LEEDS 2023 creative director Kully Thiarai on the challenges, highlights and legacy of the Year of Culture

LEEDS 2023 began with a bang – a free live 90-minute show at Headingley Stadium called The Awakening. Thousands in the crowd won their tickets after submitting drawings, photos, videos and all kinds of creations into a special ballot.

Hundreds of local performers shared the stage with the likes of Grammy Award winner Corrine Bailey Rae, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and LYR, Chumbawamba’s Dunstan Bruce, rapper Graft and The Orchestra and Chorus of Opera North.

Looking back at how the year began, Kully told the Yorkshire Evening Post: “It's always terrifying when you're doing any new show. As a theatre maker or launching anything, you never quite know how it's going to land. You kind of have to sometimes just hold your breath.

“The weather [for The Awakening] had been atrocious. There were stormy nights where we couldn't do stuff and so it's always nerve wracking, but you have to have that confidence and ambition to just go for it and hope that all the skills and knowledge and the teams around you will make it possible. So you have to believe in it and it's been wonderful that even now people talk about the Awakening with such affection and such power.”

And the Year of Culture has not stopped since, from My Leeds Summer, which saw all 33 wards of the city host day-long celebrations, to the unveiling of the new sculpture in memory of David Oluwale by Yinka Shonibare in Aire Park.

The Gifting, the final LEEDS 2023 event, will be bringing the year to a close.

It is due to be shown from December 22 to 31 at Versa Leeds Studios and is brought by the imagination of co-directors Kully Thiarai and Alan Lane from Slung Low, the team whose opening show got the Year of Culture off to a dazzling start.

The production promises to take audiences on a magical journey through 12 connected tales. This celebration of new myths will feature dance, music, song, performance, and a touch of magic offering audiences a unique experience during the holiday period.

Kully said: “In a way, the Gifting is a companion piece to the Awakening. It is looking back to pass the baton on to the city and to say ‘let's build on all that we have discovered this year and keep going’.

“But it’s also recognising that a year ends and a new year begins. It's the act of storytelling that has made a powerful connection in the year and that's what we want to celebrate and pass the baton on to a whole new generation and the city itself to carry on creating new memories or new stories for this place and the people.”

Kully was appointed as creative director only 10 weeks before the first lockdown in 2020 and she said that organising a year-long cultural celebration in the pandemic was a challenge.

She added: “For a lot of people in 2020 in the thick of a pandemic, 2023 felt like a lifetime away. So trying to make plans, build a company, raise money, has been enormously challenging and continues to be hard in terms of finding the resources to make the best of this opportunity.”

Despite these challenges, Kully said she and her team are proud of what they have achieved and hope that the year will make way for more cultural and diverse art to take place in Leeds in years to come.

Kully said: “Part of what we wanted to set out was to put Leeds on the cultural map, nationally and internationally – and I think we can certainly say that that's happened in the way people talk about the city.

"There's lots of complexity in delivering a programme across multiple art forms in multiple locations but I'm really, really proud of what we've all achieved collectively for our Year of Culture because of the feedback I get from outside of the city as to how people are understanding what we're doing, and the enthusiasm with which it's been been embraced is infectious.”

And the Year of Culture would not have reached the heights it did without the hard work of the LEEDS 2023 team, its partners and the public, Kully said.

She added: “The public turning up and showing their commitment to it is a powerful statement of the appetite for culture in this city.

“The legacy is in the very people and their memories and not just the projects. The people who engaged and participated, and the partnerships we've made and the networks we've created; the 10-year-olds who played in The Awakening, and saw themselves on a massive stage and what they might choose to do with their experience and where they might land in years to come will be part of the legacy.”

Find out more information about LEEDS 2023 and its final show, the Gifting, via the website.