Whenever I need a break from the office, or just fancy some fresh air – well, as fresh as it gets in the city centre – I come here, St Peter’s Square.
There’s nothing ostentatious about the place. Nothing brash or flashy. It doesn’t bring much attention to itself. It just works.
Most mornings it’s populated by the crowd who gather around a catering sized bottle of non-proprietary cider and a bag of rolling tobacco; lunchtimes it’s young guys with Bauhausian haircuts and beards that were last fashionable when men wore woad; and evenings students from the music college or revellers from the bars and restaurants take over. Always a good mix. Fun to watch; never any friction.
The seating is plain, wooden and welcoming. It flouts the official Leeds style guide which seems to require street furniture built to withstand thermonuclear attack, a new ice age, and invasion by cruel, steel-hearted robots intent on stripping the universe of every last shred of ease and comfort. It wasn’t designed for the eye but for more accomodating parts of our anatomy.
The sculpture in the corner is also at odds with most recent public art in the city, being neither representation of a cute, dumb beast or inanely irrelevant mythologizing. The square is meant to create the impression of a stage – we are in the middle of Leeds’ “cultural quarter” with the BBC, a music conservatory, the playhouse, a ballet school and a couple of modern dance companies – with timber decking and a steel stage curtain. Which makes sense. And it’s perfectly in tune with its surroundings.
I pass this place every day. I enjoy sitting on that bench two or three times a week. I can see the sculpture from the office where I am writing this – well, I can’t see much actually as there’s a heck of a tall tree in the way.
Funny thing is I was recently part of a project with American Express to find some hidden gems in the city – and I even wrote part of this post on that bench in St Peter’s Square – with the idea that most of us navigate our cities by a sort of “urban auto-pilot.” I was so busy looking for inspiring places I neglected to see right where I was … I’d become so familiar with the place it didn’t even occur to me to put it on the map.
I doubt my photographic efforts are any match for the lucky Londoners as American Express brought on board fashion photographer Nick Knight to snap shots of all their favourite places …
Some impressive stuff, and worth checking the #mysecretcity hashtag on Twitter. And I couldn’t agree with him more when he said: “I have always been interested in the analogy of the city being like a musical symphony, moving at different tempos. The stillness and solitude of hidden gardens and green spaces contrasted with the architecture we live and work in gives you a different perspective … We get so stuck in our familiar ways around the city that we miss the sheer beauty and inspiration all around us …”
Nick Knight’s photos can be found on the Pinterest map that American Express put together, along with some great stuff from Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
It’s good to see Leeds has still got more on the Map than Manchester!