Gloves Off: Stories from Cultural Collections & Galleries at the University of Leeds

How does the art world invite, or restrict, the expression of working-class identity? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a “fugitive” from the mainstream? How might you make art outside “the system”? The final instalment of our Curating Class series is a live recording of a panel discussion featuring six of the artists who exhibited in ‘[uz], [uz], [uz]: Artists from Working-Class...

“This wasn’t an exhibition of ‘working-class art’, but an attempt to reframe working-class experience by utilising a gaze from within, bringing together a plurality of working-class voices”.  Samantha Manton, curator of ‘Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen' at Two Temple Place in 2025 talks about her methodologies and the decisions she made – consciously and unconsciously – in initi...

“The role of an organisation is not to force the artwork to adapt to the conventions of the institution, but to adapt its methods to the needs of the artwork… “Curating can itself become a class-conscious methodology.”  How do curatorial practices reproduce or challenge class-based inequalities, and what practical changes might make the art world more equitable?  Curator, researcher and founder of...

“Being faithful to the diversity of the artists involved; avoiding tropes; challenging stereotypes... Celebrating the enormous vitality and creativity of artists from working-class backgrounds...” Exhibitions Curator at The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery Dr Laura Claveria gives a brief introduction to the process of curating the 2025-26 exhibition [uz], [uz], [uz]: Artists from Working-Class...

Dr Rebecca Starr, Lecturer in History of Art in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, gives an overview of art history’s relationship with class, which she traces back to the discipline's origins in Enlightenment philosophy.    The idea of the autonomous art object, set apart from everyday life, was still being endorsed in the mid-20th-century by critics...

How can art resist forgetting, or question state-endorsed histories? Can memories articulated through art enable us to think about and create possible futures? How does art enable us to understand the histories and the challenges of diaspora? For the second of our talks on themes of the Turner Prize 2025, we're joined by Shanaz Gulzar MBE, artist and Creative Director of Bradford 2025 UK City of C...

How does art care? How do artists embody care within the creative act of making and how does their work project care in all its multiplicities, its potential ethical and moral positions? How best can art, artists and curators create space to represent and engender care for both individuals and wider communities? Recorded at the University of Leeds shortly before Nnena Kalu was announced as the win...

Take a twinkling trip back to Christmas Past with the first podcast in a new series from our 2024 Bedford Fellow Dr Ruby Rutter. Ruby leaves the festive bustle of Leeds’ arcades behind to discover how a Victorian candlemaker harnessed the ancient association of light and magic to invent fairy lights. Looking closely at a 19th-century advert  in The John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History ,...