Yorkshire Dance is based in a beautiful old industrial building in Quarry Hill. While we’re immensely proud of our brickwork and the unusual old mechanisms dotted around our walls, the downside to our building is its age.

Image: A sign in our stairwell hints at our history as an old clothing mill building

For the last 10 years we’ve had an enormous hole in our roof (it’s so big you can actually see it on google maps) above the back of one of our studios. We haven’t been in a position to fix the hole so the only thing separating us from the elements is a large piece of plywood.

Everyone who has worked at Yorkshire Dance over the last 10 years has at some point been involved in placing buckets under the hole to catch rain or chasing down pigeons who’ve tried to sneak in of a morning for a free dance class. Our Facilities team are now skilled weather forecasters and on hearing of storm Darragh in December immediately shot upstairs with 13 buckets to catch the worst of the rain.

Image: A somewhat ironic sign cautions us that the floor might be wet! 

After over 10 years of buckets and pigeons we are finally in a position to get the roof fixed. So in December we asked all our community for help to raise the final £1,500 we need to get our roof fixed.

Over 100 people from ex staff to tenants to partners to artists and participants who use our studios came forward to chip in for a roof tile. We raised a massive £1,834. We can’t begin to tell you how grateful we are!

We reached our target and we finally have a roofer coming in replace our mouldy wet plywood with some shiny new roof tiles.

Enormous thank you to all our roof tile sponsors!