I Love West Leeds Festival...in a shop!

Having taken the Festival to parks, streets, canals and schools it was only a matter of time before we took control of our own shop!

From November to February we teamed up with Armley Town Centre Management to take over the spacious old Co-op Travel shop in Armley Town Street.The shop was a place for creativity right in the heart of Armley showcasing exciting new work and encouraging the public to get involved artistic activity.
If you look at the left hand side of this text there is a vertical list of links to lots of individual shop project pages with more details of exhibitions and events.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the shop happen.

Explore the artists' pages and find out the exciing projects we held at the shop!

Marina de Stacpoole had shown her visually striking large scale images in the windows of the shop and everyone from passers by, drivers and cyclist fully enjoyed them.

Pramtastic is an immersive sensory show that, despite the snow went a head and, entertained many toddlers running around enchanted by the sparkly lights and two fantastic ladies.

Richie Fox exhibited his abstract urban macro photographies showing his particular view on Armley.

In the display window we built a stack of tv screens and projected Makeshift Multiplex: Sopa de Pedra. This film is the result of a collaboratively project during the Festival da cor Castanho 2010, Portugal.

To celebrate Christmas we organised an extravaganza party with 12 Cakes of Christmas - an exhibtion you can eat, plus knitting workshop, cake's decoration demonstration and Christmas Carol! During the same weekend Fabric Lenny and Lou Sumray came back to the shop for a 24 hour drawathon representing the world go by in Armley Town Street.

We began the new year with an highly energetic Dance Performance in the Window by Gerry Turvey and Sam Lawrence.

On the same day, just before the dance performance, Ann Akers, from Exposure Leeds, lead a great Photographic Workshop and then sneaked in next door and took great photos of the performance.

We are really pleased to have worked with ExposureLeeds over the duration of the festival shop with the Looking Good Armley Project. This involved a photowalk around Armley, a documentation of the shopkeepers on Armley Town Street by Ann Akers and a Fun Family Portrait workshop.

One of the window of the shop, for a couple of weeks, became an interactive space for Light Play Projections by Shary Baker and Richard England.

At the end of January we had a massive weekend of fun by Armley Based Drag and Drop to send those winter cobwebs to outer space!

Armley legend Mik Artistik exhibited both his large canvas and paper bags.

Future Arts run a three days Music Workshops to make a soundtrack for the films made by Fabric Lenny whilst he was in the festival shop.

For a whole week Artforms created The Curiosity Shop and run workshops for primary schools bringing together the festival, the artists and the amazing objects that make up the Artemis collection.

For two months every Tuesday at lunch time Local Voices collected people's stories and memories to make an Armley Audio Walk, free to download from the festival website in July 2011.

While every Wednesday afternoons we held a Free Bike Clinic run by young people and staff from teh Youth Offending Service.

For the whole first half of February we had Bridget Hines, Sophie Vrettos and Katie Lea in residence in the festival shop with Made in Armley and on the other side of the shop as dusk came we back projected in the Travel Agency's window: Movng the body in the City.

Students of West Leeds City Learning Centre exhibited their striking digital images of the area at the shop.

In preparation to the TUC march on March 26th anticutsleeds run a Virtual Protest - Art and Music Workshop where we had lots of cakes and fun in a safe environment!

Michelle Philips is a self taught photographer who likes using both Nikon digital camera and iPhone and wanted to share her passion for photography by showing different style of photos.

'365 Penguins' is a book used at Whingate primary school to explore maths in a fun way.