Historic England Photography Project Launches in Leeds
A new photography project from Historic England has been launched to capture Chapeltown’s African and Caribbean community.
The Chapeltown Photography Project will be led by photographer and local resident Solomon Charles-Kelly. Over the next 5 months, he will work with the community to create a portrait of the North Leeds suburb. Lens Lab Project, a Leeds-based non-profit arts organisation, will support him.
Since the end of the Second World War, Caribbean and African people have made Chapeltown their home, and the area has become synonymous with the community. This is due, in part, to high-profile cultural events such as the legendary club nights held at the Leeds West Indian Centre (now the Leeds Caribbean and African Centre), which regularly had hour-long queues and the annual Leeds West Indian Carnival, the second largest of its kind after Notting Hill in London.
Working closely with the Leeds Caribbean and African Centre and other local community organisations, Solomon plans to capture Chapeltown's cultural vibrance and rich character and challenge some of the negative perceptions of the area.
A selection of images from the residency will be added to the Historic England Archive, where they will tell a story about the community at this moment in time.
The Chapeltown Photography Project follows an exhibition curated by the Historic England Archive, which featured images of an event at the Leeds Caribbean and African Centre in 1983. The exhibition formed part of the venue’s 40th anniversary celebrations and offered a fascinating slice of local social history, with men smoking and playing dominoes, young children playfighting, and a youth steel drum band performing.
It was fantastic to be able to support a celebratory event at the Centre last October, where the images were a real talking point. We realised then that there were more stories to tell and we wanted to create an opportunity for the community to capture these.
We are really excited to see what perspectives the Chapeltown community will record through the creation of a new set of photographs. Adding a selection of the photographs into the Historic England Archive will mean that the memories and stories will be available for generations to come.
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