Occupation of Ziff building hits 48 hours as protestors speak with the Vice Chancellor

After over 48 hours in the Marjorie and Arnold Ziff Building, protest group ‘Occupy Leeds Uni’ still remain in the council chamber of the University of Leeds. The group, comprised of students who support the current UCU and UNISON strikes, is protesting what they call the University’s “abhorrent response to industrial action”.

‘Occupy Leeds Uni’ claims that it will maintain its occupation of the offices until management agrees to no pay deductions for staff taking part in the marking boycott and the Vice-Chancellor commits to resolving the Leeds UCU and Unison disputes by supporting their demands.

Yesterday, after meeting with Vice Chancellor Simone Buitendijk on Monday, the group posted a reel to their Instagram. In the clip, Buitendijk can be seen saying “Why are you striking? That’s what I am saying to strikers. Why are you striking when we can work together?” One of the occupiers responds with claims of “awful workloads” and “really low wages” of University staff. Buitendijk replies asking ‘Why do you think it’s so terrible? I mean, is it really that terrible?”

One member of the group, who is currently occupying the Ziff Building, spoke to The Gryphon and claimed that they were not spoken to by management until the evening until the evening. At that point, they were told that the University would not engage with them while the occupation persists and that ‘formal channels’ would be a better way to negotiate their demands.

They added that “spirits are still high and we’ve been having rallies everyday at 5pm at the ‘bacon’ statue. Tonight we’re having an open mic and [doing] some banner making. The security have been nice but currently we aren’t allowed any food to be brought in for us by staff.”

A University spokesperson said: “It is deeply regrettable that our community is one of only 20 from about 150 institutions nationally that is subject to this marking and assessment boycott.

“The University remains open to finding a resolution to this current period of industrial action, and many local actions are already in train through our Fairer future for all action plan, including cutting the use of fixed-term contracts, reviewing our workload principles and modelling, and initiatives around equity, diversity and inclusion.

“Senior management and local UCU branch members had a positive discussion at a scheduled meeting earlier this week, and we hope to continue talks in the coming days. In the meantime, our priorities remain to protect the interests of students – including minimising any disruption to them; to retain the cohesion of our community; and to protect the standard of Leeds degrees.”

Occupy Leeds Uni will be hosting their 3rd rally at 5pm today by the ‘bacon’ statue.

Students supporting UCU strike occupy Leeds University management offices in protest

‘Occupy Leeds Uni’ are currently squatting in the Level 13 Executives Offices of the Marjorie and Arnold Ziff Building at the University of Leeds. The group, comprised of students who support the current UCU and UNISON strikes, is protesting what they call the University’s “abhorrent response to industrial action”.

The University and College Union, one of the largest higher education trade unions in the UK, started its industrial action all the way back in December with 58 universities across the UK striking to some degree. UCU’s disputes with University management center on the former’s claims of falling pay, gender and ethnic pay gaps, precarious employment practices, and unsafe workloads.

Upon a previous request for comment, a spokesperson from the University of Leeds told The Gryphon: “Our priorities are to protect the interests of students, including minimising any disruption to them; retain the cohesion of our community; and protect the standards of Leeds degrees.”

They added: “Many of the other issues in dispute are within our gift to address, and we are already taking action to address UCU’s concerns about workload and casualisation.”

Courtesy of Occupy Leeds Uni

Since the strikes started, UNISON, the union which represents many non-academic university staff, has joined in the fight. Yet, in most institutions, negotiations have reached a stalemate.

Last month, 41 branches of the University and College Union (UCU) backed a national marking and assessment boycott, supported by 86% of staff who returned ballots. But only 20 universities are going ahead with a boycott after opposition from branches and members led to national action being curtailed by the union’s executive in favour of letting individual campuses decide. UCU Leeds is still planning on proceeding with the boycott.

This has escalated tensions further as University managers at Leeds have told staff they face having 100% of their pay docked if they take part in the boycott, which would include not marking end of year exams and dissertations.

‘Occupy Leeds Uni’ claims that it will maintain its occupation of the offices until management agrees to no pay deductions for staff taking part in the marking boycott and the Vice-Chancellor commits to resolving the Leeds UCU and Unison disputes by supporting their demands.

According to Tweets from the Occupy Leeds Uni account, the group has also met with the Vice Chancellor today to speak about their demands.

Upon request for comment, a University spokesperson said: “It is deeply regrettable that our community is one of only 21 from about 150 nationally that is subject to this marking and assessment boycott. We have already made a series of commitments to deal with some of the issues at the heart of this industrial action, including cutting the use of short term contracts.

“The University will consider participation in a marking/assessment boycott to be partial performance, resulting in pay deductions of up to 100% due to breach of contract, although where staff notify us of their involvement in advance to help us mitigate the impact, we will deduct at 50%.”

Occupy Leeds Uni is hosting an ‘Occupiers’ protest’ today at 5pm at the wavy bacon statue for all those who wish to show solidarity with striking university staff.

Charity Kase set to tear up Hyde Park Book Club

Drag fans all over West Yorkshire are incredibly excited at the news that Charity Kase will be performing in Leeds next week.

As part of the city’s new drag show GAZE: A Night of Queer Excellence, Kase take to the stage of Hyde Park Book Club on Thursday May 19th.

The Lancashire-born drag artist, self-styled as ‘The Wicked Witch Of The East End’, came to prominence on the third series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. She is known for her nightmarish, intricate, and conceptual looks which she regularly showcases to her large Instagram following.

The evening will be co-hosted by Memphis, the founder of Leeds-based drag events company Memphis Presents, and local drag king Chafe de Fys. Also on the bill will be Villanelle and Vita Bohem.

Tickets are available here

A night with Prince Andrew

Duncan Wheeler, Lecturer and Chair of Spanish Studies at the University of Leeds, recounts a weird and wild evening spent among royalty.

I can’t recall if he sweat on the sole occasion our paths crossed. Virtually all human beings in his position would have done so on a hot August night in Sotogrande, the enclave in Andalusia popular with millionaire Brits and polo players of all nationalities. Prince Andrew wore a suit as I inelegantly perspired in jeans and cheap shirt, a more appropriate combo for the season but not the setting. His Royal Highness amiably boasted of earning a summer break after working at the coalface, courting Chinese elites in Windsor Castle. My attempts at polite chit chat with a younger Russian accompanying him fell flat. She purported to be an authority on caviar. Either my amateur questions made no sense to an expert, or she was far less knowledgeable than she claimed to be. In either case, we were out of our comfort zone.  

Truth be told, I had no idea what to expect from my first trip to an area of Spain worlds away from my regular haunts. I had rocked up at a wealthy friend’s beach house to spend a few days after a week at an indie music festival not in my wildest dreams anticipating an invitation to attend a dinner party at the house Prince Andrew had rented out for summer 2015 with his former wife, Sarah Ferguson, and their daughter. This evening engagement couldn’t, I figured, be any more unsettling than daytime encounters at the private beach club.  

A seventy-year old British ex-pat married to a minor Spanish aristocrat whose business had seen better days cornered me to volunteer her experience and expertise for the book I was writing on Spain’s Transition to democracy. In between ranting against the dangers of Islamic terrorism brewing just across the Gibraltar straits, and referring to Latin American immigrant workers as “panchos”, she offered spurious details about murders purportedly committed by Santiago Carrillo, the former leader of the Spanish Communist party. She asked my thoughts on rumours that Emilio Botín, the director of the Santander Bank, had been assassinated on the orders of his daughter and successor after he discovered her Colombian lover laundering bank money. Me responding that, to the best of my knowledge, the seventy-nine-year old had died of natural causes exposed me as a nobody.   

Funnily enough, her testimony didn’t figure amongst the sources cited in my book. Mildly more informative was a conversation with some polo players about an investor who found himself in negative equity after taking out a sizeable loan out to buy a prize winning horse, which promptly had a fatal heart attack during its debut march. Such daytime escapades brought to mind J.G. Ballard’s 1997 novel Cocaine Nights, set on Andalusia’s Costa del Sol, in which the comfortable life becomes a living death to an extent that narcotics, rape and murder become chosen leisure pursuits. The mood for my Mexican themed evening was much lighter, closer to Miguel de Cervantes than the dystopian Ballard.   

It was as if a magic potion had transported me back to Barataria, the fictional island in which Don Quixote’s plebeian sidekick, Sancho Panza, is made to believe he is governor but is in fact providing entertainment for shallow aristocrats with a hereditary but not moral right to exercise authority. The food at Casa Ferguson-Windsor was nothing special, more Taco Bell than fine Mexican dining but the former Duchess of York went beyond the call of duty in welcoming a newcomer such as myself, happy to banter away about everything from bullfighting (she doesn’t approve, especially when it involves dwarf toreros, as it sometimes does in neighbouring San Roque) or appearing alongside the singer Meat Loaf in the ill-fated “It’s a royal knock out” television program back in the 1980s. Fergie, as the people’s duchess  was popularly known, personally wrote name tags for all of the twenty or so guests at the table. There was a drink aplenty and, whilst not sober, I made sure to excuse myself volunteering to join any of the groups charged with providing the evening’s entertainment.  

Not wanting to be outdone by a group of lads stripping down to their waists, the former Duchess of York produced an ostrich costume seemingly out of nowhere and donned it alongside a fake woollen vagina to dance to the Backstreet Boys. The fun and games didn’t end there. As news arrives that a member of the Goldsmith crew notorious for mixing their dates up was running late, lights were dimmed and we were instructed to climb under the table to give the illusion nobody was home. Locking eyes with an aristocratic pensioner crouched down next to me, I couldn’t help but wonder in what parallel universe this was all considered par for the course. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether Andrew is guilty as charged, but he seems as disorientated by his forced encounter with the real world as I was by my excursion into his natural habitat, a place I enjoyed visiting but I’d hate to be imprisoned. 

Hedwig and the Angry Inch: Divina de Campo shines in a riotously camp revival

It’s been 15 years since the last professional UK production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. With the media scrutiny of those who are gender non-conforming growing ever harsher and political rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights cropping up left and right, it feels as though we need the smutty yet heartfelt musings of a genderqueer glam rocker more than ever. As Divina de Campo’s Hedwig proudly stands centre stage for the opening number, her fully extended denim cape emblazoned with the words ‘gender is a construct’, it becomes clear this production will be the antidote to contemporary toxicity.

Despite its humble off-Broadway beginnings and a box office bomb of a film adaptation, the musical has built a diehard cult following among Queer audiences akin to that of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The story follows Hedwig, an ‘internationally ignored’ East German rock singer, who battles with the trauma of a botched gender-reassignment surgery she undergoes to escape her Soviet homeland. Abandoned by her husband in middle America, she starts a relationship with Tommy Gnosis, a young, inspiring musician who goes on to break her heart, steal her music and become a world-touring rock icon. We join Hedwig and her band, named after her scarred genital mound, as she performs on a tour that shadows Gnosis’ while retelling her tumultuous life story with witty candour.

For this gig, the entourage have pitched up in Leeds. Jamie Fletcher’s production cleverly tweaks the script (with nods to Richmond Hill and Roundhay Park) and the multi-faceted set design from Ben Stones is primarily a Working Men’s Club stroke Dive Bar. It is as impressive as it is charming that Fletcher has managed to marry the original show’s riotous camp with a self-deprecating Northern sensibility.

The main attraction is of course Hedwig herself. From the moment spotlight illuminates her at the back of the stalls, it is de Campo’s show. The Rupaul’s Drag Race UK runner-up struts down the aisles, pausing to bask in the audience’s rapturous reception. They nail the bravado and showmanship of a diva with delusions of grandeur but also capture Hedwig’s punk edge, gyrating, growling, and rasping for a rowdy 100 minutes. Racing through the script’s funniest lines, de Campo delivers the jokes with a lovable lewdness, occasionally deploying exaggerated Yorkshire tones to hilarious effect. They truly are the star turn.

Yet, as much as the rip-roaring rush of the show’s soundtrack is electrifyingly Rock N Roll, it is easy to get left in the dust. Lose yourself in the anarchy for just a moment and you run the risk of missing a lyric crucial to the plot. Though ultimately, the spectacle of de Campo slut-dropping in sync with a giant inflatable gummy bear is enough to render any confusion insignificant.

By the show’s end, de Campo has put to good use their well-known four octave range and has even squeezed in a quick cameo from the iconic red wig and silver dress. Hedwig’s regalia has been removed layer by layer as she bares herself to vulnerability both physically and emotionally. Fletcher’s production succeeds in stripping back the pretensions of gender, belonging, and ambition in a show that centres and champions those that do not conform. This musical is a tonic, albeit one that is bittersweet and fabulously dirty.

Hebden Bridge Burlesque Festival set for a fabulous return

The hotly anticipated Hebden Bridge Burlesque Festival (HBBF), an annual event established in 2013, returns to the stage this Spring after a 2-year hiatus due to the pandemic.

The almost sold-out 2020 edition of the festival was cancelled only 6 weeks before the opening night when the world went into lockdown. However, with their “keep calm and carry on” attitude, an online show took place via Zoom and over 250 people bought tickets and watched live from their living rooms as 11 Burlesque performers transformed their homes into stages and performed their acts to their phones and laptops.

Now, Festival producer, Lady Wildflower, is delighted to finally bring the Festival back to the stage from 28th April – 1st May 2022. Previously, HBBF – the biggest and most renowned Burlesque Festival in the UK outside of London and now in its 9th year, took place at various venues throughout the Calder Valley with its Saturday night Gala at Todmorden Hippodrome. This year, due to demand, all 5 shows will be taking place at the Hippodrome and will be making use of the larger stage and venue capacity for what’s set to be the biggest and most anticipated HBBF yet!

Lady Wildflower, who produces the Festival said: “Following a tough couple of years for the live entertainment industry, I am so excited to bring back the Hebden Bridge Burlesque Festival in 2022. HBBF has been sorely missed over the past 2 years and I’ve been touched by the support of our audiences throughout the pandemic and their enthusiasm for being able to attend live shows and visit the valley once more. From nearby residents to those coming from around the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe, attendees have always brought a real buzz to Calderdale when the Festival is on, with local accommodation and businesses reporting an uplift over the weekend. It’s great that the Festival can contribute so much to the local community again. Described as ‘the Jewel of the Burlesque Calendar’ by 21st Century Burlesque, and with performers and artists coming from all over the world, this year’s bigger and better HBBF is a show not to be missed!”

Heidi Bang Tidy, host of Legend in the Making

HBBF opens on Thursday 28th April with the Legend in the Making newcomers competition – the most prestigious Burlesque competition in the country. 12 upcoming artists from all over the UK will compete for the title in front of a panel of industry professionals and an audience vote.

On Friday 29th April, there are two shows running back to back for a full night of exciting, cutting-edge entertainment. First up is a visiting show from London: The Cocoa Butter Club (TCBC) – the game-changing burlesque of ground-breakers, space makers and booty shakers! TCBC invites audiences to join a movement of culture, history and empowerment, to revel in the rhythm and soak up the stories. Featuring Burlesque, live music, Drag, circus and more from a cast of BIPOC performers from the world of alternative cabaret. Next up on Friday evening is The Late Night Quickie – A short but sweet foray into the edgier side of cabaret! Showcasing the finest neo-burlesque artists from all around the UK.

Sadie Sinner of The Cocoa Butter Club

On Saturday 30th April, the Hebden Bridge Burlesque Festival Gala takes place as the highlight of the weekend. Starring the crème de la crème of burlesque, cabaret, comedy and circus entertainment, the Gala will be headlined by international Burlesque royalty, Miss Exotic World & Queen of Burlesque 2018: INGA – who will be flying to the UK from the USA to perform exclusively at HBBF. The Gala will be hosted by Antipodean chanteuse KIKI DEVILLE – one of the most recognisable faces in the European cabaret world and star of BBC’s The Voice and judge on All Together Now. Kiki and Inga will be joined by an all-star cast bringing aerial circus acts, fire performances, hilarious comedy, clowning and mime performances and of course, the most glamorous and sensational burlesque acts.

The Festival goes out with a bang on Sunday 1st May with the most anticipated event of the weekend – Live & Stripping! The worlds of burlesque and live music collide in this electric, exciting show like has never seen before. Each internationally acclaimed artist will perform exclusive Burlesque acts accompanied by live band Cabaret Against the Machine with their eclectic and unique setlist of rock, pop, metal, funk, dance and blues tunes.

Kiki Deville

During the day on Saturday and Sunday, HBBF promises to keep attendees busy with a programme of fun and informative workshops and master classes from travelling artists – taking place at the Todfellows Space on Oxford Street, Todmorden. With topics ranging from Beginners’ Burlesque to Drag Aerobics to Retro Go-Go Dancing and much more.
There will also be a “Pop-up Vintage Hair & Beauty Parlour” taking place on Saturday afternoon ready for attendees to get glammed up and feel fabulous for the Saturday night Gala.

Possibly one of the most anticipated events of the weekend is Dolly Trolley’s Drag Bingo which returns after a sold-out success in 2019. This glitzy and glamorous game show for all to partake in, with camp anthems, prizes, lip-sync battles, bum shake-offs, conga lines, spot prizes and drag performances from Dolly Trolley throughout will be taking place at The Golden Lion, Todmorden on Sunday 1st May at 2pm.

Dolly Trolley

For more information and to book tickets, visit www.hebdenbridgeburlesquefestival.co.uk