Leeds Inspired Blog

The Pursuit of Normality is the third feature-length film from award-winning Leeds based Writer / Director Gage Oxley. Shot over the course of an intense month-long production and featuring the gorgeous backdrop of Leeds, The Pursuit of Normality tackles important issues of sexuality and identity.

My portrait series Portraits of Anarchists from 1996 is being shown at The Chemic Tavern in Leeds as part of Jimmy Cauty’s Aftermath Dislocation Principle; a post-riot diarama of a city that was shown at Banksy’s Dismaland last summer.

My new comic book, On Sanity: One day in two lives,  is a rather special one. Not only because it has given me a chance to improve on a zine I made in 2008 but because, well… how many artists get to make a work with their mum? 

Darren is a member of the team from Leeds Young Authors (LYA) that hopes to represent Leeds at the Brave New Voices (BNV) International Youth Poetry Festival in Washington DC in July. These young poets are still looking for donations and sponsorship so please help however you can!

Our third artist commissioned to produce one of four Leeds Film Festival posters is Biserka, an embroidery artist from Newcastle, living and working in Leeds.

Jacob Thompson-Bell is a composer and producer based in Leeds, U.K. He makes work combining visual imagery and musical performance, writes scores for contemporary classical ensembles, and creates electronic music and installations in galleries, concert halls and some more unusual public spaces. These days, he’s also spearheading a collaborative project called Fresh Yorkshire Aires.

The second of the Leeds Inspired / Leeds Film Festival poster commissions goes to Build, a design studio who recently re-located from London to Yorkshire. You'll find their work featured across an impressive list of publications and websites including Creative Review, Wired, Grafik and It's Nice That. Looking through Build's back catalogue of work it's impossible to ignore the bold shapes, eye popping colours and playful typography that feature in many of their projects.

Introducing illustrator Louisa Foley; the first of the Leeds Inspired / Leeds International Film Festival poster artists. Louisa graduated from Leeds College of Art studying printed textiles and surface pattern design last year.

Casey Orr, photographer and lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, considers the words "I'm not a feminist but..."

Hello from the Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle! Founded in 2011, we are a partnership of four arts venues that sit in close proximity – the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

This weekend Leeds Art Gallery opens its doors for the latest Picture Library selection event. It's a great chance to bags yourself some original art for a year and then swap it for something else! Axis Web thought it was such a fabulous thing they made a film about how to get involved.

Introducing a super-short, super-fab film of the SuperLeeds artwork installation at Leeds Train Station.

We are giddy to announce that we are helping to bring a splash of fun and colour to Leeds Train Station this autumn. We’ve been beavering away with the brilliant Network Rail team and with the eagle eyes of design from Colours May Vary to commission a new artwork for the pedestrian footbridge inside the station.

Last weekend on a hot and sunny afternoon we spent two hours in a darkened room in Leeds Museum along with 250 or so other people. We were there to hear artist Dave Lynch and chemical physicist Mike Nix share the story of Project Nimbus, a mad-cap crazy idea to project moving images onto clouds from the ground, sea level and aircraft including: planes, paragliders & hot air balloons. Leeds Inspired had awarded the project a small grant earlier in the year and we were looking forward to seeing how Project Nimbus had evolved.