Welcome to the Advent Calendar, day 6, where a community shows how much it can grow from a night benighted by a troubled few several years ago.
This post is also available as podcast, you can find it by searching for Harehills Love on Spotify or Google Podcasts, or via Anchor and listening here
There’s no secret that Harehills had a bad bonfire night a few years ago – it was a tough night. Young people across Leeds came together to cause considerable trouble, putting themselves and others at risk and requiring heavy policing.
But I must stress this, this wasn’t just a Harehills young people problem. There were young people from all over Leeds that came together for this. Harehills was just the location.
Considering how many young people we have in Harehills, even if they had all been from Harehills, they would have been a tiny minority spoiling the night for everyone. So it was always unfair the reputational damage this nearly caused to our area and young people (who are generally fantastic and a constant source of inspiration for me and many others).
We also saw the best of our community that night, with people from our youth organisations getting out there to try and help diffuse the trouble, and the police worked hard to keep people safe and bring the violence to an end.
This post isn’t about that night, though. That’s some background – because I want to celebrate the fantastic efforts by many people to see that this doesn’t happen again. This hasn’t been done with curfews, excessive policing, or anything. Instead, local groups got together to put on programs of events to give young people places to go and things to do, from Halloween to bonfire night.
This has involved coordination by many youth groups, the police, our councillors, and the Leeds Youth Service (East North East). And everyone else, who I don’t yet know to credit, but all deserving.
And for two years, it’s been an unqualified success. Not just because we haven’t had similar issues, but because young people have had fantastic times. 2022 was the second year of this coordinated effort, and I regret that I’m old now because it looks so fun 😀
Leaflets for CATCH Leeds and Junior Sports Hub
Leaflets for CATCH Leeds and Junior Sports Hub
A summary of all the events, activities, an services at work that week, the result of so many people working wonderfully and successfully together.
I’ve written a lot, but I wanted you to know where this came from, but below you can see amazing twitters from the night’s activities and see what the kids got up to.
And just to be clear, our community has always been aware of the problems associated with bonfire night, even if no one expected the trouble that came, that same year, in the run-up to Bonfire Night, CATCH Leeds ran an awareness campaign, with a series of videos and interviews on their YouTube channel, led by their fantastic young volunteers, which I thought were fantastic at the time, and are still relevant now.
And they also have a page of fantastic resources for Bonfire Night awareness, education and activities for all ages https://catchleeds.co.uk/bonfire-period-safety
Thank you to our amazing organisations, volunteers and our amazing young people who have continually shown actually we have some of the best young people in the city, in my opinion
Harehills ❤️ Love 
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