Compass Festival announce 2022 programme

A supermarket soundscape, a satellite crash-landing to reveal musings on Black  identity, an alternative citizens advice bureau, a vending machine with stories to tell and a chance to find out what Leeds ‘really’ tastes like.

Friday 18 – Sunday 27 November 2022

Across Leeds
– Reality blurs with the imaginary in Wondermart, an interactive audio tour which turns four
Leeds’ Morrisons supermarket aisles into intimate playgrounds
– Satellite, an Afro shaped pop-up venue, documents and celebrates communities across the
Black diaspora in Leeds, the UK and beyond with a series of events focusing on image and
afrofuturism
– Soak up niche knowledge with Citizens Advise, an opportunity to give and receive advice from
the people of Leeds, with a rolling programme of Chief Advisors tackling topics of the day
– HUNGRY GHOSTS pays tribute to Black Caribbean matriarchs, Grandmothers and ancestors,
through a series of cooking events and a ‘vending machine’ which explore the impact of food,
family and how the practice of cooking is linked to identity
– Help create the first ‘Leeds Sauce’ – get hands-on with the pop-up processing plant and
become part of the conversation around what makes Leeds, ‘Leeds’

The interactive, Leeds-wide festival returns for its sixth outing, featuring five unique, interactive
installations exploring capitalism, culture and community. Compass Festival presents its first
post-covid iteration, in its regular November festival slot, with works rooted in the city’s culture and cultural institutions such as Kirkgate Market, Leeds High Street and across a host of exciting pop up spaces.

HUNGRY GHOSTS, by artist Amy Lawrence and collaborators, reinvents memories of matriarchal
cooking and follows the shifting relationship between food, identity and place visible in shared
experiences of cooking and eating. This is channelled through passed-down recipes, seeing them as experimental stories which shape our identities and ancestral experiences. The work is playfully distributed through VENDING, a free working vending machine in Leeds Kirkgate Foodhall, eating event Festival of Festival, an ode to sweet dumplings given to Foodhall visitors, and across Compass Festival at private Black Eating Clubs for invited guests.Leeds Sauce from Popeye Collective encourages you to take part in the journey of a sauce made out of the key ingredients of Leeds (Rhubarb, Beer and Roses), enveloping yourself in the sauce’s process by
bottling your own Leeds Sauce or being on the tasting panel. This is the latest in Popeye Collective’s

Press contact: Sharon at SM Publicity – [email protected] or on 07970 178643
series of work with Compass Festival, after Mushy Pea Chaat formed part of the festival’s Compass Podcast in 2021. Although not intricately tied with food and culture, Wondermart from British-Italian theatre maker and artist Silvia Mercuriali, is an audio adventure set in a supermarket. Participants are asked to explore the aisles of Morrisons, hold items to their ears, draw in the condensation on the freezer doors and reassess an environment we take for granted. Previous reviews describe the experience as “shining a new light on the quotidian of human experience” (Irish Times) and “a delicious anti-consumerist meditation through the
dream state of aisles” (The Herald, Scotland).

Citizens Advise invites the people of Leeds to give and take advice from fellow Loiners on all sorts of topics – be it DIY, love, grief or even poaching an egg. Continuing Empathy Museum’s award-winning series reimagining the High Street, their cosy space in St John’s Centre is an opportunity to take a break from shopping, get warm with tea and cake, and be inspired by a rolling programme of Chief Advisors answering questions, concerns, queries and dilemmas. In response to a global decline in empathy, and increasing distrust in politicians and experts, this project encourages people to share their own advice, fostering exchange and connection between the city’s dwellers.

Satellite is not just an installation but a festival-made space to document and celebrate stories,
communities and individuals across the Black diaspora in the UK and beyond. The events inside include Hairlooms, a 1-1 participatory performance hair jewellery workshop, futuristic dressing-up box X photobooth Authors of Our Own Image, food, community, conversation and collective readings withLeeds-based artist Musufing Whyles in Do Yuh Read Mi, plus Satellite X Sable Radio: Orbital, a collaborative audio-celestial broadcast from Sable Radio and curator Toni Lewis (aka The Astrothot) highlighting Black women in creative industries in the North .

Peter Reed, Director, Compass Festival, said: “2022 sees Compass Festival return to its traditional
November home following our 2021 ‘slow’ festival, staged throughout last year due to COVID restrictions. Featuring five bold artists from across the UK, these city wide visual spectacles for the senses explore community, loss, tradition, memorialisation, identity and connection. This year’s festival is rooted in bringing communities back together, fostering conversation. collaboration, and communal activities.

“Held amidst a cost of living crisis, Wondermart and Leeds Sauce explore our relationship to food,
consumerism and the environment while Empathy Museum is a creative response to our times,
suggesting that solutions to our problems may be found within the community. Through their activities, Satellite and Hungry Ghosts aim to bring Black communities together with Hungry Ghosts celebrating the matriarch through storytelling, recipes and cooking and Satellite landing as a stage and a sanctuary for UK Black culture now.”

Web and Social Media links:
Compass Festival 2022
Press contact: Sharon at SM Publicity – [email protected] or on 07970 178643
https://compassliveart.org.uk | T: @CompassFestLDS | IG: compassfestlds | #CompassFestival2022
Artists:
Leeds Sauce (Popeye Collective)
https://www.popeyecollective.org | IG: popeye_collective | #PopeyeCollective
Citizens Advise (Empathy Museum)
https://www.empathymuseum.com/ | T: @empathymuseum | IG: empathymuseum
HUNGRY GHOSTS (Amy Lawrence)
https://a-lawrence.com | IG: _a_lawrence
Satellite (Toni Lewis)
https://tonilewis.co.uk | T: _thesatellite | IG: _thesatellite
Wondermart (Silvia Mercuriali)
www.silviamercuriali.com | T: @silviamercuria1 | IG: @silviamercuriali_artist

NOTES TO EDITORS
About Compass Festival
Compass commission and present interactive live art projects in Leeds. They run an artist residency programme, present standalone projects and exhibitions and artist development initiatives. Compass is also the driving force behind the biennial Compass Festival.
Since 2011 Compass has been animating the city with brilliant interactive live art projects in which they invite the public to join them in playful enquiry, silent contemplation, astonishing feats of madness, hospitality and communality within and beyond the theatre or the gallery, in the places where we live,  work and play.

They believe that everyone can enjoy the very best of contemporary live art and work closely with
partners around the city and beyond to present thought provoking, entertaining and moving projects in a range of settings including libraries, markets, museums, shopping centres and the city streets. They take time to work with artists and communities making sure the projects they commission are considered and fully engaged with their surroundings.

Listings Information:
HUNGRY GHOSTS | Presented by Amy Lawrence and collaborators
Kirkgate Market Foodhall
Leeds Kirkgate Market
34 George Street, Leeds
LS2 7HY
18 – 26 November (excluding Sundays)
10am – 4pm Daily
Leeds Sauce | Presented by Popeye Collective
Kirkgate Market 1904 Hall
Leeds Kirkgate Market
34 George Street, Leeds
LS2 7HY
18 – 27 November (excluding Sundays)
Press contact: Sharon at SM Publicity – [email protected] or on 07970 178643