Welcome to the Flatlands website
Flatlands Bid
High-rise arts group Flatlands has put in a request to take over the old rent office in Lincoln Green, east Leeds. If the bid is successful, we will open May 2006. Initially, we thought we were the only bidders, but now another late bid has been received and so we wait on tenterhooks for a final decision.
Flatlands has been active in the area for over two years and is an established community-led group. We began as a group of frustrated writers, artists and musicians, several of us had drink and drug problems and on the whole we were wasting our lives away in our flats getting nowhere. Today, we have published writers, artists and musicians, such as writer Bernard Hare, who are enterprising, confident and assertive, who are aware of the commercial possibilities of their art and who have turned their lives around. We have support from local businesses keen to develop links with the community and we hope to be self-financing within three years.
Hidden Talent
There is other arts activity in the area, but it either comes in the form of parachutists dropping in and giving us lessons for a limited period, or is aimed at professional artists e.g. East Street Arts, who are only looking for an "informed" audience. We are interested in fostering the Arts permanently at a grass roots level. The talent hidden away in our area is enormous. We aim to proclaim it from the rooftops and to use it as a tool to regenerate our community.
A Place to Learn and Grow
Leeds East Homes owns the building. If we get it, we can thank them by creating a thriving centre, which will be a resource for the local community, a place to meet, a place to learn and grow, as well as being a home for artists of all descriptions and to many other community groups and social enterprises. All welcome.
Our provisional plans are outlined on this website.
Big Flatlands Party Planned
An Open Day is planned on the weekend of 6/7th May. This will be an opportunity for local groups, artists and businesses to say who they are and what they are about. An evening extravaganza is also planned with music, dance and performances.
Our first publication, the "Flatlands" book and CD, was launched at a similar event hosted by Thomas Danby College. 150 people attended the evening, which featured poets Leeds Young Authors, Ushawant Kaur and Tina Love, musicians Simon Reed and David Liversidge and African drumming and dance from Soul 2 Feet.
“We're proud to have hosted this event and hope it will be the first of many,” said the college’s PR manager, Claire Spencer. "It has brought new people from the local community into our building and that can only be good for the college.”
Leeds Young Authors coach Khadijah Ibrahim said: “We share the Flatlands mission to support and encourage art and performance in the inner city. With the talent that exists here, there is no reason why Leeds should not be putting itself forward as the European City of Culture."
Culture? Media? The Arts?
Culture because that's what makes us who we are. Mores, background, tradition, ethnicity, customs, religion, food, dress, a thousand different things. We aim to build bridges between the long-standing local community and those relatively new to the UK. Together For Peace has expressed an interest in helping us towards this goal. We believe that everyone has a right to celebrate their cultural identity in their own way.
This is often expressed through the Arts: dance, music, literature, storytelling, visual arts, theatre, macrame, film making, origami, a thousand different means of expression. Art is therapeutic for its own sake, but it can also provide the means to earn a living. We aim to foster and promote the Arts at every opportunity.
Media because in today's fast-paced world an understanding of Websites, E-mails, E-commerce, the Internet and modern Multi-media in general is becoming increasingly important to our lives. One of our main aims is to "upskill" our community in this area.
