Leeds Holocaust Memorial Day - young people's performance brief

Deadline: 15/08/2022

Venue: City Varieties  |  City: Leeds  |  Region: West Yorkshire  |  Country: United Kingdom  |  Leeds City Council

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Leeds City Council’s events team are looking to commission a Leeds arts organisation to work with young people to produce a 15-minute performance in any art form for Holocaust Memorial Day. The Leeds event will be held on Sunday 22nd January 2023 at 2pm at City Varieties Music Hall.

Holocaust Memorial Day offers an opportunity to reflect as we share the memory of the millions who have lost their lives in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur in order to challenge hatred and persecution in the UK today. The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2023, released by The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, is Ordinary People.

The full theme paper can be downloaded here: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust | HMD 2023 Theme, but the introduction to the theme by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is as follows:

Genocide is facilitated by ordinary people. Ordinary people turn a blind eye, believe propaganda, join murderous regimes. And those who are persecuted, oppressed and murdered in genocide aren’t persecuted because of crimes they’ve committed – they are persecuted simply because they are ordinary people who belong to a particular group (eg, Roma, Jewish community, Tutsi).

Ordinary people were involved in all aspects of the Holocaust, Nazi persecution of other groups, and in the genocides that took place in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.  Ordinary people were perpetrators, bystanders, rescuers, witnesses - and ordinary people were victims.

In every genocide, those targeted faced limited choices – ‘choiceless choices’ (Lawrence Langer) but in every genocide the perpetrators have choices, ordinary people have choices. Sometimes, these choices were limited too, sometimes they had to make life-threatening decisions. And ordinary people were the ones who made brave decisions to rescue, to hide or stand up. But ordinary people also made decisions to ignore what was going on around them, to be bystanders, to allow the genocide to continue.

There are also extraordinary people in every genocide, remarkable and unusual people, who went to extreme lengths to help, to rescue, to save, and in every genocide there were extraordinary people, who went to extreme depths to cause harm, to persecute, to murder.

Our theme this year, though, highlights the ordinary people who let genocide happen, the ordinary people who actively perpetrated genocide, and the ordinary people who were persecuted.

Our theme will also prompt us to consider how ordinary people, such as ourselves, can perhaps play a bigger part than we might imagine in challenging prejudice today.

If you are selected, we can arrange for a speaker to come and talk to you and your group about the Holocaust if you feel it would be useful or put you in touch with relevant organisations. The performance can be in any art form (theatre, music, dance, performance poetry etc) and should involve young people from Leeds. 

For more information about Holocaust Memorial Day visit www.hmd.org.uk .  We welcome applications from organisations who work with a diverse range of young people.  The theme is quite broad so it would be preferable if proposals could have some kind of a local connection. If you would like to discuss the theme further please contact us.

Deadline for applications: Monday 15th August at midnight.

Total fee: Maximum £2,000 (to include materials, staff time and any stage requirements)

Successful organisations will have to provide marketing information about the performance by early October and submit a brief evaluation of the project on completion.

 

Contact the curator
Who is eligible for this opportunity?
Any organisations or schools based in Leeds or working primarily with young people from Leeds.
When is the deadline?
Monday 15th August at midnight

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