Category Archives: Events & Activities

Date change for virtual Christmas lights switch on – now December 2nd

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Leeds City Council have announced that they are rescheduling the city’s first ever virtual Christmas Lights Switch On.  It was originally planned for this Sunday, November 15th but is being moved to Wednedsay December 2nd, when it should coincide with Leeds, and the rest of England coming out of the four week national lockdown.

This does mean that if you have pictures or videos that you would like to be included in this event you now have up until Sunday November 29th to submit them.  The organisers are asking for video clips and images of your Christmas light displays at home (past and present) so they can feature in a dazzling digital montage that will be the climax of the exciting virtual Lights Switch-On.

The finished video will be set to a very special performance of Light up the Sky by pop band The Dunwells and the event will also feature performances from panto and theatre stars along with messages from local sporting celebrities and the Lord Mayor of Leeds.

To submit your pic or video message please send by email by Sunday, November 29 to: lightupleeds@sonderstudios.co.uk

The virtual switch-on event will be free to watch on the Millennium Square YouTube channel and Facebook page on Wednesday, December 2 from 6.30pm.

Leeds Virtual Christmas Lights Switch-On

The Shows Must Go On – West End Unplugged – Vol 1

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A lockdown special celebrating the very best of London’s West End 

In this edition we welcome the talents of Alice Fearn (WICKED / COME FROM AWAY / LES MISÉRABLES) Tim Howar (RENT / ROCK OF AGES / PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) Sandra Marvin (WAITRESS / SHOWBOAT / CHICAGO / HAIRSPRAY) Aisha Jawando (TINA / MOTOWN / BOOK OF MORMON / THE LION KING) Ben Goddard (JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR / SWEENEY TODD) and Mazz Murray (MAMMA MIA! / CHICAGO / WE WILL ROCK YOU / FAME)

It is on tonight (Friday 13th Nov) at 7pm – click on the picture to watch. It is unclear how long this will be available to view.

The show is free to watch but optional donations in support of three charities: Backup-The Technical Entertainment Charity, Help Musicians UK, and the Theatre Artists Fund. https://westendunplugged.com

Leeds Mental Wellbeing Service – Older Adults Class

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Leeds Mental Wellbeing Service will be starting their ‘Live Well in Later Life’ class on Wednesday the 18th November. The class is designed for older adults or for anyone who can relate to difficulties older adults may face (e.g. retirement, loss, isolation, physical health difficulties).

The class will run for 5 weeks from 18th Nov-16th Dec and starts at 10:00. Due to current covid restrictions they are delivering the class online though the Microsoft Teams platform.

Here’s a little bit of information about the class from their website.

Later life can be a big time of change, which can lead to us feeling low or perhaps more worried or stressed. You may have noticed little changes, or started not feeling like yourself. Sometimes we can experience big life stressors that have a big impact on our wellbeing.

The Live Well in Later Life course aims to help manage these difficulties by teaching you techniques that you can use everyday to tackle low mood and worries.

You may benefit from the course if you have:

  • Recently retired or semi retired, or are experiencing work related problems
  • Increased caring responsibilities for family or friends
  • A physical health condition that maybe impacting on your wellbeing
  • Experienced a loss or bereavement
  • Become more isolated
  • Stopped doing things you used to enjoy
  • Worry a lot or are having trouble sleeping

What we cover in the class:

  • Week one – introduction, understanding mental health
  • Week two – sleep and improving physical symptoms of anxiety
  • Week three – low mood and our behaviour, how to increase motivation
  • Week four – Negative thinking and managing worry
  • Week five – maintaining progress and further resources

The classes are based on guided self-help cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which is an effective therapy for treating depression and anxiety symptoms. You will learn how your thoughts, feelings, behaviours and physical symptoms interact and impact emotional wellbeing. The classes are run by qualified psychological wellbeing practitioners.

These are psychoeducational classes, not group therapy – The idea is to watch, listen, and learn about mental health and ways to improve it, and clients are encouraged to make changes outside of the classes to improve how they feel.

If they would like to join the class, you can sign up on their website – https://www.leedscommunityhealthcare.nhs.uk/our-services-a-z/leeds-mental-wellbeing-service/online-group-classes/live-well-in-later-life/

You will receive information and instructions on how to join using Teams when you have signed up. You will need to have access to a computer or tablet to be able to join.

Shared Moments: ‘Oliver feeling uncertain??’ written by Oliver Cross

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Anxiety is an ordinary consequence of being sane and if you fail to feel it during a major pandemic, you probably need help. Depression, too, is to be expected if you’re dealing with broken work routines, precarious earnings, threadbare television, confusing government announcements or the scores of things we’ve recently had to add to our worry lists.

But I’m a ‘vulnerable’ 70-year-old, so all this is overshadowed by the raw reality that the possible effects of the virus include, as well as anxiety and depression, a lonely and unpleasant death.

We tend, even if we’re in the undertaking or terminal care trades, to think that death, the only certainty in life, won’t apply to us. This is why, over the centuries, millions of people have marched willingly to war and why, right now, so many are stressing the possible psychological or economic effects of the virus rather than acknowledging the fact that, worldwide, it will leave hundreds of thousands dead, possibly including me.

Of course fretting about the non-fatal effects of the virus can be dismissed as a predictable displacement activity – a feeling that, with death knocking at the door, it’s time to change the subject. But the current spike in depression and anxiety is real enough and may be terrible for some; it’s just that diphtheria or smallpox would generally be a lot worse.

I’ve long been suspicious of the idea, which has become a sort of universally-agreed wisdom, that we should give the same status to mental illness as we give to physical illness, assuming there are enough physiologists in the world to separate the two, which there probably aren’t.

Like all 70-year-olds, I’ve seen the awful effects of severe illnesses, both ‘physical’ and ‘mental’, but most diseases, complaints and conditions could best be regarded, especially in the age of Covid-19, as trivial, or at least bearable.

Ordinary headaches, ordinary colds, indigestion, feeling anxious while waiting for exam results, feeling down because you can’t cheer on your team… they all, as they so often put it now, have an impact on your mental wellbeing, but they hardly ever  kill you.

Thank you Oliver, until next time….

Poetry Corner: ‘ Dumpty written by John Lithgow

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‘Dumpty’ by John Lithgow
Trumpty Dumpty wanted a wall
To stir up a rabid political brawl.
His Republican rivals, both feckless and stodgy,
Succumbed in the end to his rank demagogy.
Dumpty’s wall made no earthly sense,
A boondoggle built at enormous expense.
But he promised, in speeches despotic and shrill,
He’d make certain that Mexico footed the bill.
Trumpty Dumpty kept insisting.
More and more citizens started resisting.
Sadly, there won’t be an end to this tale,
At least until reasonable people prevail.  
Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse (Dumpty, #1) by John Lithgow

Light Night 2020 – Faint Signals

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Faint Signals

Faint Signals by British Library and Invisible Flock

British Library and Invisible Flock (UK)

Online from sunset on 10 November 2020 to 2 January 2021

Explore Faint Signals here

(Please note: Faint Signals is available through modern browsers (such as Chrome or Firefox) but is not currently optimised for mobile devices.)

Looking ahead to Light Night Leeds 2021, which will explore the themes of nature and the environment, the British Library has commissioned Yorkshire-based interactive arts studio, Invisible Flock, to produce a new online digital artwork using sounds from wildlife, weather and nature from the British Library’s extraordinary collection

Set in an imagined Yorkshire forest, we invite you to explore a vast online interactive commission rooted in real life natural environments. Faint Signals is a digital experience that reflects the diversity and complexity of Yorkshire’s natural world. Using just a mouse and keyboard you can explore this world for yourself. Scroll over the landscape and unlock a rich variety of different sounds. Learn more about them through a simple narrative as you playfully bring to life a vivid and complex ecosystem.

While the forest is imagined, the flora, fauna and wildlife you will discover is all scientifically accurate and native to Yorkshire – though some of it is now sadly extinct. There are thousands of combinations to explore so you’ll never have the same experience twice.

The pandemic has slowed transport and industry and given some landscapes an unprecedented absence of human contact. We’ve seen sea eagles return to the Yorkshire Moors and deer taking over corners of East London. And, for the first time in many years, city-dwellers have heard birdsong all day long. As we contemplate how we live in a world impacted so much by COVID-19, Faint Signals considers our relationship with shared spaces and the natural world, as well as with sound, and how human impact has changed this over time.

Faint Signals is part of the British Library’s growing culture and learning programme in and around Leeds

Council Services during Lockdown

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For four weeks until Wednesday 2 December the Government is asking people to stay at home, except for specific purposes; not to gather with others they don’t live with, except for specific purposes and is closing some businesses and venues.

Residents can leave home for essential reasons such as food shopping, accessing health or critical public services, to work (if unable to work from home), for education or providing care for a vulnerable person.

Leeds City Council parks remain open and people can take unlimited exercise – with members of their own household, on their own or with one other person from outside their household.

Below explains how the new rulings and guidance will impact services here in Leeds and is a summary with full details available at www.leeds.gov.uk/coronavirus/our-services.

 Services planned to remain open:

  • Parks, playgrounds and the Arium, plus car parks and public toilets in parks.
  • Waste services will remain operational but likely to be under pressures.
  • Household waste recycling centres will stay open.
  • Bulky waste collection and forestry continues and litter bins will be emptied as staffing allows
  • Cafes are able to offer takeaways.
  • Funeral services will continue with a maximum capacity of 30 people.
  • The contact centre will continue to operate. As many community hubs as possible will remain open.
  • Civil Registrations Offices remain open.
  • There will be street support for rough sleepers.
  • Food supplies: Fareshare have a new extended warehouse operational. The council has assigned £50k if they need to purchase more food. 300 bags of food a week will increase to 1000 on Thursday.
  • Social care continues, day services are being reviewed.
  • Schools and children and young person settings (incl childcare such as Little Owls).
  • Parks and playground maintenance, responsive highway and winter maintenance, catering and cleaning to support those council venues remaining open; responsive and planned maintenance of council buildings.

Services planned to close or see significant change:

  • Visitor attractions, including museums and galleries, and venues, will close for the duration of the lockdown period.
  • Leisure centres and golf courses and will close in line with Government guidance.
  • Weddings and civil partnerships will be postponed during the lockdown period.
  • General access to libraries will cease but click-and-collect services may be allowed.
  • Face-to-face Welfare Rights service will cease. Doorstep visits can continue.
  • Market stalls selling non-essential item will need to close.

Councillor Judith Blake, leader of Leeds City Council, said:

 “Once again the people of Leeds, along with the rest of England, are being asked to stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives. I know how difficult this will be for local people and businesses who have continued to face unparalleled challenges this year, but the safety of our residents must take priority until we can gain control of this relentless virus. It has been amazing to see the city pull together this year and I know we can do it again.

“The darker nights will no doubt make this lockdown tougher for many people and it is important we all take care of ourselves and look out for friends, family members, colleagues and neighbours who may be struggling. The council is here to offer help to any person or business who needs it and there is a range of support and resources available online.”

The council will continue to work with partners across the city to ensure services are delivered as effectively as possible and to support the most vulnerable members of communities.

Information and support for residents can be found here: www.leeds.gov.uk/coronavirus.

Monday Mind Workout’ answers from yesterday Monday 9th November 2020

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Dear all,

See below answers for yesterday’s Monday Mind workout, how did you do? lisa@caringtogether.org.uk

1. Braveheart

2. Die Hard With A Vengeance

3. Face Off

4. Armageddon

5. Taken 2

6. Edge of tomorrow

7. The Devil Wears Prada

8. The Day After Tomorrow

9. The Truman Show

10. Groundhog Day

11. Summer of Sam

12. Dances with Wolves

13. Marie Antoinette

14. Salt

15. Babel

 16. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

17. From Here to Eternity

18. Birdman of Alcatraz

19. The Swimmer

20. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

21. The African Queen

22. Dr Dolittle

23. The Day of the Jackal

24. Awakenings

25. Cleopatra

26. Gandhi

27. On the Waterfront

28. Shampoo

29. Das Boot

30. Timecop

Sourced: dailymail co uk

Shakespeare Season with The Shows Must Go On – Richard II

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The Shows Must Go On is bringing us a Shakespeare related performance each week in November and this week it is Richard II.  Premieres at 7pm tonight and will be available to view for 7 days.

Deborah Warner’s staging of Richard II with Fiona Shaw as the king stirred up a significant critical controversy when it was presented in 1995 at the National Theatre, and then later in Salzburg and Paris. Among those who recognised its originality and strengths was the critic Paul Taylor who praised the ‘gripping, lucidly felt production’ and Fiona Shaw’s ‘dazzlingly disconcerting… deliberately uncomfortable, compelling performance.’ For the screen version, Deborah Warner and production designer Hildegard Bechtler re-imagined Richard II as an innovative drama that was shot over a fortnight using film techniques. Playing alongside Fiona Shaw is a distinguished cast including Donald Sinden (Duke of York), Richard Bremmer (Henry Bolingbroke), Julian Rhind-Tutt (Duke of Aumerle), Kevin McKidd (Harry Percy) and Paola Dionisotti (Duchess of York).

‘Monday Mind Workout’ Monday 9th November 2020

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Dear all,

The seek-and-find puzzle, created by London-based artist Berta Vallo for Sony, challenges you to find the 30 classic film titles hidden in this busy scene below. Click on it to make it bigger.

Some are straightforward and refer directly to the movie’s biggest stars or plot points but others are more obscure.

Answers to follow tomorrow. Good luck
sourced: dailymail co uk