University teaching role for top artists

The Academy of Cultural Fellows will see emerging creative talents brought to the university for up to three years to produce pieces of artwork.

Its first fellowship will be awarded to a music composer and will be paid through Opera North's Future Fund.

The academy is being developed by music professor David Cooper, who is looking to recreate the success of a scheme from which he benefited as a student in the city in the 1970s.

For more than 30 years the university ran the Gregory Fellowships to support the work of painters, sculptors, poets and musicians. While other higher education institutions have had poets or artists in residence, Leeds's scheme was thought to be unique. The fellowships were funded by Bradford businessmen Eric Craven Gregory and ran from the 1950 to the 1980s.

Gregory Fellows included the sculptor Kenneth Armitage, poets James Kirkup and Jon Silkin and painters Terry Frost and Trevor Bell and the judging panel included TS Eliot.

Prof Cooper, who was taught by Leeds University's last Gregory Fellow Peter Paul Nash, said: "I found this to be an incredibly experience to be able to work with a young developing composer and I hope the Academy of Cultural Fellows will allow students to be able to enjoy the same experience.

"The fellows will be chosen by a panel. We will be looking for people who have shown promise, whose name is already starting to get known and who will be able to produce very good pieces of art during their time at the university.

"We aim to appoint the first fellow within weeks and we hope their work could feature in an Opera North production."