Marching On Together: Celebrating 400 years of the greatest city

Anyone who knows me will understand how I feel about the great city of Leeds. It has provided me with every opportunity and led me where I am today. My heart and soul is a product of Leeds, so I was proud to reflect last month on its 400^th birthday.

I’m a proud Leeds lad, who likes to wear his heart on his sleeve. But do we do enough to talk up our city and show the rest of the world the value that we can provide?

Partnerships are important. We hear a lot about West Yorkshire, Yorkshire, The North, but what about our home city.

One of the words you might be fed up of hearing over the past few weeks is ‘Manchesterism’. For understandable reasons, the concept of a ‘way of doing things connected to a city’ is an attractive thought. But if ‘Leedsism’ were to exist, what would it look like?

Unlike our noisy neighbour over the hills, Yorkshire’s biggest city and the place I have always called home, has never been as forwards about pushing itself into the limelight. I would define Leedism as ‘quietly, confidently and competently getting on with the job’. We’re not about being brash, or self-congratulatory.

I was honoured to speak at the city’s 400 year celebrations in July, and I reflected on storytelling: are we selling ourselves – our organisations and institutions, our history and our present - as we should?

John Smeaton, for example, was a benevolent Leeds figure whose work had a global impact, as was Joseph Priestley—yet neither is as widely known or celebrated as they should be.

Part of this is about competitiveness. This may sound strange coming from the chief executive of a major sporting organisation, but from a wider perspective, the competitive tension that exists elsewhere isn’t as evident in Leeds, and that’s no bad thing.

Rather than thinking about getting one over on the competition, Leeds can act as true collaborators, adding up to a greater number than the sum of our parts. And for a city of almost a million people that would make for a formidable force.