Leeds City Museum ready to go green

The award-winning Leeds City Museum officially goes ‘green’ this week with the launch of a new exhibition looking at environmental issues in the city.

Running from Saturday 16th January through to the end of the year, the free exhibition entitled “A Greener City” will see a collection of short films which celebrate green spaces and environmental initiatives in Leeds being shown on the big screens in the museum’s central Leeds Arena.

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Media are invited to Leeds City Museum at 6pm on Friday 15th January to see the launch of 'A Greener City' and speak to the team who carried out the project.

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Created by Leeds City Council in partnership with the Yorkshire Film Archive, the films on show range from an interfaith group tidying and planting flowers in Charlie Cake Park in Armley, and allotment holders working on their plots at Clarkes Field in Beeston to healthy living in a hostel for homeless men in the city centre and a day at Skelton Grange Environment Centre in Stourton.

In addition to the films, there will also be on display memorabilia from the biggest annual event of the year in Leeds, the Leeds Festival held at Bramham Park in Wetherby each year, as well as entries from the schools competition ‘Your Climate Your Call’ run in Leeds which looked at the issue of climate change.

Leeds City Council executive member for Leisure Councillor John Procter said:

“With the extreme weather we have just experienced the issue of the environment and climate change is once again at the forefront so this is the perfect time to launch this new exhibition in our museum.

“Hopefully visitors to the museum will stop and watch the films and look at the exhibition and think about what they can do to be a bit more environmentally-friendly.”

Entry to Leeds City Museum is free and ‘A Greener City’ will run until December 2010. The exhibition has been organised by Leeds City Council and Yorkshire Film Archive with support from Renaissance Yorkshire.

For further information contact Community History Curator Gabrielle Hamilton on 0113 214 1559 or email Gabrielle.hamilton@leeds.gov.uk. For further information on Leeds City Museum, visit the website at www.leeds.gov.uk/cityMuseum.

Notes to editors:

Since opening in September 2008, Leeds City Museum off Millennium Square has attracted over 325,000 visitors and won four major awards including the highly-coveted Reader’s Award for Best Museum of the Year at the National Museums and Heritage Awards for Excellence in 2009.

ENDS

For media enquiries please contact:
Roger Boyde, Learning and Leisure Media Relations Officer,
Tel 0113 247 5472, Email: roger.boyde@leeds.gov.uk