thank you!

We hope that everyone who attended Sunday’s workshop day had a great time. The whole anticutsleeds team, including some new faces, absolutely loved it – and can’t wait to do another one! It was well-attended, there was a lot of cake, and an impromptu choir was formed too.

We’ve got some fantastic images and videos from the day – including audio clips that you can listen to here on one of our member’s blog – but we’d like to hear from you. If you have any photos, images, drawings or comments, please let us know either on Twitter or by emailing anticutsleeds[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk

don’t forget tomorrow!

There’s been lots of exciting emails flying around the Anticutsleeds gang, talk of re-working, painting, banners, sewing machines, chords, and lots of fantastic ideas (and cakes) for our Creative Protest Workshop Day tomorrow!

You can find the original information here but just a quick recap – it’s in the I Love West Leeds Festival Shop on Town Street, Armley from 12pm – 3pm. Bring instruments, noise makers, painting stuff, crafty bits, yourself, and cake if you’d like, to work with us creating exciting, original forms of artistic protest.

Don’t forget to bring your best performance poses too, as we’ll be launching our Virtual Protest Project, a website where you can upload images, videos and text to take part in protest if you can’t make the ones in London (like March 26th) or locally, whatever the reason. There’ll also be people on hand to talk to about our group and other ways you can become involved, or if you have any questions about where you can information they’ll try their best to help.

Hope to see you there, and don’t forget to tweet us (@anticutsleeds) or use the hash tag #anticutsleeds to let us know your thoughts!

a quiet january, exciting february

Hello all! And sorry we have been so quiet for the first bit of 2011. January for many people was a time of belt-tightening, of horrible weather and terrible news as more cuts in the NHS, education, public services and even the forests were rolled into action.

However, we hope that everyone has carried on fighting the good fight in whatever way you can, either through Twitter, Facebook, writing, out on the streets or in your own homes.

Recently, some of the AntiCutsLeeds gang along with many others in Leeds, and thousands across the country, protested against planned local library closures. All of these protests were fantastically creative and involved not just students and young people, but families and all age ranges. You can read an excellent real-time account on the Guardian here, including images of the lovely @BookElfLeeds! BookElf has also written a piece for the local Guardian Leeds website here. If you were part of any protests at the libraries going on in Leeds, please comment, tweet or email us at anticutsleeds[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk.

Some of the AntiCutsLeeds group had a brief meeting after the library protests on Saturday, and all we can say for now is: put 20th February in your diary! We’ll be posting very soon about the upcoming action and how you can get involved before and on the day of the event. Suffice to say it will involve music, video, painting, decorating, maybe some cakes, and getting involved…