What took you so long?

It’s 6.37am and I’m sat in the home office wondering at my decision to abscond from the @culturevultures Twitter account. My daughter wanders in rubbing her eyes. ‘Mummy it’s too bright in here.’ As I rest my chin on her mussed up hair I know right there that this is the healthy thing to do. For me, for us.

So why did I deliberately disconnect myself from the most incredible experience I’ve ever had? It seems so melodramatic to even be writing about it. It’s just Twitter right? Am I not the same person over @playfulleeds?

I started @culturevultures reluctantly 5 years ago. My friend @heartscontent told me I’d love it. I disagreed it seemed pointless & confusing. My little girl was about 6 months old. I’d just started the Culture Vulture as an email newsletter whilst on ‘maternity leave’ as something to keep my brain ticking over, or lets be honest a much needed connection to the world whilst my sleep was buggered up and I struggled to compute that I was actually a mum. It was February, I had a stock of Opera North tickets (payment in kind for a launch I’d facilitated) to do something with…So the first Culture Vulture newsletter was cobbled together. ‘Win tickets to My Funny Valentine & Cocktails at Mojos!’ ‘Win a delicious Marvellous Tea Dance Sumptuous cake & have it delivered to the office’ which most deserves it’…Cue meeting nurse Katie Bolton of @LeedsGrub who had nominated the critical dependency unit she worked in, who despite the snow & ice still struggled into work to look after the poorly public. They were an obvious winner! As a result Katie became a close ally and regular contributor for the site over time too.

Michelle Duxberry Townsley played a massive role in those first heady days. She became a pivotal part of The Culture Vulture. We both attended a Bar Camp run by Imran Ali & Dom Hodgson in May that year which proved life changing. We craftily took cakes to a pretty much male event, and discovered a wonderful community of people who were so open & sharing. Ironically Imran upon hearing our lofty aspirations for The Culture Vulture told us to get on with it, just get a WordPress theme, don’t wait for perfection…So that same WordPress theme is what you experience now 5 years on! But Imran was so right. We had more content than we could manage. There was nothing quite like The CV at the time. The ‘open source’ sharing, agile philosophy of that Barcamp resonated with my views on giving generously with bounty I did not own, and that’s not changed. From that event on we took a cheeky, mischievous approach to ‘culture’ mixing up the quirky, fleet of foot stuff that would never have made it into the local press or city marketing tomes and shoved it with equal importance on the page next to a new production at the Playhouse or Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

We hustled to get inside buildings such as Temple Works when we caught wind that the owners were considering opening its long shut doors. We facilitated groups of photographers to get into places before they were open. We met amazing people along the way, they became contributors, friends, creative allies. Our site has been woven this way. A space where anything and everything went.

Twitter became our engine to play out with new friends. The beauty of the 140 character limit became the creative act. Conveying copy from the site in a witty one liner was the goal. After not much time I fell in love with it as a way to discover, to prod, to meet real people, to test ideas, to promote the site, to get people involved in writing for the site. To cook up crazy ideas, to mobilise a mob, to galvanise a gathering…

Twitter was where I first met my great friend and editor of The Culture Vulture @philkirby. I observed him & his sister @chrisgbaillie shredding the marketing efforts of the people at Holbeck Urban Village. I met other strong personalities I’ve come to call friends. Twitter gave me insight into a multitude of views from people I’d never have had a reason to connect with. I met a brilliant friend and fellow mum @mariemillward when she came up to me in Armley Library at a Story Time I’d tweeted about saying ‘Are you @culturevultures?’ I get that question a lot these days, swiftly followed by ‘do you ever sleep’ type responses or less polite versions…

Fast forward and many events and workshops later, I’m now working with a brilliant cohort of Community Life Champions with Asda who are discovering the joy of connecting with the world via Twitter for themselves.

More than anything I’ve had moments recently where I feel immense pride to have been a part of a growing community in Leeds & the North, where I’ve watched and supported the endeavours of others making art, being creative and trying stuff out. Recent highlights were Bring The Happy with Invisible Flock & Hope & Social at The Town Hall where I sat in the dark with @philkirby recalling Ben, Victoria & Rich coming into Temple Works to talk about their idea for Bring the Happy. I’ve watched their success on Twitter as it toured across the UK and enjoyed a moment of closure at the final event 3 years later. How privileged I feel to be part of this world. It’s rare I take a moment to revel in these moments so driven I am by the machine I’ve set in motion.

It might seem beyond comprehension to those of you not addicted to the joy of Twitter that it became my drug of choice. The rewards have been on the whole very healthy. I’ve made amazing friendships, discovered a world unknown to me, played my part in developing conversations, indulged my insatiable curiosity, had a few spats, tutted a great deal and learned more than I imagined possible. I can’t imagine another social media platform which could have embedded its hook as deeply. I have cooked up and filled events, sent 80 Travelling Moleskines around the world, found brilliant (& will hopefully continue to work with) clients, provoked and challenged & played nicely with the local authority, created work in other parts of the UK and feel surrounded by love. I’m not kidding.

I became addicted when I started the hashtag #hometourist a few years back, when I realised I had assumed an almost civic duty to notice stuff around me and appreciate the little things and people that make where we live really special. I think it was at this point I realised my phone was pretty much welded to my hand and I thought in Twitter speech bubbles…

However the downside to all of this bounty via the seemingly influential @culturevultures Twitter account is as follows:

1) I’m always on and I’m not good at moderating myself. It’s like being a pub landlady.
2) I need time to ‘be’ & give myself time to reflect.
3) I’m a bit jaded and the site has a brilliant community of contributors & my tweeting is not doing justice to them. As I see myself as a community developer it’s time to step out of the way.

I know when you choose to follow an account it’s a much about the person and their way of looking at the world as it is the organisation or website, so removing myself from @culturevultures may strike you as a little odd. I hope that you’ll continue to chat with me when I set up my personal account or follow @playfulleeds where I’ll be concentrating on a major public project called March of The Robots.

As for The Culture Vulture, Phil Kirby and I are hatching plans for the next incarnation of The Culture Vulture. We really really want to continue to play our part in being part of the great conversations in Leeds and across the North. We’re drinking our way into new collaborations that stretch our reach across the North. We’ve got a year of film screenings planned with Hyde Park Picture House in it’s 100th Year and have hooked up with RIBA & The Leeds Society of Architects to bring a range of interesting people to the city.

It’ll be our 5th birthday this jolly month of February. We want to throw a party. To toast old friends and new. Just like in the good old days perhaps we should bring back the tweet up?

So I hope that explains something that has taken me a long time to come to terms with. I do feel a bit bereft, after all you’ve been amazing & constant company. You have changed & fueled me. But I’m not going far, just taking a breather. At a recent event I was asked ‘What took you so long?’ I hope this blog post goes some way to explain why this has been a momentous decision for me, even though it may seem trivial in the overall scheme of things.

Pity @PhilKirby, he needs you now! It’s not our intent for him to be the lone voice of @culturevultures.

So then…see you around!