In conversation with: Cosmic Slop
Sasha Shuttleworth chats to Will from Cosmic slop about the event series role as a fundraising party for MAP, Music and Arts Production charity. Cosmic Slop finds itself in the midst of battle to halt the building of residential blocks which threatens their existence.
Crossing Regent street and walking through the storage buildings and furnishings businesses which frame the roads of Mabgate, Leeds on a drizzly November evening I arrive at Hope House at around 9pm. As I stand waiting for Will one of the organisers of Cosmic Slop to let me in, there is already a queue forming to my right of people hoping to buy a ticket on the door for this evenings sold out Cosmic Slop.These prospective clubbers range in age from eighteen to late sixties. They have no idea who is headlining, as no headliner is ever announced at Cosmic Slop. They are also aware that there’s no guarantee they will get in, even after standing in the drizzle for two hours, but the atmosphere is friendly and relaxed as they chat amongst themselves.
Will comes and unlocks the heavy metal gates and ushers me through the cobbled courtyard into Hope House, a repurposed foundry now charity centre and party venue. During the week Hope House is home to MAP charity, a music and arts organisation which offers alternative arts education to young people at risk of exclusion. At the weekend it’s home to the Uk’s most prestigious not for profit party, Cosmic Slop. As we walk through the venue Will stops to show me the new bar space they are refurbishing, which hopefully should stop people from having to queue too long in the rain, Will comments, smiling. We grab two old desk chairs and wheel them through to the middle of the dance floor. Above us hang Cosmic Slops signature decor, giant balloons filled with helium that stick to the soft black fabric which lines the ceiling. The decks are already set up and whilst we talk over the next half hour their legendary hand made sound system (considered by many to be the best in the country) gently hums beside us.
Sasha
Hi, thank you so much for speaking to me, I am a huge fan of Cosmic Slop, I started coming to slop about six years ago and it’s been the event which has been my guiding light in what I look for in dance floors. We are going to chat about Slop’s latest development, Cosmic Slop Records as well as the party’s origins and introduce people who may not know about Slops relationship to MAP Charity, and the building Hope House.
So before we chat about Cosmic Slop Records, I wonder if you could give an outline of what Cosmic Slop is for those readers who have never heard of Slop or MAP charity before and how they have been intertwined for the past thirteen years?
Will
Yeah, so MAP Is the focus, really. MAP charity was founded eighteen years ago to provide alternative education opportunities and creative education to young people at risk of exclusion in Leeds, with the aim of giving them a space to realise their own potential and pursue creative careers. Cosmic Slop the night was set up to raise funds to pay for extras for MAP. Art supplies and staff’s wages at the start, because even though MAP get’s funding from the government to operate, the money raised by Slop’s tickets means map has extras to support the students getting involved. MAP was operating for four years before it’s founders (Tom Smith, Kat Soutar and Charlie Stobbart) held the first Cosmic Slop party. Over those years they started renovating this space we are sitting in now, and Tom started building the sound system. So yeah, the parties like were like, every month or every, every month or two, but kind of like irregular, just like when they when they could fit time to do it, because they were just kind of like getting MAP properly started and then, yeah, I think the first one was, and 2010, New Years eve which they through as a party to start a new decade.
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Sasha.
Such a momentous start date, I didn’t know that.
Will
yeah yeah I know, it was, they really went for it! and yeah, it’s been going for fourteen years now.
Sasha
How quickly did they realise they had something special? Did they immediately think this is something we should try and do regularly, or was it just a case of just really enjoying it and wanting to do another and it gradually gathering momentum?
Will
No, I think it was a slow starter and it’s just grown and grown over the years. Yeah, I remember, because I’ve been probably coming for about eight or nine years, right? I used to come through from Barnsley.
Sasha
Did you?
Will
Yeah, my sister studied in Leeds, so she used to travel through, and then she found out about Cosmic Slop and was like you should really come through and see this. I remember it being a lot quieter back then, but it’s just been slowly growing ever since.
Sasha
It’s interesting that you say it’s grown slowly, that makes sense in how people seem to approach the night. I’ve been coming since I was about twenty one I think, and yeah, and I’ve seen it kind of grow and change, but it was always interesting to me that, as you say someone told you to come along, but that’s how I found out about it. I didn’t read about it anywhere or see any posters for it, I was invited to come.
Will
yeah it has really been a word of mouth thing from start, and it’s just been organic like that, how it’s grown. People telling people to come, has helped it keep that vibe.
Sasha
I think you really get that sense being there. I was trying to think about how to describe the atmosphere of Slop to someone who has never been. I think you could walk into Cosmic Slop without knowing anything about it and you would still be hit with a sense of care put into the event. It doesn’t quite have the atmosphere of a house party, but it’s not at all like most clubs. There’s this undercurrent of care here that really shapes the way people interact at the party.
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Will
I think people understand what we’re doing, they understand the aim is to raise money for charity. We really try to tell people that before they come, we aren’t a normal club night. Even though we are a party and we want everyone to have a good time, it’s not just a party.
Sasha
Yeah and it really isn’t. There are so many parts of the event that let you know this isn’t just a run of the mill night. The free fruit on the bar, the energy of the team working, the way Lloyd who runs the door remembers every single person who has come before. These details really set the tone. I think so much of our behaviour is shaped by the atmosphere around us, all of that stuff sinks into you and you are left thinking, oh this is a special thing, a different thing, you know?
Will
Yeah, I mean, the room itself carries a lot of energy, it’s a really old foundry. It’s a hundred and something years old, made in the eighteen hundreds, this space where we are ( Will gestures around the empty dance floor), see next door where the amps are? (Will gestures to a small side room on the left of the dancefloor) That’s the vault where they used to pay all the workers out of, they used to keep all the cash in there/ The foundry itself used to be massive, this space we are now in is the last part standing.
Sasha
I was wondering if it used to be bigger when I was walking over. The last time I came, it was all covered in fog but this time I was really looking at it and trying to work out how old it was.
Will
Yeah, this half of the building was built one hundred years ago for offices as part of the foundry. After that there were a load of jewellers. There used to be like ten jewellery stalls here working away. There used to be a jeweller shop where our education department now is, so yeah it’s got a lot of history, and now it’s been turned into a dance floor!
Sasha
That’s such a big history.
Will
Yeah it’s amazing it didn’t just get turned into flats like so many other buildings have. But MAP just managed to do this massive fundraising campaign to buy Hope House, alongside funding from the EU and Leeds city council, and they did it! They bought Hope house and converted the upstairs into art studios (will points above us - the art studio’s are situated directly above the dance floor).
Sasha
And now, in Hope House alongside the monthly Cosmic Slop parties, MAP’s full education program, you have this new arm which is Cosmic Slop Records. Can you tell us more about that?
Will
yeah, Cosmic Slop records. So the team is Tom myself and Al. Whenever we are around we will get up there and just make tracks and when we have guests up playing at our parties we invite them to come in and make a track together before the party.
Sasha
It’s so magical that that creative space is directly above the dance floor. I feel like this space hums with all the energy from the nights before .
Will
Yeah it really is, and we’ve got a lathe up there so if we wanted to we could make a track together, cut it as a record and go downstairs and play it at the party.
Sasha
Have you managed to do that yet? It was one of the first things I was really struck by when we first started chatting about it back in February when you launched, how exciting that would be.
Will
Not yet, but we will! We have cut our own records, but we haven’t yet done the twenty four hour turnaround, it’s definitely a dream we have got to do! But since February we have fifteen releases on the record label, and we have just opened up our web shop so people are able to buy them online.
Sasha
You had a very exciting first release, Four Tet, who has been a long term supporter of Slop donated his project 871 a set of recordings made between nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety seven.
Will
Yeah so we have the first release of that project, and he also let us release his most recent album on cassette tape.
Sasha
Is it true that the young people at MAP help with the physical production and printing of both these records, as well as the design of the sleeves?
Will
Yeah that’s right, Jason Evans the artist who designs all of Four Tets artwork, came up and did a workshop with the students. It was a collaging workshop, where they then scanned the work and within a week it was up on the website.
Sasha
The speed of that turn around is so striking. Working with a group of people, not just young people, anyone and turning around a project in a week from idea to completion is really exciting. It also really speaks to the history of this space (sasha gestures to the room) as a space of production and how this new iteration of production in Hope House is so tied into benefiting the community.
Will
Yeah! And making that making accessible, so anyone can do it That’s what I really love about this place.
Sasha
I was reading the founding ideas of MAP and Cosmic Slop, the idea of the responsibility you have as an artist or business owner to young people in your community. It’s your job to pass on those skills and help people see their own potential, and their own power. It’s very easy to talk about that, but it’s harder to deliver that in a really exact way. The team here really seem to embody those idea’s it seems like you say you do it, this belongs to you, it’s yours. (At this point in our conversation we pause as some cosmic slop team walk in and say hi on their way to set up, outside the queue has already doubled in size)
Sasha
So MAPS has been going for seventeen years, one thing I wanted to ask you about is about the young people of MAPS continual involvement. Could you tell us about how their relationship with MAP and Slop continues after they graduate?
Will
Yeah loads of students come back down, a lot of them go off to college or start to work but quite a few of them keep being involved regularly as adults, for example, there’s someone called T she is a videographer now and does video editing for MAP, she edited the latest campaign . There’s another guy called Yefe who has done gigs here, he’s an amazing musician. There’s so many people who came through as young people in MAPs education department, took what they really liked about learning there and just thought, yeah I can do that and carried on with it. I think they just took what they really liked about learning here and thought I can do that, yeah, carried on doing it. Yeah. It’s amazing to see that people do really take it in. I think one of the things about MAP is people just want to be treated as people rather than kids. When you’re in school you just get treated like a kid but when these young people come to map, they are just treated like a person. IA lot of my students at MAP really love that aspect, and that it’s a safe space for them to come.
Sasha
And that sense of respect and equality, and I suppose also an expectation of mutual respect, carries through to Cosmic Slop as well. I think people treasure being at the event, not just because it can be so hard to get in with the strict ticket limit (Cosmic slop operates a two queue system one for ticket holders one for those who missed out, all tickets expire at midnight and the queues often reach all the way down the road). But also because it’s the culture of the space to do so. (At this point more of the slop team walk through carrying fruit to cut up for the bar and some of their hand printed merch which is individually screen printed by the team and sold in the cloakroom)
So we know how hard it is to grow and maintain spaces like this. You have recently raised over five thousand signatures on your petition to stop a residential building development overlooking Hope House, where are you at with that campaign?
Will
So the building development is going ahead. The petition was to stop the building of balconies which would directly overlook the Hope House’s courtyard. The courtyard is a big part of the education department’s space during the week, and at the weekend is the outside area for Cosmic Slop. It’s always been a really good thing that the education department and courtyard are tucked away. These young people who come through to work with us don’t want to be overlooked or observed while they are learning, they want that privacy.
Sasha
It’s hard not to feel like this is the only conversation we are having in nightlife at the moment, with so many similar campaigns taking place across the country, Night and Day’s licence dispute, Moth Clubs fundraiser to name just two.
Will
Yeah it is, but because we got so many signatures on the petition the Planning Committee on Leeds City Council have made the decision to put a clause in place so that the developers have to tell everyone that’s moving in what our operations are as a charity, But now we need to work out how to manage how they do that, thats whats next.
Sasha
So before I let you go to set up, can you quickly tell me about Mr Scruff’s up coming visit as a part of his miniature arena tour?
Will
Yeah he’s really supportive of MAP he’s just done a T-shirt and donated the full proceeds to MAP. We are really lucky, we get so much support from our artists. They see the work that goes into the education department and they want to support it, Four Tet’s and Mr Scruff’s donations are just two examples.
Sasha
There are so many big names that support Slop, I know that Charlie dark is a big supporter, For Tet, floating points, caribou, it’s great to see those artists with such commercial power being so proactive in supporting
Will
Yeah it’s amazing how they support us and donate their time and work.
Sasha
Thank you so much for chatting to me Will, I really enjoyed it and I really feel like i should let you get back to it now
Will
Thank you!
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Will gets up and immediately runs upstairs to let in more team members, within half an hour of our conversation finishing the dance floor is packed with moving smiling dancers, who stay there until the early hours of the morning.
To support MAP: https://mapcharity.org/
For cosmic Slop Records https://cosmicslop.org/
For more of Sasha Shuttleworths Work: https://sashashuttleworth.squarespace.com/
To listen to the original unabridged version of this interview: https://www.mixcloud.com/sasha-shuttleworth/