of working people in the early industrial factories south of the Aire is made both ancient history and yet a tangible part of our daily lives when we drive our cars on tar roads across concrete suspension bridges or surf the internet or even rub something out with a pencil eraser, all of which Leeds industry has contributed something to.

We’ve had an occasionally troubled ride, but it’s where we’re headed that truly counts. Isn’t that the message of the entire Summat today…?

 

 

 

 

3.00pm   –   Live Art in Leeds

It’s not only the Summat which is drawing the crowds across the city today. The skies are grey and the clouds threatening, but all over Leeds the Compass Festival of Live Art is in full flow.
 
I dropped in at the Town Hall’s fine Old Court Room, an elegant enclave into which I’ve never stepped before, and far less grandiose and pompus than the rest of Brodrick’s magnum opus. Since 9am today, Oliver Bray has been performing in his exhibit ‘The Speechmaker’, weaving great speeches from history with the words and messages of local folk sent to throughout the day via email and Twitter. Only occasionally taking the odd sip from his coffee cup, he’s still going strong.
All over Leeds, there’s something going on for the festival – so take a look around!
 

 

 

 

2.00pm   –   Words… Actions!

At any summit (or indeed any Summat), one of the things that keeps the temperature high is the sheer level of hot air. Today brings together a host of speakers from all kinds of backgrounds and with diverse, arguably in some cases competing social and political interests. Bringing these people together to make contact and simply talk is something special in itself. But whilst words are actions in themselves, they only achieve so much.
 
Mike Chitty, whose Leeds Community Enterprise (Elsie) programme brings together committed people to share insights and ideas and simply to brainstorm over what they can do to make their project a success, has just been chairing a session here at the Summat on how to move from words to actions.
Yet surely the vast majority of those at the Summat today have no problem with turning their words to actions? Maybe what they want are to make their actions effective actions?
All of these things were on the minds of the small crowd gathered round the table this afternoon. But what resonated most powerfully – and one of the ways that Mike ventured is key to affecting change and making things happen – was what he had to say about measuring indicators and objectives.
He spoke of ‘child poverty’ as an example, a catch-all buzz-phrase that means so much and yet so little. Councils and think-tanks are familiar with measuring child poverty on the basis of raw numerical data, hard stats about income levels for example. What if instead we were to measure it on the basis of how well a child as fed, whether they get to go on a school trip or can afford a new uniform – real, experiential indicators which are tangible and genuinely mean something to the people whose plight we’re discussing. Ask different questions about the problem, and you may find some radically different answers.

To do that of course, you have to include everyone in the process of finding solutions and affecting action. Councils pay consultants vast commissions to go into a community from the outside and fix the problem, rather than engaging with the community and bringing the solutions from them directly: “Insulting and conforming, rather than consulting and informing”, as one of the crowd in the room neatly phrased it.

Today’s Summat inevitably has a political edge, such is the activism and the inclination of many of those involved. From the audience this morning, and listening to conversations throughout the Union now, there is a strong disaffection here with what is perceived as a corrupt capitalist system and a stifled political climate. Yet whatever your politics and the place in society you feel you have, the need to think very radically about our problems and how to tackle them is perhaps now more urgent than ever.

The folks who came along to Mike’s talk today, at the very least, seem more than ready for the challenge.

 

 

 

 

12.00pm   –   Fun and games

Leeds Summat of course isn’t all about high-brow discussion and earnest navel-gazing about social divisions and macroeconomics. It’s a carnival atmosphere with fun and games all around. Musicians are playing, representing every genre you could think of (including a few you would never think of). And out at the front of the building are the players from Republica Internationale FC playing football, right beside a vast interactive graffiti canvas.

The man at the heart of this today is Ed Carlisle from Together 4 Piece. When we met a few weeks ago, he said that this side of the day was just as important to what it’s all about: people from all over coming together and enjoying themselves and appreciating what one another has to offer. Ed has been racing around the Union all morning keeping the show going, but if he gets to see this post, hopefully he’ll know that the Summat is doing exactly that.

11.00am   –   And they’re off!

Harry Gration has been asking the big questions here at Leeds Summat this morning with a panel that included Hilary Benn MP, Maurice Glasman, and Nic Greenan from the LS14 Development Trust. The important questions of the day were based on the riots we saw across the country earlier this summer: what do they tell us about our civil society, our local leadership, our economic model?

In Leeds we were fortunate to escape the worst of the damage that was done to civic centres in Birmingham, Manchester and parts of London. Tribute was paid to the work of youth and local leaders in Chapeltown and Harehills, both for their dedicated commitment through the years, as well as for taking to the streets to make a stand for the safety and the prosperity of their community.

Nic Greenan made the wry remark: “We had no riots in Seacroft because we’ve only got TESCO!” There was little equivocation from some of the audience members who shared their insights and posed questions to the panel: they urged for a wide-ranging revision of the economic structure and the pursuit of growth without sustainability that they argued has long defined our culture and has culminated in the social breakdown epitomised by a summer of violence. “It’s time to think again about ‘the S-word'”, one audience member ventured, to wide appaluse.

The panel however responded with a degree more circumspection, whilst recognising the relevance of the national discussion of inequality here in Leeds: it was of course pointed out how Leeds today is a hugely wealthy city, yet its wealth gravitates towards the north, whilst the rest of the inner cities are left far behind. Nic again pointed out how the monolithic TESCO in Seacroft consistently fails to appreciate a social responsibility to the area it has come to dominate. Perhaps, she said, Occupy Leeds should head there to set up camp instead.

The key theme, and the keyword that reverberated around the room, was ‘sustainability’: the desire and the movement towards an economic model with a more conscious social dimension. As the audience heads off to workshops and talks around the building, I daresay we may have more of a clue by the end of the day exactly what that means in practice.

 

9.45am   –   Warming Up

Wind and rain is general across Leeds this morning; over the Parkinson Building on Woodhouse Lane hangs a low cloudy sky giving space to only a trace of white light.

But here at the student union building at Leeds University, right at the heart of the campus, the warmth of conviviality irradiates the building as already the crowds gather to hear from the dizzying array of thinkers and activists, of politicians and poets, of artists and ordinary local folk – all here to share what they do with the world.

I’m tweeting throughout the day’s mixture of events, already circling the names I’m looking out for on the packed schedule sheet. Follow me @mw_obrien and the hashtag #Summat – and if you’re around then come on down!

 

It’s the Big One. This Saturday I’m heading along to the Leeds Summat, and I daresay I’ll bump into a few of you throughout the day.

It’s an event I’ve been looking forward to since first hearing all about it: an eclectic day of inspiring talks, engaging workshops and sharing of ideas, the Summat is an ambitious project. Opening at 9am with a series of wake-up sessions including dru yoga and tai chi, the day begins in earnest with a panel discussion hosted by Look North’s Harry Gration, with guests including Maurice Glasman, Hilary Benn MP, nic Greenan from the LS14 Development Trust and many more.

All day long, workshops, activities and performances are on offer for anyone and everyone who comes along. Leeds Spotlight are there with insights on business and the community; the Leeds Salon will be discussing the Big Society; International Service will be talking about young people changing the world. Local-made shorts will be shown in the film zone, whilst in the arts zone visitors can try their hand at anything from calligraphy to sock puppets. Music, drama and poetry will be on show all day long.

How many times do you have the chance to see and hear so many people, committed to their work and passionate about what they do, in one place at one time?

It’s going to be a huge event, and I’ll be there from the off live-blogging from the Summat here on this very page. So if you can’t make it up to the Leeds University Union yourself, drop by here and follow the day’s events as they happen. I haven’t quite worked out how, nor do I know if my laptop is up to the job – but that’s all part of the fun of it, isn’t it… Watch this space!

Summat’s going down… let’s see what happens!

2 comments

  1. We would do well to remember that planning permission for the giant TESCO in Seacroft was justified, at least in part, by the positive impact it would make on ‘regeneration’ in LS14 and the jobs it would bring. Not sure whether we should laugh or cry at the various schemes that the council nods through in the name of regeneration.

  2. Cheers Mark, sterling work! The whole day seems like a blur now. Most importantly, people seemed to really like it. Almost as crucially, I’ve now got headspace again: woo! And (quick nod to Mr Chitty here), we’ll be cracking on with post-Summat follow-up shortly. It’s all very well putting on nice events, but what difference do they make in the real world? I’ll keep you posted…

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