Connecting and Collecting Tangible and Intangible Sporting Heritage: How Leeds Museums and Galleries Recorded Intangible Sporting Heritage and Reflected This in Community Spaces

Abstract

In 2023 Leeds Museums and Galleries was awarded a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant to deliver the project #DYC On the pitch, off the pitch, sporting heritage in Leeds. Delivered between October 2023 - August 2025, this project worked with community partners to collect under represented and intangible aspects of the City’s sporting heritage, reflect these back into civic spaces and in turn collect aspects of these reflections. Delivery broke down into three elements. First, collecting oral histories of people involved in contemporary sports in the City. These ranged from grassroots to elite sports people, the common theme being that their stories were not currently represented in their City’s collections. Second, creating and collecting films capturing outdoor activities across the City, again capturing sports and experiences under represented in the museum collections. Thirdly, commissioning five murals and five digital art works representing sports and sports people not recognised in existing Civic artwork. The murals were delivered in public spaces and the digital art works collected by the museum to create a long term legacy of this impermanent public work. The commonality across all stages is that people were able to directly shape the representation of their history in a deeply personal, authentic way. By creating and collecting these digital and physical representations we have ensured the long term tangibility of these otherwise intangible experiences.

Presenters

Catherine Robins
Project Curator, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds, United Kingdom

Details

Presentation Type

Poster Session

Theme

Representations

KEYWORDS

Public art, Oral history, Film, Public engagement, Sport, Digital