Dates Announced For Compass Projects

Dates have been confirmed for three of Compass Festival's projects this Spring and Summer in Leeds as the city and the UK re-opens following the latest lockdown.

The three projects will take place in a range of covid safe settings. Closed Forum's Anxiety Arcade will be available to play from 24 - 30 May at Trinity Kitchen, Lucy Hayhoe's One In, One Out will take place from 28 - 30 May at Wharf Street, Leeds and Amy Sharrocks's The Ballad of Crown Point Bridge will take place from 5 - 27 June at Crown Point Bridge beside the canal (Leeds Dock Side). Taking you on a journey around Leeds, the festival largely takes place outside and can be explored alone, in small groups or from home.

The festival has spread its activities throughout 2021, allowing audiences to experience them as intended where possible. Dates will follow for Joshua Sofaer's Museums in People's Homes, and Etheridge and Persighetti's Public House - The Yorkshire Square which will be presented later in the Summer to allow the projects to be experienced as intended.

The final of four Compass Podcasts is aired this week. Popeye Collective's recipe for Mushy Pea Chaat (make the dish at home as you listen!) will guide their podcast conversation; charting personal histories, unpicking colonial pasts and looking at how all of this can impact on our vision of culture, community, and ultimately, art.

The Ballad of Crown Point Bridge is a sonic artwork created with the people and water of Leeds.

In the soft underbelly of the bridge, where the light doesn't shine and the sounds of city life are condensed, recordings of people's voices will join with the sounds of the city's water to make a new ballad for Leeds.

The ballad explores the understory of water in Leeds, the slow performance of leaks as well as the economics of flooding. The project also explores the development of community that water encourages as well as the feeling of being landlocked and locked in in countries far from here as well as in this city and our homes over the last year.

For some the experience of water is the essence of freedom and gathering, while for others it is the embodiment of violence and aggression. Graffiti marks on the bridge speak of the social impacts of austerity, tracing the assault that city life can be. Activated by movement sensors attuned to your body, The Ballad of Crown Point Bridge pulls together words, water and echoes to try to negotiate a different social contract between the environment, the city and its inhabitants.

Anxiety Arcade is an original game in a full-sized arcade frame which has been created from scratch. The project, by Leeds based company Closed Forum, is a love letter to 80s pop culture and classic video games. Looking at anxiety through the lens of those that experience it, Anxiety Arcade uses an innovative and fun concept to get people talking about mental health, rather than trying to solve it. Anxiety Arcade is a digital space that allows you to reset and take a break from everything in your world. Explore a virtual world where each room is a song in an album and every puzzle unlocks more mystery.

Matt Allen of Closed Forum said: "We designed Anxiety Arcade to get people talking about mental health. We wanted to make something playful and accessible that plays on peoples nostalgia of retro video game culture to get them to think about their own experiences. Our ambition was to build something that would be located in public spaces and stand out but still give people an intimate, thoughtful experience. We know first hand the anxiety of being out in a public space after lockdown and think that this artwork now is more relevant than it was when we first started thinking about it in 2019."

Created by artist Lucy Hayhoe, One in, One out: Leeds' Smallest Gay Bar is a playful interactive installation exploring the role of the gay bar in contemporary queer culture. The project asks what we want to preserve and what we want to change as we reflect on a year that has presented huge threats to the existence of queer spaces which occupy a unique position in our cities. As the needs of the queer community change, and we grow more aware of intersecting identities - is the gay bar part of the future of queer space? One in, One Out explores nostalgia for lost LGBTQIA+ scenes, the consumption of queer space as novelty and what it means to be queer and alone.

Lucy Hayhoe said: "In the context of covid, the work has taken on new meaning. One in, One out facilitates a nightlife experience and access to queer space that the community has been missing out on for so long. The project makes possible the present impossibility of a nightlife experience, but only through isolation. I hope visitors will contemplate what a nightclub experience can be without the intimacy with strangers. But also, that they find joy in the familiar but miniaturised experience. The work makes real the possibility of fun and frivolity once again and for queer people people being queer in practice often happens on the dance-floor!"

Learn more at https://compassliveart.org.uk/.

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