Client: Caddick Developments
Sometimes a project comes out of the blue and it changes your perception, forces you in new directions to expand your mind and learn new skills – makes you grow in a way you hadn’t imagined and best of all brings a whole new set of people into your life who inspire and excite you. This is exactly what SOYO Leeds did for us.
What started out as a request to help with a guest list has progressed beyond what we could have envisaged. We ended up organising the launch party for said guest list to attend. We were asked to be disruptive, to create an event not usually associated with property launches. The kind of brief we love.
SOYO Leeds is a £600million development in the heart of Leeds’ cultural quarter and so we wanted to include as many of our new neighbours as possible. We hired DJ Paul Dunphy, who then also worked at the BBC; a super cool student band from Leeds Conservatoire and ‘disrupted’ the evening with a mini flash mob of street dancers from Phoenix Dance, who took off their suits to reveal SOYO Leeds t-shirts as part of the performance. And we held the launch in The Wardrobe – a legendary bar and events space on the SOYO doorstep.
Prior to the main event we held a press briefing - which attracted all the great Leeds media and resulted in oodles of coverage including front page of the Yorkshire Evening Post and interviews on BBC Radio Leeds. We wrote the launch newspaper featuring interviews with local ‘Faces’ and an overview of the development – and then they asked us to stay long-term.
Four years on and we are still pushing our creative boundaries. When the first Moda building reached topping out, we put a band on the roof to celebrate – you can see the video here. We followed this by organising a party at Leeds City College, which attracted the city’s great and good including then new West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin. We arranged extra catering from our friends at Sarto and cocktails from The Wardrobe. It was fantastic, apparently – I tested positive for COVID on the morning of the event so was banned from being anywhere near it. Again, we (the team – not me!) hosted press interviews and tours of the new buildings.
We’ve worked with LeedsBID to bring the Jurassic Trail to SOYO and put a dinosaur on the plinth in Playhouse Square. We’ve negotiated and managed sponsorship with Leeds Light Night since we started and last October brought the End to End installation to the site, inspired by the iconic Slinky, which attracted more than 2,500-3,000 people over the event’s two nights.
We organise and host regular stakeholder meetings with all our neighbours to keep them up to date with building work on site, planned activities, and we all work together on events, cross-promotion and the safety and appearance of the area.
Our current to do list includes working with Emma Hardaker, who we recently appointed as our SOYO resident artist, on a series of projects to animate the new public space; hosting Leeds City College Graduation Art Show; a UK REiiFF celebration; presenting ideas for Phase 3 of the development; preparing for Leeds Bear Hunt; and planning for the next stakeholder meeting. In between we are constantly chatting to Leeds Playhouse and all our neighbours plus we also manage the SOYO social media channels.
The spin offs have also been great – introducing Caddick Developments to New Citizens to host The Garden Party at their City One site last year, which is returning with other events for 2023, is a highlight.
So, if you need a space activating, give us a call…