Leeds Creative Timebank

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News| Meet Amelia Baron

Amelia-baron-timebroker-new-leeds-creative-timebank

News| Meet Amelia Baron, who is our newest time broker here at leeds creative Timebank.

News| Meet Amelia Baron is from Blackburn. She recently graduated from Leeds Arts University. And guess what, she got a 1st in BA in Fine Art. How incredible is that! Amelia has been a time broker for a couple of months. So maybe you have already met her? If not, here is a little more about her.

Amelia believes in the strength of art as a tool for recovery and her practice combines endurance performance, sculpture and spoken word. Her work also offers insights and opens up a discourse surrounding mental health. This is important because it is an issue that is stigmatised in modern society. Often, her work will use delicate materials and repetitive motions. Furthermore, Amelia’s work is often a metaphor for fragility and vulnerability. Finally, She is a recent Art prize winner and has just completed her exhibition Obsession at the Asylum!

More about Obsession at The Asylum

Obsession at the Asylum presents Amelia’s research about West Ridings Pauper Lunatic Asylum. The asylum is one of the first mental health institutions to offer moral care and support for the “insane poor”. Catch her work at The Ridings Shopping Centre. This is a collaboration with The Art House.

So do get in touch with her to find out more about her work and how you might work together. Also, feel free to say hello, next time you make a transaction online. Amelia, as one of the three time brokers, is around to help you with transactions.

Link to her website: ameliabaronart@gmail.com

A link to her instagram : amelia_baron_artist

Meet Pauline Mayers

Originally from London, Pauline began her theatre and dance training at the Weekend Arts College and continued her dance training at the Rambert School, London. After graduating, Pauline had a 15 year career in dance touring nationally and internationally. 

In 2011, Pauline diversified her practice to include theatre and writing. Pauline produces shows under the name of The Mayers Ensemble themed around participation, intimacy, identity and dialogue. In co-production with the Leeds Playhouse her last show, What If I Told You, directed by Chris Goode toured nationally in 2017. What If I Told You was a shortlisted nominee for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award 2017.

Pauline Mayers Artistic Director The Mayers Ensemble
Please note office hours for The Mayers Ensemble are Monday and Tuesday, 10am – 5pm. Freelance hours are Weds – Fri, 10am – 6pm.


email: paulinemayers@outlook.com
website: https://www.paulinemayers.com
facebook: https://www.facebook.com

twitter: @emergentp


Meet Diane Ireland…

I am an investigative, process artist with an
ecological and sustainable practice. My work has primarily  been concerned
with creating a different way to reveal ‘what lies beneath the surface’. I engage in a diverse variety of mediums and my works can be a mixture of installation, imagery and performance.

My recent project recorded stages of decay, transformation and reinvention. By trusting the process, my intervention is minimal, and I become the observer. My audience may identify similarities within their own lives. I also take the hashtags from my social media to encapsulate a narrative: 
#attheendoftheday#allthatremains, after the #effectsoftime is #unseenbeauty

Meet Sue Johnson

Sue Johnson is a timebank member and timebroker whose creative practice revolves around website design.

Originally a freelance graphic designer and artworker, she began designing and developing websites ten years ago.

She mainly develops websites based on the popular and easy to use platform WordPress. She designs and creates custom themes for the websites. Her clients include non profit groups and small businesses.

Her recent work includes a website for Urban Angels Circus featuring a system to book and pay for classes: https://urbanangelscircus.com/ She has also created a website for The Human Aquarium: https://humanaquarium.co.uk/ featuring an activities section built with WordPress custom posts.

You can see more examples of her work at: https://suesdesign.co.uk/

Twitter: @suesdesign https://twitter.com/suesdesign

Exhibition at Workshop Press

Mappish opened on Friday evening at the occasionally open Workshop Press Gallery. There will be another opportunity to see work on Thursday 4th April at 6pm together with a poetry reading.
There were lots of LCTB hours behind this exhibition, the spirit of reciprocity and the gift economy, enabling so many of the achievements of this fascinating group of artists. The common thread, the concept that brought them together, was the idea of journeys and their mapping, and by bringing their ideas together they were able to create a synergy that lent energy and invention to a wonderful exhibition of making, mapping and drawing. At times working side by side, drawing and documenting an experience of landscape and at other times working independently to realise their own journeys, these artists have demonstrated that the experience of using the LCTB can be very positive and that it allows people to achieve wonderful things as part of a collective experience. Hopefully we will see far more joint ventures because of the new LCTB ‘lightbulb’ workshops that are being held in the coming months.

Guess what’s happening here ?

Here are a few images of some of the amazing transactions that have taken place through the Timebank. So can you remember or guess when these pictures were taken and/ or by whom and/or which members were involved, or even what year it was ? Or do you remember other brilliant projects that have used the Timebank? Do let us know by emailing or via our Instagram, twitter or Facebook accounts.

Whats Your Bright Idea?

New in the Timebank – Lightbulb Moment Workshops!

For our 10th anniversary we want to begin to change how the Timebank works and move towards a new era of supporting your creativity. Creativity lies at the core of the LCTB reason for being. Events at our recent social ‘Light Bulb Moments’ have highlighted that we can foster creative invention by offering members the opportunity to run workshops in relation to their members’ ideas. 

‘Light Bulb Moment’ Workshops
This is how we see this working:

Any member can propose a workshop, all you have to do is identify a time and place to hold the workshop, outline your idea, say how long the workshop would last and give an idea of the numbers and sorts of other people  you would ideally like to be part of the workshop. Then email this proposal to leedscreativetimebank@gmail.com

The LCT via its timebrokers will then send out a call for participants and put you in contact with those that come forward, so that you can deal with arrangement details. Every workshop can be structured differently, but if you are unsure about how to structure one, the LCT has examples. LCT also has suggestions for where to approach for spaces to hold workshops if you have nowhere. The actual time credited will depend on how much time you put into developing the workshop and how long the workshop takes, but for instance you as a workshop proposer, developer and host would get hours for doing these activities and your participants would get hours for attending the workshop. 

We consider the key to developing new ideas is people. How will a musician think about a visual artist’s concepts, how does a performing artist think about a practical craft discipline? In bringing together the many and various backgrounds and experiences of members, we feel we can energise possibilities both in terms of opening out conceptual thinking and in terms of practical resolutions. 

We also strongly believe that workshops will foster new relationships between members and that these relationships will lead to a stronger and more vital arts community. 

First workshop for up to 5 members April 9th 2019.

Meet Lucy Meredith

Lucy is a Leeds-based performer, eco-artist, director and professional  mermaid. She joined the Timebank in 2013 and has used members skills on many projects that she’s been involved in.

She is co-director of Yorkshire Life Aquatic C.I.C. who promote health and wellbeing, and environmental and animal welfare issues, through art and performance. The company takes inspiration from 1950’s film star Esther Williams ( and other iconic female swimmers) performing in and out of water creating immersive site specific work that merges theatre, dance and synchronised swimming. Her latest project was the Human Aquarium which exhibited in Leeds February 2019.

Lucy is also one of the directors of Tea & Tolerance, a Participatory Live Art Project for social change promoting kindness and peace through conversation. T&T have just created a conversation game – Being Human, and used Timebank members time to test the design concept of the game.

She is also a member of the World Cetacean Alliance’s campaigns working group who work internationally to protect whales & dolphins from harm.

Tweet Lucy: @Lulovesglitter @YorkslifeAqua @Teaandtolerance @HumanAquariumUK. More info here – Lucy’s website

Four Ways to Spend your Time Credits!

So you have given some time to one or two projects and have saved up some hours, but you are not sure how to spend those hours. Here are four ideas of ways to spend your time…

1.Make a film just for fun. Yorkshire Life Aquatic spent time credits making a this film in a fountain in Doncaster: Maria Spadafora filmed it, Annabeth Robinson edited and gave it the 1950’s film reel look/ background music, and Ivor Tymchak did the voice over. A total of 12 hours

What small project could you put together on time credits?

2. Spend time with another member. This is a photo from an exhibition Wave by artist and Timebank member Jo Lee. In asking her to photograph some objects, I found out lots of things about her work and how she works with small objects. Spending a couple of hours to meet someone or see their approach to a creative task is very interesting.

3. Participatory Art Cycle -Walk – Member Caleb, (now time banking in Bristol), paid members time credits to cycle in shared pedestrian-cycle walk spaces across the city. Maybe you have an idea you want to test with members or have them help out with public workshops.

4. Moving Premises – Members helped Live Art Bistro move into their new building. This included de-rigging lighting/sound and a whole lot of general moving and lifting.

Don’t have enough credits? Maybe another member will gift you some?

That is just a few to be thinking about. Over the next few months, we will share more ideas from members about how they use the Timebank and about their work as we’ll as ideas of how to spend and earn time credits.