Featured organisation: Leeds Creative Timebank

Jon Eland’s creative art practice is photography, but he also works as the communications lead at Leeds Creative Timebank. He has been a member of the organisation for five years and became a member of the organisation’s management group in 2019.

"At its simplest level the Timebank is a clearing house (a bank) for time-based transactions among the arts and creative community in the Leeds area. If a member needs a task doing they can approach either the Timebank or individual members and request it - anything from generalist activities like helping at an exhibition or an event, through to consulting, mentoring, training or producing. Members choose both which skills/services they offer and which briefs they respond to. We just ask that they treat work they do through the Timebank in a professional manner (as they would cash-paid work).

Operating for a little over a decade we were already in the process of reviewing how we support our members when the current crisis happened. In 2019 we’d already changed the way we did many things to make them more appropriate and easier to access. Our first initiative was in providing the time credits to undertake R&D, consultative or idea creation events - where it was felt that they benefited the wider community.

Other changes included no longer requiring all transactions being managed centrally - members can now mutually agree to work together and instruct those who manage time credits (timebrokers) to make the associated hours transfers. We also trialled venues becoming members (as well as people) - for example, the Centre for Live Arts Yorkshire (CLAY) - the crisis has delayed us rolling it out to other venues.

Our immediate action in the crisis was to be more visible. Within days of lockdown we provided an online meeting space for the first 3 weeks when most information was needed and we used this to identify the information we should find and share (largely around finance and funding) as well as allowing some members to run proof of concept and R&D testing sessions for re-worked and new collaborative projects.

We’re currently looking at the longer term - how we can best advise, guide and support our members - while also making it as easy as possible for them to be creative and be as effective as possible. We are also looking at opportunities for the Timebank to collaborate with other organisations to enable the best positive growth.

As an organisation which puts people, creativity and fairness at the centre of what we do we’d like to build on this to enable as many as possible to succeed in whatever society arises from this crisis. If anyone wants to find out more about how we can help them please don’t hesitate to get in touch."

You can contact Leeds Creative Timebank on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or on their website. 

CuratorSpace are currently featuring articles by artists, curators and organisations who want to share their experiences of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, whether that is artists using their practice as a way of exploring new boundaries of isolation, or as a way to connect more broadly with their communities. We are also interested in hearing from curators and organisations who are offering support to artists.

Contact us at louise@curatorspace.com to share your story.
 

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