Bringing the Happy

Just under a year ago we opened the doors to our spanking new Bring the Happy shop in the Light Shopping Centre. It glowed blue neon and amber yellow at night and looked very beautiful, we had even installed a mini wood into the dressing room with real trees and bird noises. It appeared for all purposes the perfect home for the giant map of Leeds which it housed, onto which we planned to map the happy memories of hundreds of residents and visitors to Leeds. It had taken us six weeks to get the shop ready and months of pre-planning. Five days after we opened we were informed that despite promises and assurances to the contrary that we would have to close shop to make way for a clothing shop from London. We had 48 hours to strip the store.

Initially we were gutted, but we had no option. Despite vain pleas the decision had been made, so piece by piece we began to strip out the shop and place it into storage. Four hours before the doors were locked and the keys taken back, Non Zero One performed the show we had curated as part of our project to a packed out audience much to the delight of passers-by in the Shopping Centre.

But fortune was smiling on us and during a flurry of phone calls to prospective venues Leeds Kirkgate Market stepped in and showed an interest. They really liked the concept and were sympathetic to our plight. Four days after closing we were re-installed in two empty units in the heart of the 1904 Market, yards from the main front entrance, underneath the Marks & Spencer’s clock. It would be an understatement to say that this was the best thing that could have happened to the project.

The second month we were there 800,000 people passed through the front door of the market, a perfect cross section of the city, a classless, colourless mass all with individual stories and memories, some beautiful, some hilarious, some heartbreaking and some terrifying, but all worth hearing. Of the memories that were added to the map we were always aware that once the dust had settled on this part of the project we would like to trawl through all these memories and transform them into something epic and performative. At the end of this summer we printed out the thousands of memories and recollections people had left and began to sift through them, picking out themes, remembering the ones that had left a mark and recalling the ones that had stuck with us. We accosted Simon Wainwright of the wonderful  Hope & Social and persuaded him to come on board and help us transform these memories into a musical symphony.

On the 29^th September we will show for the first time the thing we have created. It is, we are all agreed, what we set out to make, an epic extravaganza which in some way does justice to the thousands of memories that gave meaning to the project we decided to attempt some 18 months ago. Somewhere between a wedding and a wake, it is rambunctious, drunk, occasionally melancholy, often ridiculous and everything inbetween. When we say you are invited to come along we really do mean it, we have made this show for a bunch of guests rather than an audience, we will serve you drinks and look after you, and at the same we will do our utmost to entertain you.

Written by Richie Warburton, Invisible Flock.

Bring the Happy, part of Leeds Met Gallery & Studio Theatre’s autumn season, is at Northern Ballet, Leeds, Thursday 29 September, 7.30pm. More details & booking here.

But…fine fellows, we have two free tickets for the show to be won. By you. So, to win a pair of tickets just post a comment below telling us what makes you happy… or tell us a joke or something you’ve come across recently that made you merry?

The writer of this post, Richie Warburton is one third of Invisible Flock.  He owns a bear suit. What more do you need to know? You can follow the trio @invisibleflock and Bring the Happy at @bring_the_happy

MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: Fran (me) currently works with Invisible Flock, but if I wasn’t, I’d still post this up, because… my first experience of Invisible Flock’s work was sitting in the tiny forest they had made in the back of their shop, on Light Night in Leeds, and I decided there and then that a) I could happily stay in that tiny forest forever b) that wasn’t very practical c) I wanted to see more of their work. And I still do.