Leeds Creative Timebank

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Meet Jon Eland…

Strawbleu is the pseudonym of member Jon Eland.
A timebanker since 2015, he has two photographic art practices and loves collaboration and collective development – he has been involved in several local and international artistic collectives.

Photo of Planetine by @strawbleu for @timebankleeds member @LunaLeFey

Whilst his photographic style does differ between practices and from project to project you can be certain that each series will have a sense of narrative that also has some unreality.

His strawbleu practice is focused on capturing what it is to be in a place; responding on a personal level to the environments he finds himself in, his But I Like It practice uses gay and queer men as it’s subject – looking at identities, tribes and society impacts how individuals react with the world at large.

Alongside his photographic projects Jon worked to develop a real-world element for Flickr (the social network) in Leeds before founding the Exposure Leeds photographic group (which ran for 5 years), as part of this he brought the Photocamp concept to Europe. Since this he created the (we are) Obscured international queer art collective and has exhibited with the Homosurrealism group in London, Warsaw and Paris as well as other exhibitions throughout the UK, in Athens, Rome, Dortmund, Louisville, Los Angeles and New York

Currently Jon is refining his practices looking at assemblage with fabric and needle crafts as can be seen from his most recent work, shown at Homosurrealism Paris:

résister aux bandes parallèles si vous pouvez (2019) – assemblage with mixed media.

You will find more of his work posted:


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Cycle through the City

Cycling Art Project with Caleb Parkin and Paul Hurley

This was one of a series of projects happening in the city in 2013 with Paul Hurley and Caleb Parkin. The projects were cycling as a vehicle for creativity. On this trip, time bank members were used as guides to support the main leaders. This activity went out to all members as we had no idea who cycled and had a bike…its great when the activities challenge the set up. We try to be flexible and versatile to accommodate any creative suggestion. We cycled in groups around the city, with particular tasks. In the one I was part of, we were observing people and trying to pick up bits of their conversations. We then discussed what we had noticed and heard at intervals. It was an interesting way to engage with the city and the people in it. We mapped the experience afterward in Magellan House where we had met for the trip. As a time bank member, its as a valuable experience to part of. i got an insight into how these artists worked and new ways of engaging with public spaces which I really enjoyed.

Caleb and Paul live on a canal boat and have since this time moved out of Leeds down to Bristol.