LADS: Participatory film explores reflection in community cultural practice
A new participatory filmmaking project at the University of Leeds will bring a group of community cultural practitioners back together
to explore how research, listening and collective reflection have continued to shape their work.
Community cultural practice describes cultural and creative work developed with and within communities, shaped by the particular relationships, knowledge, experiences and places in which it happens.
Led by Dr Alexander De Little in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, LADS (Listeners And Doers) builds on the 2024 Participatory Research Fund project Co-producing the Legacy of My Leeds 2023.
The original project brought together eight former Leeds 2023 City of Culture ‘Neighbourhood Hosts’ as co-researchers. Rather than evaluating Leeds 2023, it explored how participatory research could create space for community cultural practitioners to step back from delivering projects, critically examine their work, share experiences and collectively develop new understandings of participation, place and civic cultural practice.
A central finding was that research itself could become part of community cultural practice. Through collective reflection, participants began to understand listening, reflection and action as interconnected rather than separate activities. They described lasting changes in how they listened, collaborated and understood their own work.
One of the most significant outcomes was the community of reflective practice that emerged through the research. Participants continued to meet and collaborate after the funded project ended, eventually naming themselves LADS – Listeners And Doers.
Two years later, new Participatory Research Fund support will enable LADS to reconvene. The project will look both backwards and forwards: returning to the original research so participants can collectively make sense of what they did together, while exploring its continuing influence on their community cultural practice.
Dr De Little said:
Two years on, we want to return to what we did together and collectively make sense of that process, while also exploring how it has continued to influence people's community cultural practice. Making a film allows us to do both: to revisit and interpret the original research together, and to explore what has happened since. The filmmaking isn't simply a way of documenting or communicating the research – it becomes another stage of the enquiry.
The group will co-create a 30-minute documentary through peer discussions, filmed conversations, documentation of their current community cultural practice, archive material and collective editorial workshops. Participants will shape the developing narrative and collectively determine how their experiences and the original research are represented.
The project will work with Chris Chinnock (Our Creative Connection) as participatory filmmaking facilitator and Adrian Sinclair (UNION – The Northern School for Creativity & Activism) as creative collaborator. The emphasis will remain on participants as authors of the filmmaking process, with collective decision-making extending through to the film's final edit.
The completed documentary will be shared through community screenings and a public event with the Centre for Cultural Value, creating dialogue with other community practitioners, researchers and cultural organisations about participatory research, co-production and civic cultural practice.
The project will provide an opportunity to understand what participatory research can contribute to community cultural practice over time, examining how listening and collective reflection can help practitioners question and adapt the ways they work with communities.
