I think there’s something a bit funny in the water in Kirklees. Nothing that the Environment Agency or Yorkshire Water should be unduly worried about, but the county has a surprising amount of strange and mysterious events that take place within it’s northern towns and villages.
From the Coal-Carrying World Championships in Gawthorpe (note: see addendum), to the pagan imbolc fire-festival in Marsden (and who could forget the gnomes raking the moon out of the canal in Slaithwaite), Kirkless wears Quirky and Fun like a badge of honour — and long may it continue to do so.
In amongst these strange traditions, is the more recent annual “Spirit” event that takes place amongst the mills and shops of Dewsbury town centre each February. If you visit any of these quirky events throughout Kirklees you’ll sense a pervading sense of community spirit driving them forward. It’s something possibly a little bit easier in the smaller towns and villages where people know each other better and where living in the wilds of the moors people are used to pulling together, but perhaps that makes it all the more important to build community in a large town like Dewsbury.
What once was a thriving industrial revolution wool and textile mill town with plentiful coal supply and canal access to Hull and Manchester now contains some of the more deprived areas in the uk, along with significant immigrant settlers. Building community and making people feel a little better about their area is important.
Come 7.30pm on Friday night the streets of the town centre were lined with expectant families waiting for the festivities to begin. What takes place changes each year (with different European theatre companies and performers tasked with bringing something new and different to the town), but one thing remains consistent – a surreal and always impressive piece of street performance weaving its way through the town centre set to music.
This year saw the return of spanish theatre company Sarruga, the company that brought fire-breathing (well, rather “smoke-breathing”) dragons to the town 2 years ago. This year the performance had a distinctly fishy odour to it, with a selection of large glowing sea-based creatures sat atop pedal-powered vehicles. Jellyfish pulsated, shoals of fish wove along the streets, and large fish and a shark bothered the townsfolk by blowing jets of… erm.. smoke… at them. People thronged the streets as the floats did a lap around the roads surrounding the market, to the sound of mobile sound-systems blaring out tribal techno beats.
On returning to the town hall, the fish and the shark did battle, charging along the road at each other, before culminating with a pyrotechnic firework display.
One of the things I really enjoy that is most noticeable with spirit, is that it’s not fenced off – many places would surround the entire route in crash barriers and the whole thing would feel a bit more sterile and clinically managed, here a bit of northern sensibility seems to work just fine – there’s a few florescent-jacketed stewards wondering around to make sure things go smoothly and deal with people who are lost, but people are trusted to line the roads politely and not throw themselves infront of the vehicles – all very civilised and people can feel like they’re more part of the event (and for people taking photos it’s nice to not be hemmed into the one spot!).
All in all a fun night out (and free to boot!), with big smiles on the faces of young and old, and of every race. The young kids in particular seemed to be beside themselves with joy 🙂
In previous years there’d been a community arts project taking over one of the empty town centre shops, with lots of out-reach activities to schools, and a massive chalk-board wall with local kids writing what Dewsbury and Spirit meant to them – really nicely done, but I didn’t notice it this year – I’m hoping it was there and I just missed it (which is entirely possible).
On a slightly sad note, on googling to check a few things for writing this piece I noticed the event nearly stalled at the last minute as the council had hoped to rely on vounteers to assist putting the vehicles together and pedal them around the town. Sadly despite the offer of free sandwiches no-one came forward, but thanks to a last minute scrabble to get together some paid workers it went ahead. I’m not sure how well advertised the request was, but maybe the community spirit hasn’t quite worked it’s magic yet. I get the impression a lot of the more rural events like imbolc are thanks to locals giving up a lot of their free time to make things happen, and as much as I dislike much of Cameron’s Big Society, sometimes I reckon truly special things need a little personal sacrifice and people to go that extra mile? I’d like to think if I lived in Dewsbury I would have been at the front of the queue to make something like this happen. I guess there will always be a bit of a funny atmosphere around a service that’s historically always been paid for transitioning into something volunteer based – hopefully this won’t jeopardize future events as I think it’d be a shame to lose something as special as this.
Oooh – controversy! Gawthorpe, as @OssettObserver has pointed out, is part of the Wakefield Metropolitan Borough, not Kirklees (trust me to rely on a quick Wikipedia search – tho in my feeble defence it apparently was nearly given to Kirklees in the 1972 Local Government Act, and up until 1866 was part of the parish of Dewsbury). Maybe we should just be talking about West Yorkshire instead of Kirklees instead? Or will that open up a whole new kettle of fish (pun, sadly, intended – i’ll get my coat).
Rick Harrison was once living the dream as multi-millionaire playboy, before he lost it all on an ill-judge gamble on black in a seedy gambling den in Cleethorpes. These days he’s a freelance photographer, and the Culture Vulture’s photography Editor. You can find him lurking on twitter as @sovietuk
Excellent items from you, man. I’ve bear in mind your stuff prior to and you are simply extremely wonderful