Celebrating an event in Leeds: Idea generation

When identifying an event that had taken place in Leeds and could be celebrated, I tried to find relations between what I am interested in and what I already knew about the city. This is a list of the events considered:

- Chapeltown Riots (difficult concept to celebrate, but these events had interesting reasons)

- Looked into Celtic heritage, but there was nothing remarkable. Same as pre-historian.

- Multi-culturality of the city

- Louise Le Prince: the person who first recorded video footage. Did it first at Oakwood Grange, in Roundhay Park and secondly at Leeds Bridge in 1988. He mysteriously disappeared being the father of cinematography.

- JRR Tolkien - The author of The Lord of the Rings once lived in Leeds. There's a theory that Kevin Grady proposes where it seems that Tolkien was inpired by the Meanwood Valley when writing the LOTR. Another theory is that the two towers might be inspired in the tower of the Leeds Uni (white) and the church down the road (black).

- Another idea was to do something with Leeds Market, as it is the largest covered market in Europe.


The three ideas presented were Le Prince, Tolkien and Leeds Market, and the one with more potential seemed to be the first one.

Some of the ideas were to use more than just colours, also typefaces. Finding a way to show Leeds then, and Leeds now. This inspired the idea of shooting the bridge from the exact same spot as Le Prince did in his day. As it is a second or two of footage running in a low frame rate, the frames can be used individually for a flipbook or something similar. But since the publication is going to be exhibited, that's not the best idea. Do something related with time and the bridge.

The following examples are visual ideas that represent duality, which can be used to represent past and present, using colours, shapes and type.