Meet the new addition to the Leeds 2023 cultural programme

Earlier this month Emma Beverley was appointed as the latest member of the creative team of Leeds 2023 who are working towards delivering an exciting year-long programme of cultural experiences for the city region in three years’ time.
Emma Beverley will be joining the Leeds 2023 creative team as executive producer in January.Emma Beverley will be joining the Leeds 2023 creative team as executive producer in January.
Emma Beverley will be joining the Leeds 2023 creative team as executive producer in January.

An accomplished producer and programmer with an impressive track record of presenting award-winning art in a variety of contexts, Beverley takes up her post in January and is looking forward to working with the many arts organisations and individual artists in the city, established and emerging.

Beverley knows Leeds well, having developed her own career as a producer there since 2013, working with acclaimed performance artist Selina Thompson and ground-breaking Eclipse Theatre. “One of the things that is so exciting about Leeds is the level of cultural activity already going on, and the quality of it,” she says. “It is also quite a big, diverse geographical landscape with rural and urban neighbourhoods. I am really excited about doing as much work as possible in all those areas to make the programme as inclusive as it can be.”

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Inclusivity and accessibility are key considerations for the Leeds 2023 team in the development and delivery of their programme, and it is a passion that Beverley shares. “It is one of the main reasons I applied for the job,” she says. “I could see that both were at the forefront of the team’s decision-making.”

For the past two years she has been programme director at Leeds-based East Street Arts where she says she has learnt a lot about connecting with communities in a meaningful, sustained and sustainable way.

“East Street Arts works with all of the different stakeholders in a neighbourhood to make long-term cultural programmes. What I have also learned from them is how to successfully combine what you might call ‘shiny’ cultural things with deep community engagement. At East Street Arts the two come hand in hand. There is always a sense that the community is a co-creator in their projects – that’s what I really love about their approach and I definitely want to bring some of that to Leeds 2023.”

Aside from delivering a transformational, entertaining arts festival, one of the principal aims of Leeds 2023 is to create a lasting legacy of positive economic and social impact. And securing that legacy seems more vital than ever as the potential long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, not only in socio-economic terms but also in relation to health and wellbeing, have become apparent.

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“Leeds 2023 has a big role to play both in the cultural sector’s recovery over the next three years and also in helping the people of Leeds to recover from this period,” says Beverley. “Some of the neighbourhoods we will be working with have been particularly hard hit. And arts and culture are so important in bringing people back together again.

"When you think about a landmark year of culture – it is such a big statement, but spectacle can be very quiet too, so developing a programme is going to be a delicate balance.

“That is a good challenge and it’s something I am really looking forward to getting stuck into.”

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