We also provide artists at the beginning of their career with exhibitions, experiences, opportunities, mentoring, and assistance in achieving their visions.

Some thoughts that we live by here at Basement…

Praise for BasementArtsProject . . .

ABOUT . . .

When BasementArtsProject first threw the kitchen door open to the public in April 2011 we got a big surprise; visitors.

South Leeds is an area of major deprivation, economically in the lowest 1% of the country. It is low on aspiration with a limited take-up of places in further and higher education.

The area has many issues around homelessness, drug abuse, alcoholism and anti-social behaviour. BasementArtsProject was an experiment to see who from the local community would take up the offer of art events if they were provided.

With a local audience of 40% from the outset (60% wider art audience) the naysayers who said that there was no appetite were proved wrong. Ever since this point, BasementArtsProject has gone from strength-to-strength, widening the scale and scope of our projects for both artists and community alike.

Our work has spilled out of the kitchen door into the community via community centres, schools and the creation of ‘The Corner’ Pocket Sculpture Park.

At first, using the basement of a terraced property was a practical solution, but over the years it has become the cornerstone and foundation of an expanding practice that thrives through its interactions. Exhibiting at BasementArtsProject has become, mostly by chaotic accident, more than a gallery experience, it is about becoming part of a family, a real one that resides in and around a permanent art space. It is this approach that has allowed people without any prior knowledge of the arts to engage with our experimental programme of exhibitions, events and workshops.

In a non-judgemental, non-hierarchical space where people can talk about anything without fear or favour, the opinions expressed on art and a wide variety of subjects, are much more candid than in the usual white walled environment.

The pandemic lockdowns of 2020/21 threw into stark relief the precarity of art engagement in areas like South Leeds.

Poverty is a massive barrier to people when it comes to cultural offerings, and a large proportion of our marginalised community does not access the art of the wider city.

Whilst the art-aware section of our audience maintained their communication with us via online projects during lockdown, the local audience lost contact as they generally do not access art via the internet.

Upon re-opening, our local audience had been reduced to one person. Everyone who came to that first post-lockdown exhibition came from the online art audience. The one thing that changed this situation was the completion of a project begun in the year before lockdown.

Jacob’s Ladder is a sculpture that BasementArtsProject had commissioned from the artist Keith Ackerman as part of the Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019.

After lockdown we were able to move the stone to its location opposite ‘The Basement’ on Tunstall Road, where we worked on it for an average of two days a week for a year. The land had previously been abandoned and had become a haven for drug abusers, fly tippers and alcoholics.

In our time spent working in the public realm we removed more than a tonne of rubbish and hazardous materials and were able to engage with the public about the process of creating a public sculpture. This project led to a resurgence of our local audience attending exhibitions at BasementArtsProject.

Since getting the 9ft, 7 tonne stone sculpture upright in July 2022 we have landscaped around it and the anti-social behaviour issues have never since returned. We have also used the land to run concerts and stone carving workshops. With our assistance the community have learnt some of the basics of direct carving in stone and over the course of a year have created their own benches in the process.