Online arts and culture resources for individuals to enjoy when convenient
This is not a complete list but we have put these resources together to accompany a webinar we ran with 100% Digital Leeds to help enable people to engage with arts and culture online. You can watch a recording here.
There has been extensive research into the benefits of engaging in arts and culture in daily life in:
Supporting mental wellbeing
Connecting to and communicating with others and
In managing specific health conditions
Arts and culture activities also relate well to the 5 Ways to Wellbeing: connecting, physical activity, learning, giving and being in the moment. People who have engaged in arts and health in Leeds, researchers and professionals like Leeds GP Mo Sattar met in November to describe how arts and culture can make a difference to our health - you can watch the discussion here. Engaging in arts and culture remotely and online is yet to be proven to have the same benefits but we have been speaking to a number of local organisations in developing this information such as Yorkshire Dance to understand how their work is making a difference.
Online arts and culture resources are always changing and developing but you can keep up to date about what’s going on in Leeds including online events at Leeds Inspired and there are national resources for being creative in isolation here. People interested in arts and creativity for mental health and wellbeing can join the Arts and Minds Network in Leeds for free and you will receive an e-bulletin about opportunities.
We found it difficult to organise this information usefully but have used the broad categories from the World Health Organisation’s 2019 research into health and wellbeing benefits from the arts:
Performing arts (e.g. activities in the genre of music, dance, theatre and singing)
Visual arts, design and craft (e.g. crafts, design, painting, photography, sculpture and textiles)
Literature (e.g. writing, reading and attending literary festivals)
Culture (e.g. going to museums, galleries, art exhibitions, community events, cultural festivals and fairs); and
Online, digital and electronic arts (e.g. animations, film-making and computer graphics)
1. Performing Arts
Northern Ballet - enjoy their short and full length ballet performances online from Casanova to 1984
Opera North - join 65000 people in watching The Ring Cycle or watch other performances including the Turn of the Screw
Paines Plough have a website and an app based on Come To Where I’m From - a national project that invites playwrights to write and perform mini plays about their hometowns, which has several plays on Leeds and West Yorkshire.
Slung Low have made a selection of plays available for you to listen to.
Opera North created Walking Home for lockdown: five sound journeys to be listened to on headphones whilst walking. Each piece has been made with a particular place or time in mind, offering the listener a unique chance to renew their imaginative connections with their environment.
Leeds music venue The Brudenell Social Club has recorded a range of music live including Leeds’ own Kaiser Chiefs which you can watch here. Made With Music have also recorded family-friendly ‘Mini Gigs’ from this venue.
As restrictions ease Leeds Concert Season will be live streaming concerts on Mondays and Wednesdays at Leeds Town Hall from 22 February.
Build your knowledge:
Learn more about performance with online courses like The University of Leeds’ course on Physical Theatre.
Have a go:
Anyone can make a feel-good (dementia friendly) playlist e.g. using the free BBC Musical Memories app. With TV theme tunes and international music, it has lots of tracks to lift your mood.
Yorkshire Dance has recorded videos of sessions for you to follow from Dance On (aimed at over 55s) to Leaps and Bounds (aimed at people with learning disabilities) and Saturday Superstars (aimed at younger people)
2. Drawing, creativity and craft
Creative Prompts, online instructions and ideas:
Do Think Share is a website with weekly creative challenges and an opportunity to share your work with the world.
Submit your own Covid Diary to help Leeds document the impact Covid is having on all of us - this could be photos, words or film of your experiences.
(Aimed at people who have experienced a loss or bereavement) The Grief Series’ Ways To Remember - creative activities to mark a loss that you can do when it suits you
(Aimed at people with learning disabilities) Purple Patch Arts Daily Activities: new activities and printable colouring sheets are released every week and are suitable for different ages and abilities,
(Aimed at people with learning disabilities) Pyramid of Arts’ Pyramid At Home is a selection of creative activities including creating sensory spaces.
How-to videos:
The national Quarantine Quilt Project has a range of tutorials on printing on fabric, quilting, collage, slow stitching and drawing with a sewing machine,
Leeds Minds’ Inkwell Arts have created a range of instructional videos on their website for arts and crafts, alongside gardening, recipes and meditation exercises
Leeds Museums and Galleries have a wide range of online activities such as meet and make crafting sessions and print-making from home. Abbey House has also developed videos of Reminiscence Activities encouraging exploring memories from the past with Made with Music (and have just created a series of short videos aimed at teaching new creative activities that can be done at home, from Islamic Calligraphy to Songwriting and Creative Writing).
Make the Paint Dance’s Midweek Mindfulness on Instagram live on Wednesdays at 12noon or recorded on their instagram page
Leeds artist “Freckles” has a range of videos, suitable for families, describing how you can be creative with household items, from printing with string to making sculptures with paper and drinks cans… be inspired here.
The Art Doctors are a duo who prescribe art for people to go and look at or maybe an everyday creative activity for you to try at home. Last year they were asked to prescribe a range of creative activities for Leeds health professionals and they have made a range of videos about being creative in lockdown for you to explore.
(Aimed at women) Verd De Gris Arts over in Halifax have created a series of videos called Here We Are which is not an art course but a series of sessions you can dip into whenever you need to reduce stress - weaving together mindfulness, art activity, writing and poetry. They advise that absolutely no creative experience is necessary.
You can find hundreds of creative activities with easy to follow step-by-step instructions and even masterclasses put together by Get Creative, where you can search for particular art forms or materials.
3. Literature:
E-books and audio books:
Leeds Libraries have a range of ebooks, audio books, magazines, newspapers and comics. You can download the Leeds Library app here.
(Aimed at children) Audible has a free range of ‘timeless’ listens and classic audio books.
(In Chinese and English) You can read a new online comic developed from research in Leeds into experiences of Chinese children: How to Make a Paper Crane and Time Off.
Online courses:
Learn a skill with online courses like The Open University’s Start Writing Fiction
Explore free courses through the National Centre for Writing on topics such as Know Your Publishing Options and Super Charge Your Productivity.
Have a go:
Thackray Museum of Medicine has instructional videos for Writing and Stitching For Wellbeing
Keep Real UK have created a video introducing creative coping methods, such as free flow writing, to support mental wellbeing as part of NHS Leeds’ Feel Better Campaign. You can find other videos on activities for wellbeing here.
4. Culture
Google Arts and Culture with all kinds of interactive activities (like colouring and jigsaws) and collections from around the world including Leeds. Tour art galleries around the world like the Courtauld Galleries Permanent Collection.
You can visit the current exhibitions of Leeds Museums and Leeds Arts Gallery here including The Sound of The City exhibition.
If you like the sound of jigsaws why not try Jigsaw Planet - it has a range of online jigsaws including images of artwork and buildings within Leeds.
365Stories is a Leeds based website exploring different areas of Leeds through arts and creativity - they now have 19 maps of different parts of Leeds - can you find where you live?
If you are interested in graphic novels and comic art you can learn more about this as part of November’s Thought Bubble Festival programme from live sketching to a range of interviews with local and international artists.
Podcasts and radio
Leeds Museums have a podcast called Museums An’ That exploring their collection and the people who look after it.
Podcast Light on Leeds has interviews with people doing interesting work across Leeds (and from January 2021 a bit further afield): great for learning about arts and culture from the people making it happen.
Exploring philosophy and film with Hyde Park Cinema’s podcast, the origins of Reggae through Opera North’s Dead N Wake or how people become Indian Classical Musicians with South Asian Arts UK
Radio station Chapel FM has a player with all kinds of content from plays based on research into experiences of British Chinese children to Found Fiction’s Look Closer, an interview podcast exploring different parts of the North of England with a local artist.
Build your knowledge:
Learn more about culture with online courses from around the world, from The University of Leeds’ courses on Culture to Keio University’s exploration of Japanese subcultures and Dublin City University’s courses on Irish Culture.
5. Digital arts and Films:
You can explore online art exhibitions
Arts and Minds Exhibition - artwork on the theme Change Is Gonna Come
Women of Leeds - an exhibition of people and places with Mafwa Theatre and photographer Lizzie Coombes,
Meet the People of the (Hyde Park) Picturehouse as photographed by NHS Trained Leeds photographer, Lee Brown.
Possible All Along - artwork by disabled artists in Leeds
Back To Life - black and white photos of Leeds’ first generation Jamaicans transformed in glorious colour
Pyramid of Arts’ Members Gallery and three dimensional Virtual Gallery
Sunny Bank Mills has a new exhibition Body of Water where all the art explores water in some way
Assembly House has an online exhibition of local artists, which includes their Black Joy Matters print commission.
You can experience Faint Signals: a remarkable, interactive and relaxing audio experience created by Leeds organisation, Invisible Flock, using the British Library Collection of natural sounds. You can listen to Fibre, a soundpoem created with Verd De Gris, over 9 months of lockdown from voice messages on the phones of women in West Yorkshire.
Many people enjoy films online - we were recommended the free films available through the British Film Institute, including 120 years of Britain on film. LAHWN members have suggested Open Culture, which has collected free movies available online from around the world but is attentive to copyright. You can also access a selection of recommended films on Leeds Film Player, developed by the Leeds Film Festival team from £5 per household here.
A friendly webinar to accompany these resources, made with 100% Digital Leeds and Leeds Libraries team is available to view here.
If you want us to update any of this information please get in touch by email at g.montgomerie@leeds.ac.uk. If you are not already a member you can join our network at http://bit.ly/joinLAHWN.