Leeds Creative Family Tree, (Not-for-Profit Project)

Campaign · Print · Self-Initiated

The Leeds Creative Family Tree is an ongoing not-for-profit project designed to showcase the huge range of creative individuals and organisations in our city and to help us all find other like-minded creatives and collaborate more locally.

The Creative Family Trees are distributed for free around the city and we hope that through the project, the creatives of the city – and those that work with them – will find all sorts of things they never knew existed.

All research and design is done for free by Split, but with the help of many.

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Issue 1.3: Central Leeds

2017 saw the third release of Issue 1 of the Creative Family Tree, first started in 2012 on Quarry Hill to introduce the creatives in our small corner of Leeds to each other… It’s grown a tad since then.

Each point of the 400+ points on the tree represents an individual or organisation with a work space in the city, with icons used to describe their specialisms and the sectors they’re engaged with.

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Issue 2.2: Mabgate & Sheepscar

You could head out of Leeds through Mabgate, just as the Tour de France did, and not think twice about what was there: A Maplins; a couple of furniture showrooms; A garage that sells shit Costa; nearly 100 artists, creatives, studios, co-working spaces, galleries, workshops and venues.

The streets of LS9 and LS7 must currently lay claim to the city’s gritty, DIY, artistic heart. How long this can last in the face of the ever-encroaching gentrifying affluence of the city centre’s big boys is yet to be seen, but with the likes of East Street Arts opening another artists co-working space recently, we’re confident we’ll be needing a bigger piece of paper next issue.

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Issue 3.1: Hyde Park & Headingley

Released in May 2017, the Hyde Park & Headingley issue marked the first edition of the project created in partnership with the fantastic folk at the University of Leeds’ School of Geography.

At a point we felt we couldn’t take the project on much further by ourselves, their students came on board, working in teams to conduct the research and field work. (It was at this point we realised we’ve been doing a geography project all these years. Who knew!)

We’re now working with the University to see if we can grow the project across more regions of the city in the coming years.

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Launch Event – Creative Leeds Under One Roof

To celebrate the five year mark of the project and launch 2017 issues, we held a big fat celebration of Creative Leeds under one roof (and what a roof!) . Thanks to the support of many, the event was free and all the creatives that took part gave their time and skill for free to support each other in showcasing just how strong the creative community is in the city.

From flash mobs, to mini music, poetry and theatre venues; installations, galleries and live art, to weaving, paper making and printing workshops – You can read the full blog post about what went down and find out about everyone that pitched in to make the night a success here.

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There are far too many good eggs that have contributed to this project to try and list them all here.

However – Special mentions must go to Sara Teresa, the co-founder of the project back in 2012; Jack Simpson for his support with the 2017 event Launch & beyond; Pressision & Antalis for sponsoring the print of the 2017 issues; and the University of Leeds School of Geography who have partnered with us on the research since Issue 3.

For a full thanks list and to find out how to get involved, visit the project microsite here.

+44 (0)845 087 8766