A long day and a return commute between the West Riding and South Yorkshire today; fortunately, the followers of #ChallengeMark know how to look after a young man on the go – so I was invited first off to enjoy a good lunch in Leeds’s latest exciting restaurant venture, amid the fine surroundings of another prestigious piece in the jigsaw of our urban heritage.
A swanky meal and a visit to a quirky new exhibition at a contemporary art gallery could hardly be more removed from one another, you would think. But creativity – of sorts – was at the heart of today’s adventures.
Create is the name of Leeds’s most talked-about new restaurant. Opened only three weeks ago, the restaurant is the latest initiative from the Create Foundation, established in 2007 to help create opportunities to get people into work through their food and retail businesses.
The foundation is a trail-blazing social enterprise, and has won the plaudits of the Prime Minister among many others.
Inside the Leeds restaurant, catering and waiting staff who were trained at the Create Academy serve the patrons, at once providing the guests with a quality dining experience and themselves with an income and with a great opportunity. The restaurant’s profit go straight back into training, work experience, and providing jobs for the marginalised and vulnerable to whom Create seeks to reach out and help.
One half of the partnership that runs the restaurant, Lancashire-born Gary, told me all about the organisation and the great work that they continue to do over a very special lunch.
When you’re eating at a joint where the Head Chef, Richard Walton-Allen, has spent over a decade running the culinary show at Harvey Nicks, as well as landing himself with the title of “the best chef in Leeds” in the 2011 Oliver Awards, you do arrive burdened with a certain amount of expectation.
But the grilled skirt steak – a rare speciality – I enjoyed was a beautifully tender main course, followed sweetly by the Create summer trifle (I was warned that it was served “in a bucket” and could feed a small family, but I had my eyes on it all along and I love a challenge…). The trifle has to be tried to be believed – I want the girl I marry to taste like that did…
It is, of course, a fine setting in which to eat too: a sleek modern space spread over two floors, inside the prestigious Atlas House – so named for the sculpture of the man holding the globe overhanging the entrance.
Gary and chief executive Sarah kept to their business’s principles of helping others help themselves by challenging me to uncover something interesting about the magisterial building on the corner of St Paul’s Street. The face is made of an artificial marble product called ‘Marmo’, once made at Burmantofts Pottery (now Gargrave Court, a block of flats just off York Road, which I regularly pass on the 40 bus home).
Create Leeds is doing incredible work in this city in so many ways: providing opportunity and hope to hundreds of marginalised people every year; bringing a civic spirit to the city; and now offering a fine dinner right in the midst of the city centre.
I have a secret little list of special bars, cafes and restaurants that I’ll visit if ever I want to impress someone; Create Leeds goes straight on it.
It was a very different kind of creativity that took me to Sheffield later in the afternoon. At the dazzling contemporary art space The Site Gallery, it was the launch party of their DIY Summer series. From today until September 7th, Site welcomes workshops, talks and events hosted by a range of cultural groups. And most importantly, visitors are encouraged to get stuck into the action: collaging the walls, screenprinting t-shirts, making zines, and much more.
As well as live music and beer from Thornbridge Brewery, Site welcomed Rotherham Zine Library, bringing to the city Sheffield’s first Zine Fayre. A desultory collection of curious, shocking, hilarious mini-magazines, the collection is stunning – colourful in every sense, with a breadth of topics and styles, from the ranting mini-jeremiads (a pocket-sized zine entitled ‘Why I Hate Chelsea FC’ instantly struck a chord) to collections of drawings and doodles, poems and play-pieces, and everything in between.
I met Chella Quint, from New York but visiting the zine scene here in Britain and stopping off in Sheffield. She had produced some of the zines that I’d browsed when I arrived (including a series of six zines with the title ‘Adventures in Menstruating’ – I told you I was ready for anything). She told me how she loves the opportunity to show creative flair when working on a zine, drawing out the connections between things in your own mind and ways of thinking, letting your passions thrive.
Indeed, I bought one of her zines: a tongue-in-cheek (though only slightly) scientific guide deconstructing and analysing the phenomenon of the pub quiz, and offering a treatise on the ideal pub quiz team.
When #ChallengeMark gets put out to stud at the end of this month (or possibly not), I might even try my hand at a zine myself.
A gallery like no other, Site’s DIY Summer is a chance for anyone and everyone to let their creativity shine too.
For further background as to Mark’s challenge check out ‘28 days later’