Leeds Creative Timebank

History

The Triple Crunch
In early 2009 Sue Ball (MAAP) and Sarah Spanton (Waymarking) as active members of the Leeds arts community, sought to alert the sector to the interlinked crises of credit, climate and energy as described by the  NEF’s (New Economics Foundation) report on the Triple Crunch (www.neweconomics.org)

A small research group then emerged, including artists and academics Andy Abbott and Garry Barker, looking at non-cash economy models such as guilds, LETS systems and Time Banks.Ideas arising from and models of non-cash economies were brought into public forums for wider discussion with a broad base of the arts community and included different models of skills exchange, the potential for entrepreneurship and innovation using a skills exchange model and the philosophical and political discourse on value systems pertaining to worth and profit.

Pilot Phase
In March 2010 under the organisational umbrella of MAAP, the steering group successfully applied to Arts Council England for a small grant to set up and run a test period for Leeds Creative Timebank. Employing artist Michael Burkitt as Timebroker, members were recruited via a series of events and meetings, followed by a period of review.

The evaluation demonstrated that the Timebank model provided tangible benefits with the potential as a long term strategy for the cultural, arts and creative sector in Leeds to provide bespoke support to artists and creative practitioners whilst increasing resilience and strengthening the network as a whole.

Renaissance Timebank
In April 2011 Steering Group members Sarah Spanton and Sue Ball reworked the on-line administrative and procedural mechanisms and trained new Timebrokers.

A group of Timebank members beta-tested the new system and the Timebank was relaunched in January 2012 with two Timebrokers,  20 members and a programme of events and induction workshops with the aim of achieving a membership of 50 by Dec 2012.