Slung Low

Founded in 2000, Slung Low is an award-winning theatre company specialising in making epic productions in non-theatre spaces, often with large community performance companies at their heart.

Our venues is available to other artists and community groups as performance and cultural spaces to anyone who needs them. The equipment and vehicles of the company are also lent to those who have need.

We also manage an ancient semi-natural woodland, approx. 40 minutes drive from Holbeck. This has a canopied outdoor classroom and acres of space to explore and learn in. It is open to the public (go and try the swing), and anybody who has need. Again on a Pay What You Decide basis.

For 15 months during the pandemic we ran a non-means tested self-referral food bank from The Holbeck, the oldest working men’s club in the UK. Artistic Director, Alan Lane’s book ‘The Club on the Edge of Town: A Pandemic Memoir’, published by Salamander Street Publishing, covers this period.

Slung Low created ‘Flood’ by James Phillips, a year-long epic for Hull UK City of Culture told online, live in Hull and on BBC2. Over a half million people saw a part of ‘Flood’ and the show won a Royal Television Society Yorkshire Award for excellence.

At the start of 2020 we made The Good Book, a short film – the first with Leeds People’s Theatre.

Recent work – on an epic scale using cityscapes as backdrops – includes ‘Mapping The City’ (with iMove Yorkshire Cultural Olympiad in Hull), ‘Blood and Chocolate’, (York Theatre Royal & Pilot Theatre), ‘The White Whale’ (Leeds Inspired) and ‘Camelot: The Shining City’ (Sheffield Theatres and Sheffield Peoples’ Theatre).
Our Artistic Director, Alan Lane, co-directed the opening ceremony of Leeds 2023, The Awakening, at Headingley Stadium in January 2023

Slung Low is one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations and supported by Leeds City Council.

We believe that access to culture is a fundamental part of a happy life. We believe that actions, however small, can have big impact. We believe that culture can change our world for the better.

We are uncompromising in our beliefs.

We look forward to welcoming you.