Selecting stone. Early 2019 at Highmoor Quarry, Tadcaster

It was early 2018 when I first approached sculptor Keith Ackerman about the possibility of a sculpture project for South Leeds. Alongside our programme of projects here at BasementArtsProject, I spent the rest of the year talking to Keith about an idea that would create for the area, a work that was monumental in both scale and ambition.

The story of Jacob’s Ladder is one that appears in the major texts of Islam, Christianity and Judaism and yet also provides a secular reading in terms of what it signifies. Jacob’s Ladder represents a connection between heaven and earth, it is also aspirational, a message that we can achieve a higher state through the raising of our vision, ‘a gradual ascent by means of virtue [ . . . ] not using material steps, but improvement and correction of manners’.

Stiffen the Sinews. Photograph 2014. Adam Glatherine (Detail of Jacob’s Ladder by Keith Ackerman)

Keith Ackerman is Jewish and a man of faith, he is familiar with South Leeds through his work running interfaith projects for young people within the area. The story of Jacob’s Ladder had already provided Keith with the inspiration for a small scale sculpture in Ledmore Marble back in 2014.

Jacob’s Ladder. Ledmore Marble 2014. Keith Ackerman

On the basis of seeing an exhibition of Keith’s work with collaborative partner Adam Glatherine at a North Leeds synagogue in 2014, I then worked with them on producing the MantlePiece exhibition, which took place at BasementArtsProject in December 2015.

MantlePiece (Installation at BasementArtsProject) 2015 Keith Ackerman & Adam Glatherine

In 2019, Leeds and Wakefield were the focus of the inaugural Yorkshire Sculpture International: A project that located the heart of Yorkshire sculptural production in these two cities, whose past associations include Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Damian Hirst and Thomas Houseago amongst many others.

A House Within A Home. Installation at BasementArtsProject 2019. Phill Hopkins

As part of this festival of art, BasementArtsProject put forward a handful of projects for inclusion in the programme. Supported by Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019 and the Index Festival of Visual Arts we realised ‘A House Within A Home’ by Leeds based artist Phill Hopkins.

Pitched (Installation at BasementArtsProject 2019) Jadene Imbusch

‘Pitched’ by Beeston born, 3rd year art student Jadene Imbusch and a collaborative project by Hopkins and Imbusch entitled ‘Conversations On The Corner’. These three interlinked projects essentially looked at peripatetic living in a 21st Century gig economy.

Collaborations On The Corner (2019) Phill Hopkins & Jadene Imbusch

Also as part of the Index Festival and YSI2019 we were also able to start work on two other projects: ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, inspired by the 2014 piece of the same name, by Keith Ackerman and ‘Nature of Balance’ by Dominic Hopkinson.

Nature of Balance. Kilkenny Limestone 2005. Dominic Hopkinson

The project was truly intergenerational with a span of forty years between the youngest participant of 21 and at the other end of the spectrum, a recent student of sculpture aged 61. In between were artists of varying ages and experience.

Artists (L-R) Jadene Imbusch. Phill Hopkins. Dominic Hopkinson. Keith Ackerman.

In March 2020 all work on these projects, and all other indoor projects by BasementArtsProject, were brought to a sudden halt by the emergence of Covid-19. Since this point all projects have sat on the shelf waiting for such point as we can return to the Real-World. This of course has not stopped us from realising art projects online with exhibitions such as ‘My Kingdom For A Croissant’ by Nicholas Vaughan.

View of 3d Virtual Gallery. My Kingdom For A Croissant. Nicholas Vaughan

More than fifty instalments in the ‘Lockdown Journal’

View of 3d virtual gallery (recreating BasementArtsProject online) We Are Still Here: Sonic Landscapes. Kimbal Bumstead

. . . and our 10th Anniversary celebration with Kimbal Bumstead ‘We Are Still Here: Sonic Landscapes’ in which we invited the public to be a part of the project with us and exhibit their contributions in our virtual gallery space.

Freeing Jacob’s Ladder from the Quarry where it has languished since lockdown

Finally, the gates to the quarry having been unlocked, we have been able to free ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and bring it to site.

Jacob’s Ladder at its final site: Tunstall Road, Beeston. The final stages of carving and polishing will be completed in the public domain and will incorporate a community carving project to create a pair of benches for the land.

Over the course of the last few weeks anyone passing along Tunstall Road in Beeston South Leeds, may have noticed the appearance of three large pieces of stone on a small area of grassland near Fulton Foods. This event signals the re-emergence of our 2019 projects to give South Leeds a serious and inspiring artwork, and eventually a pocket sized sculpture garden around it . A gift for a post-Covid future of outdoor art to the area.

The sculpting stage of Nature of balance by Dominic Hopkinson

Alongside this we will be continuing to work on getting ‘Nature of Balance’ by Dominic Hopkinson, sited just a few yards away ‘On The Corner’ at the junction of Tunstall and Dewsbury Road.

But why do we need art? Are there not better things to spend money on? Are there not more important things in life? We are after all just about coming through a pandemic, society and the economy is on its knees. Should we not be thinking about our NHS, employment, the future of our children and the world they are inheriting.

The answer is of course yes to all of those, and whilst we think practically about how we do these things we also have to acknowledge that survival is one thing but creating a beautiful future worth having is a big part of that. Life is not a zero sum game, although there are those that would like us to think that it is.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world, be cheerful. Strive to be happy

Desiderata

There is a perception beyond the boundaries of South Leeds, that it is an area that is somehow undesirable; a place of bad behaviour, drugs and a hotbed of terrorism. This is of course far from the truth, a campaign of fear mongering by national news outlets in a bid to confect news stories where in reality there are none to be had. Over the years BasementArtsProject have addressed some of these stories in our programme and tried to unpick the nature of such negative stereotyping.

Yorkshire Evening Post article about Responding To The Beeston Series exhibition and 2 week residency by Philip Gurrey in 2012

Of course the area has its problems, but, doesn’t everywhere. The question is how to achieve those elusive steps to improvement, how to train your vision on a new horizon and attempt to take people with you on that journey.

Setting The Agenda: Levelling Down If We Are Not Careful

"The working classes have come to “include (as sources of surplus value and therefore as “productive labour”) a very large part of the “middle classes”: white collar workers, salaried technicians, scientists, specialists of all sorts, even in the mere “service Industries,” publicity, etc. This means the extension of exploitation as an objective condition (though to very different degrees of intensity) among an increasingly large part of the population.” Herbert Marcuse

On The Corner: Beeston - starting to clear the land for the arrival of Jacob’s Ladder

I have lived in South Leeds for twenty-one years now, having moved here from what would be considered a moneyed and middle class area, despite being from what was very much a working class background myself. Interestingly, as the first person in my family to be university educated, I find my situation here in South Leeds a familiar one but with a significant difference. Whereas in the 1970’s it was possible to be working class and have a parent predominantly based at home in charge of childcare duties, I find myself in the position now of being married to a full-time teacher, myself a full-time gallery worker, artist and voluntary, for which read ‘I don’t draw a wage from this activity’ project manager of everything related to BasementArtsProject. Despite two full-time workers under one roof and with one less child in the family than my parents had, we seem unable to achieve a life style any better than that which was achieved by my family with one full-time working parent in the 1970’s. The expansion of the working classes talked about by Marcuse have come about not because of levelling up and ideas of social mobility, but because of wage stagnation and the lowering of workers rights.

Standing next to Jacob’s Ladder with the artist Keith Ackerman discussing the angle of the steps and how to ensure that they are all being cut to the correct depth, we are approached by a man walking his dog. He asks if we are sculpting. I say yes and we describe the project to him. Keith Ackerman: I hope you’re going to like it? Man: I already do. His response is that the area is in need of people “with a good heart, who want to make it a nice place to live” and something to focus the attention of people that are in the way of bad behaviour the “heroin addicts, druggies and ones that hang around doing nothing all day except causing trouble, I know” he says “I’ve been there”. He wishes us good luck and goes on his way.

Over the course of three weeks since we have set the stone down on the land and begun work, we have been approached by at least half a dozen people on a daily basis who not only ask us what we are doing, but actually get excited about the project. The conversations, in particular the one above, could not better articulate the intentions in my mind when I first touted this project to the artist in early 2018. And this is the rub; there comes a point where we all have to understand that no one is out there to help us achieve a better society, we must at some point pick up our own tools and take the initiative. Someone has to begin somewhere and pick up the audience and participants along the way. Learning does not end when you leave education, be it High School or University, learning should end as you take your last breath.

“Happiness and freedom begin with. a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not.” Epicetus

Bruce Davies | June 2021