DANCING IN LEEDS

A torch lit-walk past the lap-dancing clubs in Leeds City Centre

Friday October 9th 2009

WHY WE ARE WALKING

It is by experiencing our city first hand – by walking its streets – that we begin to understand its changes and what these changes mean to our lives. 

By walking together, by thinking and talking, by looking, we join a procession of scientists, philosophers , artists, feminists and activists who have, throughout history, always walked as a means of disseminating and understanding ideas. 

We are walking a route past eight lap dancing clubs in Leeds City Centre because we want to start a discussion about their impact on our cultural life and what it means to have more of them than bookshops, independent galleries and live music venues combined. 

How many art galleries does the centre of Leeds boast?  In Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, the ‘retail experience’ is balanced by its galleries, cultural quarters, independent cafes, theatres and cinemas. The ‘high-end’ retail face of Leeds has apparently become the viable signifier of our cultural life. Riding on the coat tails of this retail glitz we now have at least eight city centre lap-dancing clubs.

Amongst the promotional material for freshers’ week in Leeds, between adverts for club nights with names like ‘Filthy Orange Wednesday’ and ‘ Miss Conduct’ are website invitations from lap dancing clubs to ‘come down and see our dancers performing on podiums’ at a freshers’ fair in the University district. 

The assumption that these venues are the playgrounds of businessmen looks to have shifted. With the lure of vouchers for free dances, cheap entrance and drinks promotions, students are now seen as a desirable target by these businesses. 

Have lap-dancing bars become so mainstream that Leeds City Council and the educational institutions also accept that young people moving into the city are legitimate targets for this kind of activity, as potential clients, as potential lap-dancers?According to the Council “Leeds is internationally recognised as a major centre of learning”. Do we accept that, as part of that experience, students also learn how to objectify women and that visiting a lap-dancing club is a positive experience for a man? 

Do the blacked-out facades of these clubs constitute (in the City Centre Partnership’s own words)  “a vision of a vibrant, cosmopolitan city centre which actively embraces and nurtures its businesses, residents and visitors; an innovative, international city that offers opportunity, 

co-operation and partnership”?

 

What value do these strip clubs add to our city? What do they represent culturally and how do we start conversation and debate about what goes on inside them? Do they uphold the council’s standards on sexual equality? Are they somehow beyond debate? What do they say about all of us who live in Leeds and about the role of women in our city centre?

  

When we don’t ask questions, we endorse and accept.

That’s why we’re walking, as residents of this city, walking, and wondering, and asking questions.

FEMINISM IS A DIRTY WORD

We are a group of artists and designers from The Leeds School of Contemporary Art & Graphic Design at Leeds Met University who are working together to define feminism for ourselves and explore how these ideas apply to our lives and concerns. 

We are a collective of students and staff from different backgrounds, disciplines and age groups, formed as a direct response to the environment in we live and the visual material we encounter everyday that uses and creates images of women. 

Although this isn’t a recent trend, there appears to be a more mainstream acceptance of one-dimensional representations of women within popular culture; from advertising billboards to magazines and TV.  As people who work within the creative industries, using our skills as writers, photographers, curators, designers and artists, we are interested in questioning, initiating debate and discussing this material, as well as identifying the roles we can play in redefining women. 

The Women’s Movement is often seen as something that happened a long time ago, as something that doesn’t apply now. We believe in its relevance today for women and men of all ages and backgrounds who believe in the principles of equality.  We consider ourselves Feminists.