Compass Festival 2024

With live art installations and performance, Compass Festival will animate the city of Leeds once again throughout November. Every two years the festival’s events pop up in public spaces across the city – this year, you’ll find interactive performances and collective listening walks alongside delicious communal feasts, visual art and participatory installations. Most importantly, the festival is super accessible too – with all events either free or pay-what-you-can.

Since 2011, Compass has been igniting Leeds with brilliant interactive live art projects. This year’s event invites festival goers to connect and reflect as they experience the artwork, which is popping up in unconventional, everyday spaces across the city, and outside the constraints of traditional theatre and gallery buildings.

Some great commissions have been announced as part of the biennial festival’s 2024 programme. Early on there’s Ling Tan’s Leeds’ Low Carbon Chinatown (2-15 November), an installation that combines data science with Chinese diasporic food culture to explore the environmental impact of food systems.

We’re also heading to Leeds Central Library to see the new durational work, Building of Spines, by Manchester-based performance ensemble Quarantine (2-9 November). Over seven days, Quarantine artist Kate Daley, in collaboration with writer Cherie Battiste, will hand-make a book containing a work of collective fiction based on conversations with people in the library.

The second half of the month brings Alisa Oleva’s Sounds Like Home, a collective listening walk exploring themes around migration, home and belonging (16-17 November). SLAP Collective also bring two contrasting performances – Brightside (19-21 & 26-28 November) and ALT+R (21-23 & 28-30 November), the first is an intriguing workout experience that blends the energy of a fitness class with a live dance theatre performance, and the second, an interactive performance based around a digital wellness spa.

Further highlights include Ellie Harrison/ Polite Rebellion’s Loose Ends, a participatory installation examining genealogy and our ‘chosen’ family tree (22-24 & 28-30 November); Here Marks the Spot by Melanie Whitehead-Smith, a joyous and visually eye-catching celebration of the LGBTQ+ community in Leeds using film projections throughout the city (25-28 November), and Amy Lawrence’s Sharing Platter, a collaborative and experimental food and eating club (30 November).

Compass Festival is a much-loved feature of Leeds’ cultural calendar and offers the perfect opportunity to reflect and celebrate the people, places and stories of the city.