Ed Carlisle of Together for Peace explores Leeds’ journey towards becoming a truly global city – and how we can best make it work for all of us.
Leeds is not the place it once was. The city’s had big injections of multi-culturalism since the 1950s, but the last 10-15 years have seen an explosion of diversity: the arrival of people seeking asylum since 2000, still others since the EU opened up eastwards in 2005, and many many more from every corner of the world.
For decades and even centuries, Leeds has lagged behind most other major UK cities – and to this day, we have a smaller proportion of black and minority ethnic (BME) residents than places including Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham, Leicester, Liverpool, or of course London. But here’s a fascinating stat: Leeds is actually now the most ethnically plural UK city outside London. We might not have the greatest numbers of BME folk, but we have the most wide-ranging mix of different people.
And call me an optimist (I’ve been called worse…), but I think Leeds – once infamous for its racism – is getting used the change. We’re moving on from the time of tragic stories like that of David Oluwale, and we’re learning to drop our guard a tad and rub shoulders with different folk. But are we really getting mixed up together? Are we truly embracing the opportunities and possibilities of living in a deeply global city? Are we finding and unlocking the huge potential we have together?
Because of course this new world of accelerating diversity does present immense opportunities. We now have easy access to an unprecedented range of cultures to enjoy, wisdom to learn from, and perspectives to see through. Businesses increasingly talk about ‘diversity advantage’ – whereby companies deliberately employ a diverse workforce not to tick boxes, but because it gives them a greater collective pool of perspectives and wisdom, and therefore increased creativity and problem-solving capacity.
Cultural diversity is not without it’s challenges: many people have genuine concerns about the changes they see around them, and how we can all best adapt – and it’s crucial to listen to these, not simply brush them away.
And it’s also surely crucial to mix people up as much as possible! Because, whilst encountering different cultures shouldn’t be unusual, it often is for many of us. Why? Because as people we don’t naturally venture outside our normal grooves, don’t naturally connect with those unlike us, don’t naturally go beyond outside our comfort zones. This is natural, and in fact crucial for our sanity and well-being: cultures and sub-cultures are fundamental for us all as we establish and maintain identity. Without being rooted in a community with the same language, rituals, norms, values and so on – against whom we can reference ourselves – we’d struggle to make sense of ourselves and our lives.
But there’s danger here too. Because when we become too enmeshed in a culture, without exposure to that which is different, we can easily become blinkered – that is, lose the capacity to see the world from a range of perspectives, to enjoy difference and newness, to be pleasantly surprised by the unusual. Infamously, Leeds was home to several of the 2005 London bombers: a wake-up if ever there was one to the dangers of creeping segregation.
Multi-culturalism served an invaluable purpose: enabling diverse groups to stretch their legs and get established on their own terms. But a growing body of people are calling to go beyond that now – to develop a society that’s increasingly ‘inter-cultural’. That is, one in which different people are increasingly mixed up together, sharing and inter-fusing their wisdom and cultures, weaving their lives, gifts and passions together.
Against the backdrop of all this, my little charity T4P – with a great posse of partners and volunteers – are once again co-hosting the annual Planet Leeds street festival this coming Saturday (16th June), featuring performers from all Leeds’ diverse cultures and communities on stages on Briggate and Kirkgate Market.
We’re not going to achieve world peace this weekend. But great journeys are made up of many small steps – so we hope to give regular Leeds folk the chance to encounter something new, enjoy themselves, and catch a glimpse of the rich possibilities of an increasingly inter-cultural society. So join us this Saturday if you can; but let’s also make inter-culturalism a reality in each of our day-to-day lives. The power is in our hands.