081024 RED PROGRAMME OLLY AND ALI

The Leeds Shopping Centre and Food Hall, the core, has closed and will be demolished to make way for student accommodation. The council aims to revitalize the area and alleviate pressure on other residential areas. The closure is expected to benefit businesses in the city centre. The late Nadine Senior, MBE, founder of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, has been honored with a blue plaque by Leeds Civic Trust. The plaque is the 200th created by the trust. Calverley Old Hall has reopened after a £1.7 million restoration. The Grade 1 listed building is now open to the public. Leeds Discovery Centre is undertaking a cleanup operation on a mammoth tusk found in Temple Newsom. The tusk is an important part of Leeds' prehistoric history. Roadworks outside Leeds Station have been deemed unsafe by a visually impaired commuter. The construction is causing accessibility issues and is not expected to be complete until 2026. A Leeds greengrocer encourages people to eat Good afternoon, it's 3.30, I'm Oliver Bolton, and I'm Abigail Johnson, and this is Leeds Hacks Radio News. Plenty to get through today, including why roadworks outside Leeds Station have been branded unsafe. We go behind the scenes at the unveiling of a multi-million pound house restoration in Caledonia, and we find out why fruit seems to be off the menu for many young people. But first, Leeds Shopping Centre and Food Hall, the core which opened its doors in 1987, has finally closed. The council are putting plans to start demolition, aiming to turn it into a luxury accommodation for students. So Ali, why has the council decided to close the core? Well the core itself was a pretty neglected space compared to its more successful neighbours Trinity and Merion. The plan was to revitalise this space to bring student lives back to residential areas like Hyde Park and Headingley, and to breathe life back into the centre. Tom Godhall is a councillor for Hyde Park and Headingley. He told me there were a lot of challenges for students moving into the city. There's over 100,000 students when you add all the institutions together. The council has really encouraged building accommodation in the city centre to kind of alleviate the pressure in Headingley and Hyde Park. Nearly all of the accommodation at the centre is very expensive, so a lot of students can't afford it. So if a lot of students can't afford it, then why is there a record amount of student accommodation being built? Well by creating new accommodations and having residents in the city centre, it helps businesses. I spoke to managers at Poco and Pop Boutique. We recently announced we've had a high increased number of students coming in, which is good. I feel pretty confident that for us, the business can have really, really good growth and revenue. Even when you walk down the street to get here, a lot of the surrounding businesses are now closed down. So it's like quite a nothing street. So maybe if they're knocking down the cord to avoid it for accommodation, it just got so much more traffic of people. And the shops would literally be on our doorstep. So it's very good in that sense. Leeds Civic Trust have honoured a visionary dance educator. The late Nadine Senior, MBE, founded the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Chapeltown. Jacob Grattidge is there now. Now Jacob, how has Nadine Senior, MBE been honoured? Thank you, Adrian. Oh yes, I'm here at the Leeds Contemporary School of Dance. And the Civic Trust have honoured Nadine with a very, very own blue plaque. And I'm just going to go over to read it for you. Nadine Senior, MBE, visionary teacher who championed dance education in Leeds. She founded the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Many former pupils have become successful professionals in the arts. Now that's the important bit, because I call up with one of these professionals, Sharon Watson, MBE. I've known Nadine since I was nine years old and I've never not known her to be influential and creative in terms of how she has influenced the arts and creative education. And who else was at the unveiling, Jane? Oh, there were hundreds of people at the unveiling. Nadine was such an important figure in the art community. One attendee was the poet and activist Khadija Ibrahim. I met her and she touched on the importance of honouring figures like Nadine. Figures such as Nadine Senior, it's important to honour them because of the legacy that they've created and the opportunity that they've created for people in the community. Lord Mayor, Councillor Abigail Tatoon was also there, I caught up with her. She said that Nadine's contribution to the city was priceless. Knowing the history of Nadine and the impact that she's had within the dance industry in this city, especially with young people, priceless, you know, so very, very important what we've done today. It was also an important day for the Civic Trust. How many packs have they created now? Yes, Ollie, with the addition of Nadine, it's just gone over 200. She joined quite a long list of people, such as Louis Lee Prince, producer of the world's first moving picture, shot in our very own Leeds, and author J.R.R. Tolkien, who lived in Leeds during the 1920s. Now there's no doubt that Nadine Senior will be remembered for years to come, thanks to this plaque, but also thanks to her educational vision, teaching and leadership style. Well, thanks, Jacob. That was Jacob Grotted reporting live from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Chapel Town. Calverley Old Hall has reopened its 800-year-old doors to the public after a £1.7 million restoration. The building was built in the 12th century in the suburbs of West Leeds. Lara Gohan went for a look back in time. I'm here at Calverley Old Hall, where a little piece of West Yorkshire history is back. An 800-year-old hall has reopened its doors after a major restoration. The two-year project has finally been completed and is now open to the public. I spoke to Hannah Thompson about how the community have tried to keep the history of the Old Hall alive. So we're at Calverley Old Hall. So Calverley is from 1320 originally, and I do all the public engagement on site. So we basically do absolutely anything and everything you can think of. So we've made these benches that we're sitting on here in public engagement workshops. We're trying very much to bring skills training back. To keep the house in pristine condition, there is a team of hard-working houseworkers. I spoke to Sarah to see what her job entails. We all have special training in how to take care of painted chambers, and we're not allowed to use any wet products in there, and we're not allowed to touch the walls or anything like that. Taking it back in time, I spoke to a member of the free company. He was just at all of his finery for the grand reopening. The three aspects, the civilian aspect, we've got weaving here and all the food preparation at the time through to the military side. I'm a gunner. Nick here is an archer with a famous English longbow. Wayne and Dalu over there have got a whole range of melee weapons that the men at arms and knives would have fought with in hand-to-hand combat. The Grade 1 listing building received a £1.7 million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and is now restored and rescued, ready for the next generations to enjoy. A clean-up operation on the 38,000-year-old mammoth tusk is underway at Leeds Discovery Centre. The tusk was found in Temple Newsome in the 1960s and is a key part of Leeds' prehistoric history. Jed Atkinson, pantheologist at Leeds Discovery Centre, spoke about the importance of impressive fossils such as the tusk. Fossils quite often are way in the geology, but if you live in Leeds, and you think the only place you can find fossils is Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast, where everything is like the Anaheim, you're not going to get into it. But if you find that, actually, just down the road from where I live, there was a mammoth found, that's really cool, where is this now, I'm going to go and see it, then you can maybe get those sparks lit. It is thought that mammoths roamed the West Yorkshire landscape during the last ice age, around 75,000 years ago. This was just before they became extinct. Dwelling in the icy tundra, these huge creatures were an important part of cave dwelling humans' survival, and have become an iconic symbol of prehistoric times, along with other animals, such as the saber-toothed tiger. Jed went on to describe the process by which the tusk is being preserved, preventing things such as delamination, which is where layers of the tusk shed due to dryness, is highly important. In most instances, it's a thing we use called paraloid, which is a kind of acrylic, and you coat it in this, you dilute it up in acetone, and you paste it on, the acetone evaporates off, it soaks the resin into the band, the acrylic into the band, and preserves them, and keeps them stable. These sorts of things don't suffer from pyrite decay, which is invulnerable. Earlier this year, it was reported that the de-extinction of all the mammoths is well underway, with the appropriately named Colossal Biotech Company stating that it plans to reintroduce the prehistoric legend back into the modern world. Jed spoke about these plans and his thoughts on the matter. The road works around Leeds City Station have been deemed unsafe by a visually impaired man. Winston Stafford commutes to Leeds multiple times a week and faces a different battle with accessibility each time. Our reporter Daisy Short headed to the station to take a look at what was going on. Well, I feel a lot more confident walking on the road part, where it's wider and it's more accessible than I did going down the narrow channel. I'm currently stood outside Leeds City train station and the chaos of construction is hard to ignore. There are barricades everywhere and the temporary footpaths seem hard to navigate, especially for those with sight-related disabilities. This disruption seems like a massive inconvenience for daily commuters and it's also a reminder of how these public spaces overlook the needs of those with disabilities. The construction's been going on and I face a lot of accessibility issues. Mainly the fact that, as construction goes on, the layout changes in the area. I get used to one way that the area's laid out and then the next day or next week it's all changed again. The £46.1 million development outside the station is not due to be complete until 2026, meaning that Winston and many others under similar circumstances will face this issue for almost another two years. So everyone, the walkways are just not wide enough. There's too much moving traffic going up and down and it makes it very unsafe. This all should have been thought out a lot better and it's quite frankly just ridiculous. A Leeds greengrocer says people should be getting more fruit in their diet. It says a report this year by the Food Foundation found the cost of living meant people are putting less in their baskets. This man works in the heading of the greengrocer. A standard part of a very healthy diet is to maintain eating fruit and vegetables with everything I suppose is how to maintain your body correctly. 22-year-old marathon runner Ben McBride says his diet is mainly fruit and vegetables. I just try to eat at least two or three bananas a day, especially when I'm running, like a banana for a run and then any fruit left in the house like strawberries and raspberries as well. And then I probably eat a lot of prunes through the week. Well I certainly don't get my five a day. Do you get yours? I struggle sometimes. It's easy to forget I think, yeah. Thank you for listening. This is Leeds Tax Radio News. I look forward to doing this over again next week from 11.30am. Goodbye for now. you