Theatre steps in to help community

LOCKDOWN: Delivering hot meals, arranging psychiatric assessments and taking a cat to be neutered are not the everyday actions of a theatre group – but for Slung Low, that has become the reality of lockdown life.

Its base has taken on a new life as volunteers from across the city’s arts community have helped provide a support hub.

DELIVERING THOUSANDS of hot meals, arranging emergency psychiatric assessments and taking a cat to be neutered are not exactly the everyday actions of an internationally acclaimed theatre group – but for Slung Low, that has become the reality of lockdown life.

Its base in Holbeck, Leeds, in the oldest social club in Britain, has taken on a new life during the pandemic, as volunteers from across the city’s arts community have joined local people in providing a support hub.

As well as running a foodbank, organising volunteers running errands for those shielding such as picking up prescriptions, it has been the centre for social care referrals in the Holbeck ward – dealing with anything from families who cannot put food on the table to calls from concerned adults worried about their elderly parents.

It has also stuck to its artistic values, by arranging a community art exhibition on lampposts around the LS11 postcode area.

All of this and more has been documented in a new short film by Sheffield documentary maker Brett Chapman, who first connected with Slung Low when it took over The Holbeck, its base, two years ago.

As with that film, Mr Chapman had editorial control over what to put in the piece, which has been entitled A Club on the Edge of Town.

He said: “In the first film, they talked a lot about community, and being kind and useful, and what they have done in lockdown is the perfect realisation of these values. At a time when a theatre company can’t do anything on the stage, they have done incredibly to adapt in this way and become such a useful force for good.”

Since March, Slung Low has

Documentary maker Brett Chapman.

dealt with 1,300 referrals for help, which have come from the council, local schools, “freelance community workers and exceptional neighbours”.

Slung Low’s artistic director Alan Lane said despite being in Holbeck for 10 years, with two at the club, the pandemic has made the group feel part of the community like never before, even meeting people “who live 12 doors down who we’ve never seen before”.

While social care may not seem part of an arts organisation, it fits well with Slung Low’s ethos.

Mr Lane said: “We didn’t change, the world did.

“When we moved in, we promised that this building would be for everyone, and a place where people could be delighted and challenged, and educated. The space we can’t use anymore, but collecting prescriptions, giving people food, checking in on people – all of that is the same impetus that we had before, but in this new world.

“For us, this admittedly may be a radical change, but it’s an extension of what we were already doing.”

They have done incredibly to become such a force for good.