New chapter for city’s pioneering library after 250 years
A PRODUCTION of ,a dance performance by Northern Ballet, movie screenings, fevered debates on everything from Brexit to writing, music by Opera North and open mic poetry nights – not things you would tend to associate with The Leeds Library.
But as the city’s oldest cultural institution prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, it is forging ahead with an ambitious, some might say revolutionary, programme of events which it hopes will help ensure it has a vibrant future. The library itself – not to be confused with Leeds Central Library – is something of an oddity in that most people will be unaware of its location, which is above a row of shops on Commercial Street, close to its junction with Albion Street.
Until 10 years ago, there was another obstacle too, in that it was a private subscription library and very much a closed shop in terms of membership. Times change. The debate over whether to embrace charitable status was hotly debated at the time but members eventually backed the plan, which not only saved them £1,000 a week but opened the library up to anyone. The library was founded in 1768 and originally occupied a room above a bookshop at the Sign of the Dial on Kirkgate, moving to its present location in 1808. It remains the oldest surviving subscription library of its kind in Britain.
But, in the age of the internet, how does a library remain relevant? That’s the question its members have been wrestling with and judging by their roster of events, they’ve done a pretty good job of transforming it into something which might be considered more relevant to the modern era.
President Dr Kevin Grady joined in the 1980s. He says: “It was a traditional historic library, where people borrowed books, there might have been the odd lecture but that was it. In recent years, we have turned that round, so people come here for all sorts of presentations, lectures and performances.”
He’s not wrong. The library’s calendar for this year alone has 200 events and in the past year they have played host to Opera North, Leeds Light Night, the music school from the University of Leeds, Leeds Playhouse, not to mention a constantly updating list of authors, speakers and performance artists. This week The Leeds Library is hosting an international conference on the history of books to mark the institution’s 250th anniversary.
Carl Hutton, 45, has been chief executive of The Leeds Library for almost two years. He says: “From our point of view, its a good reflection of how we got here but we are not just navel-gazing, we want to know where we will be in the next five or 10 years. The fact this library receives rents from the shops below has been its salvation, because across the country, many subscriptions libraries have closed. That was a great piece of foresight by the original proprietors.
“Right now, we are enjoying our highest membership in history, with 920 members. Since we became a charity, we have opened up to so many more people and organisations and we expect that growth to continue, even though we don’t have a sales team. One of the tough questions we had to ask ourselves was, what is it to be a library in the 21st century? For me, it’s about engaging with other organisations in the city and making connections which will last. The worst thing we could possibly do would be to have a big shebang this year and then next year, everyone’s forgotten about us.”
Carl adds: “There’s something about the human condition where people like to be tactile. Books are tangible, there’s a sense of progress and of completion when you read and finish a book you don’t get from the internet. Reading a book in a quiet corner with a coffee, it’s something the internet will never be.”