The Essay: Looking at Leeds

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The Essay: Looking at Leeds: Khadijah Ibrahiim

Khadijah Ibrahiim

Looking at Leeds

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Looking at Leeds, Khadijah Ibrahiim

Khadijah Ibrahiim looks at what changes to Leeds's environment tell us about its identity.

The city of Leeds seen through public art, past, present and future. Khadijah Ibrahiim looks at what changes to the city's built environment tell us about its identity.

Khadijah Ibrahiim’s essay, A Journey of Things Past and Present, looks at how Leeds’s built environment has changed and what that tells us about it as a society. Leeds is a rich north England city in a beautiful rural setting, but only the former is reflected in its physical development. The starting point is a much-loved mural that Khadijah contributed to as part of a school art project about the city’s historical and modern architecture. 
Khadijah still lives in the city and has watched as the skyline has become blotted out by high rise buildings, changing the view and creating a sort of forest of grey trees. She is struck by how beautiful the countryside is around the city, as are many of its historical buildings.

The essay will consider what the built city tells us about its identity and why/how the landscape is developed, then move us into the future, talking about the imminent David Oluwale memorial sculpture by Yinka Shonibare, Hibiscus Rising, in currently empty open space down near the river.  

Khadijah Ibrahiim  is a literary activist, theatre maker and published poet/writer. She is the Artistic director of Leeds Young Authors, and executive producer of the award-winning documentary ‘We Are Poets’.  Recently work includes writing and directing ‘Sorrel & Black cake’ A Windrush Story, a Heritage Lottery funded program as part of GCF. ‘Dead and Wake’ Opera North 2020 Resonance and Leeds Playhouse Connecting Voices.

Writer/reader, Khadijah Ibrahiim
Sound designer, Alisdair McGregor
Producer, Polly Thomas

Looking at Leeds is a co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and The Space with funding from Arts Council England.
A Thomas Carter Project for BBC Radio 3.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

The city of Leeds seen through its public art - past, present and future.

The city of Leeds seen through its public art - past, present and future - by Leeds writers Mailika Booker, Jeremy Dyson, Michelle Scally Clarke, Ian Duhig and Khadijah Ibrahiim.

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