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News - Press & Reviews - Contact - Home - News Archive |
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Left Bank News * Keep in touch with our news on our facebook page, Left Bank Leeds and on twitter/leftbankleeds
December 2011 Happy Christmas everyone. We've had a great Christmas party with lots of incredible local musicians and a candlelit carol service with the Leeds Guild of Singers, so all we need now is some snow! It's been another great year, we've met lots of wonderful people who are coming to love Left Bank as much as we do and there are many challenges ahead for us to tackle together. And just to finish up the year we've been shortlisted for the Leeds Architecture Awards! 31st October 2011 - STOP PRESS! So
today's the day of the Heritage Angels awards and WE WON! The other projects
in our category were all fantastic, in fact everyone in all the categories
was really inspiring, so we're incredibly chuffed that we won. Mike and
Vik went on stage to collect the award, but it's for all the passion,
dedication, time and energy that all of our steering group, trustees and
fab volunteers have put in over the years, so CONGRATULATIONS ALL OF US! A couple of quotes from the judges: “All 16 shortlisted groups were exceptional and the judges had a hard time deciding between them. But in the end the winners stood out for their passion, perseverance and imagination, for the scale of the challenges they had taken on and for the legacy they leave behind...” and “the winners, Left Bank Leeds, …brought enormous energy, creativity and life back to their vast red brick hulk of an inner city church.” A couple of web snippets here and here. We’re obviously Northerners, so there was no Hollywood-style gushing at the awards, but this is a great opportunity to thank some really significant people who have held our hands during the whole restoration process – Richard Jaques and Nicky Brown at English Heritage in York, Andy Wiles and Nadia Watson at Wiles & Maguire Architects in York, Steve Arrowsuch and Richard Unwin at Historic Building Restoration in Doncaster – who between you brought us support, expertise AND brought the repair work in on budget. THANK YOU!
October 2011 It's the Heritage Angels awards on 31st October, down in London. Looking forward to that. There was a clip about Left Bank on the Culture Show last week - you can watch it on iPlayer - episode 13, it's 21:12 minutes in for the section about the Heritage Angels, or 27:04 mins in just for our bit. Possibly even more exciting is we're having some new sinks put in the loos this weekend. And after that, we're getting some asbestos taken out of the boiler room. Never a dull moment!
September 2011 We've just been shortlisted for the Heritage Angels - a national award for rescued heritage buildings! Read about the awards and see the list of shortlisted projects here. We'll even be featured on the BBC2 Culture Show. How exciting!
July 2011 Wedding season is upon us once again, which is always a real joy. Thought we'd show you a few pics of how Left Bank looks all decked out... Congratulations to Nick & Emma, who's wedding is shown here.
June 2011 There's been lots going on behind the scenes these last few months - we've had amazing slog from volunteers, who've been up the scaffolding getting rid of high altitude cobwebs, polishing up the brassware, designing displays, cleaning, gardening, doing admin - here are some of them in action. Thank you, thank you!
Check out the before and after on this brass lectern stand. It's all shiny now!
We have a great timeline stencilled on our newly painted porch wall. Huge thanks to Aaron Christie, Matt Morrissey and Patrick Harkin for putting it together and to Steven Savage for all his amazing research into the history of St Margaret's.
Otherwise we're keeping everything ticking over, talking to all sorts of people who we'd like to collaborate with and working on our licence application, so we can open Left Bank more often and use it for lots more arts stuff.
Music to our ears... It's been a musical start to the year. Her Name is Calla kicked off their UK tour at Left Bank in March and Pengilly's held their EP launch here on 1st June. We love local talent! The March Violets' video, filmed in Left Bank in November, is now out for viewing. There are some fabulous sunlight-through-window shots - ooh, Left Bank is so photogenic. And the March Violets aren't bad either (ho ho). Check it out:
Christmas 2010 Click here for more photos of our brilliant Christmas party on 18th December - made brilliant by our new patron, Corinne Bailey-Rae, great musicians, Man & Wife and the Little Parades (above), dedicated volunteers, fab caterers and lovely public! Photos taken by the fantastic Barnaby Aldrick. What a great finale to a great year!
December 2010 Well it doesn't get much more exciting than this! 3 years of renovation work are completed this month (whoop whoop!) AND the fabulous Corinne Bailey Rae has agreed to become our patron (oh yeah!). Safe to say that we are pretty thrilled!
November 2010 The Dandelion King graced us with his presence in November, as the March Violets (Leeds 80s indie goth band!) held a gigeo (combines a gig with shooting a video apparently) - lots of amazing costumes, some very interesting psyder and a successful photo shoot. The official video's not out for a while yet, but here's one from the night to give you flavour of the hats and furry coats... October 2010 The first time we've taken part in Light Night, thanks to "The Crossing", a special installation-performance-storytelling-interactive journey, created by Pointed Arrow Theatre Company and many of their friends. Brilliant! Photos of The Crossing are at http://www.crossing.org.uk/ September 2010 August and September were adrift with flowers, confetti and many cupcakes as we welcomed 6 couples through our doors to celebrate their weddings. It showed, yet again, how many different ways there are to personalise Left Bank with your own creative touches. Many congratulations to all of the Left Bank Wedding Collective! Thanks, too, to our roofers and plasterers, who were incredibly flexible in getting things done and getting out of the way so that the various wedding posses could come in and work their magic on the space. August 2010 It's the little things that make so much difference - we now have windows in the toilets instead of breeze blocks and they're transformed! Roofing work continues apace and we've even had some of our crumbling plaster patched inside the building. But don't worry - we'll always maintain that slightly down-at-heel look everyone loves so much! June and July saw the building swinging and sliding as West Coast Swing Leeds ran a 6 week dance course. Meanwhile, Surefire continue to use Left Bank for circus practice when it's too wet to be outside (quite a lot, then!). Also in July we had the first of our summer weddings, a rather petite Big Lunch and another hands on clean up day - thanks to all the volunteers who scrubbed and painted their way through the day. July 2010 May and June saw some great events - the Beautiful World charity art exhibition, two Forest of Sound gigs, the Tinwolf conference and the Fashion North graduate fashion shows. Thanks to everyone who helped out and made them happen. We also saw the start of our next round of repair works, to finish the roof works and window repairs - all very exciting stuff. Scaffolding is our constant friend, once again!
April 2010 The sun's shining and we've got cheerful news. We've raised enough money to get started on our final phase of roof repairs. Hurrah hurrah! We just need another £5000 and we'll have the full amount. The builders start back on site at the beginning of May. This means that by the autumn all our roof work and window repairs should be done and the building will be watertight. Interest in Left Bank grows apace. We've had lots of enquiries and you'll see from our What's On page that there are loads of interesting things happening and plenty more to come.
March 2010
March was an arty month, with an exhibition on surveillance, a Leeds Met end of year exhbition of first year work and a lovely bunch from the Greenbelt Festival making groovy things. Meanwhile the gang from Youthpoint were back, this time throwing custard pies at each other in pursuit of a Guiness World Record. We've even got our own facebook page now, so you can become a fan of Left Bank Leeds.
January 2010 What a great couple of months we’ve had! On November 21st the Ladybird Project ran an all day family activity session, followed by a Unity Day fundraising gig, which drew an appreciative crowd, who loved the entertainment and our venue! The following Friday, November 27th, 200 people attended the preview night of “Advent – an exhibition for the festive season”. The art was thought-provoking, the candlelight atmospheric, Dan & Emily Norton added a subtle musical dimension, the cheese & wine was just the thing for a Friday night. It didn’t even feel that cold!
Also in December we held three Advent services, a meditation, a carol service and a Christingle Service. Lots of people were involved but we’d especially like to thank Esther Richards for organising the meditation; the many people who heaved chairs back and forth for the carol service; the chestnut roasters and wine mullers; Steve Smith and the readers from All Hallows; Tim Knight, The Heritage Singers and the Heritage Masterworks Chorale for lifting the roof with their incredible singing. Shall we do it again next year? On the 12th December, Gav also hosted New Leads, an evening of acoustic music. Have a look at the video below for a flavour of the evening.
Dan Wilde 'Beeswing' Live [New Leads @ Left Bank, Leeds] from Barnaby Aldrick on Vimeo. The weekend before Christmas we were delighted that our next door neighbours at Youthpoint were able to host a talent night at Left Bank. Despite the snow, the show went on with much enthusiasm. At
the start of 2010 we’re getting lots of enquiries about using Left
Bank and already have bookings for gigs, weddings, exhibitions and a Guiness
Book of Records record-breaking day! Our goals for the year are to make
the building much more accessible, hold a lot more events and get the
rest of the roof fixed. We’ll keep you posted… See the news archive for earlier news Filming
& Recording Weddings
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