Compass Festival 2024

Kristy Stott, Theatre Editor

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Compass Festival

1-30 November 2024

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

A close up of a pink bottle of Leeds Sauce
Image courtesy of Compass Festival via Leeds Inspired.
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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.

Compass Festival 2024
Installation: Leeds’ Low Carbon Chinatown. Image courtesy of Ling Tan/ Compass Festival

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.

ALT+R at Compass Festival 2024
SLAP Collective’s ALT+R. Image courtesy of Lizzie Coombes.

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.

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Where to go near Compass Festival 2024

Asian Bazaar Leeds
Leeds
Asian Bazaar

In the heart of Leeds is also an Asian market held every Wednesday, featuring a vast array of fabrics and spices from the Indian subcontinent and beyond.

Wapentake Leeds
Leeds
Restaurant
Wapentake

Wapentake is a café bar in Leeds, with freshly-baked bread and plenty of sweets cooked onsite. Its decor is rustic and and busy, crammed with bottles and other oddities, giving a pleasing artistic feel.

Wapentake Leeds
Leeds
Restaurant
Wapentake

Wapentake provides freshly-baked bread and plenty of sweets cooked onsite. Its decor is rustic and and busy, crammed with bottles and other oddities, giving a pleasing artistic feel.

Leeds
Event venue
Outlaws Yacht Club

A European style café/bar, exhibition space, record shop, hair salon and creative hangout tucked away on New York Street in Leeds…

Gallery
Leeds
Gallery
BLANK_

BLANK_is a Leeds-based gallery, run by the School of Creative Arts at University Centre Leeds. It encompasses a physical exhibition space and a publication that showcases new contemporary visual art…

Food at Crowd of Favours Leeds
Leeds
Restaurant
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Crowd of Favours is a relaxed, welcoming restaurant and pub serving a great range of beers, spirits and locally sourced food.

Leeds
Theatre
Leeds Playhouse

The Leeds Playhouse, formerly the West Yorkshire Playhouse is a producing theatre in Leeds with two stages at its disposal.

The Man Behind The Curtain
Leeds
Restaurant
The Man Behind The Curtain

Man Behind The Curtain is a stylish, exclusive fine dining restaurant in the Victoria Leeds shopping centre, with a flair for the weird and wonderful.

Music venue
The Wardrobe

Located in the city centre’s eastern Art Quarter, The Wardrobe features a bar and kitchen on its ground floor plus a cosy dedicated event space in the basement. Dance, jazz and world music regularly feature on The Wardrobe’s gig calendar, while the venue hosts popular club nights and comedy too.

Leeds
Shop
Tribe Records Leeds

Tribe Records returns after a 4 year gap with a new store stocking house, techno, electro, reggae, dancehall, disco, world, dnb, bass & beats.

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Hotel
Art Hostel in Leeds

The UK’s first social enterprise of its type, Art Hostel is a pioneering new project by East Street Arts.

Victoria Arcade
Leeds
Shopping Centre
Victoria Arcade

Leeds’ go to place for premium shopping, Victoria Arcade, has both style and substance in abundance.

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