Alison Phelps
Resident of Chapeltown, Leeds for the last 50 years. Sometime screen printer, community worker, college tutor, justice educator; currently interested in co-housing and local history.
Our vision is economic, environmental, racial and social justice and peace in Leeds and the surrounding region.
Our mission is to create opportunities for people of diverse experiences and backgrounds to collaboratively engage, explore and transform complex issues impacting the city.
Our work and working culture is rooted in our shared values.
We organise in a decentralised way, hosting many projects which align with our shared values and vision. Here’s an overview of our current work, along with links to each project page.
Born in 2002, we’ve been actively organising in Leeds and Yorkshire for 22 years. Here’s a snippet of what we’ve been up to over the years…
Our work began in 2002, initiated by a small group of people who saw the need for a non-partisan initiative that could build relationships across differences in our diverse urban context in Leeds.
2003 saw 20 organisations collaborate under the banner ‘Together for Peace’ to produce a multimedia festival in partnership with Bradford Peace Festival. The intention was to help people and groups in Leeds to engage with and work towards all that the word ‘peace’ means. In 2023 we also played an active role in the annual Leeds Peace Poetry competition, a project we continued to organise for ten years until 2013.
By 2005 the festival had grown to include 60 partner organisations, with the intention to learn collaboratively how to make our city and our future good for people and the planet. In 2005 we also began contributing to the In One City series of five films about Leeds (with Lippy films). This partnership with Lippy People continued until 2008.
We coordinated the Planet Leeds street festival for five years from 2007, working with a range of organisations, groups and volunteers to host events celebrating the city’s rich cultural diversity. We continued to organise this initiative until 2012.
T4P also hosted the first Leeds Summat in 2009, working alongside a number of partners and community volunteers. These popular all-day mass-participation gatherings featured a range of activities, including headline speakers, workshops, networking, food, music, arts, film, sport, and much, much more. 2009 also saw the start of our work convening and coordinating a Jewish-Muslim dialogue group, which involved over 35 people during its four-year lifespan. This included a shared ‘learning journey’ to Israel-Palestine with ten participants.
We hosted another very big and successful Summat Gathering in Leeds. Since then, we’re delighted that our friends at Leeds for Change and Leeds Tidal picked up the baton and hosted another three Summat gatherings in Leeds.
In 2014 we launched the first Leeds Poverty Truth Commission, inspired by the impactful work being carried out in other cities. This included an Opening Event (highlights video; full event video), getting to know each other as people and deciding the 3 issues that the Challenge team would take on, forming working groups to explore themes of mental health and poverty, young people achieving their potential, and the stigma of poverty for individuals and neighbourhoods, and closing with an event at the Civic Hall and publication of our final report.
This year saw the launch of the second Leeds Poverty Truth Commission
For 15 years a core team of three (Ed Carlisle, Jill Mann and Mike Love) worked on a diverse portfolio, always in partnership with other organisations. In 2017 it felt time to review our approach. We undertook some focused learning to see how we could adapt for the future. As a result of this we decided to explore a different way of working, integrating more people into the team which has expanded our network and initiatives. We began operating as a group of associates who pool our time and resources to work together on areas that matter to us where we can make a difference.
Together for Peace was approached to support the delivery of a pilot programme called ‘Real Conversations’ in Leeds and Bradford during spring 2018. The project was a partnership between The Movement for Reform Judaism and the Islamic Society of Britain. It aimed to improve the way young British Muslims and Jews perceive each other by enabling conversations on potentially divisive topics in single-identity (i.e. all Muslim or all Jewish) groups. The pilot focused on delivering workshops to Key Stage 4 students and partnered with ten schools across the area.
Between 2019 and 2020 Together for Peace worked as Learning Partner for Leeds Gypsy and Traveller Exchange (Leeds GATE) alongside several Leeds-based organisations, exploring systemic change and the impact of solidarity between marginalised groups. T4P’s role was to act as a supporter, guide and ‘critical friend’. It was a dynamic rather than static approach, using an ongoing action learning process to ‘collect and reflect’ rather than evaluate. 2019 also saw the start of a series of evaluative work with young people, commissioned by GIPSIL, a large Third Sector organisation in Leeds. Our role was to review and make recommendations on two of their projects with vulnerable young people, focusing on young people’s mental health & well-being and their transition from GCSEs through to further education, employment or training. T4P carried out 3 evaluations between 2019 and 2023.
T4Ps climate hub network grew to four more areas – Alwoodley, Armley, Little London and Horsforth.
We held the first Big Up Festival of Arts and Social Change at The Tetley which was a culmination of months of community building. The festival built networks between creatives, social change-makers and audiences, with the intention of making the voices of change too loud to ignore. In 2023 we also hosted a three day training on ‘The Art of Hosting the Conversations that Matter’ for people, and those in the public sector and third sector interested in facilitating generative conversations that lead to actions and far reaching impact.
2024 included the launch of our 4th Poverty Truth Commission. It was built around the ‘UnFairground’, a creative (and rigged) experience of games devised by the community commissioners.
Our project teams are made up of Staff Members, Associates and Trustees. Some Teams also have their own Volunteer Networks, Steering Groups, and project Partners, which you can read about on their project page. Our Teams include:
Big Up
Asher Jael, Tami Pein, Olivier Nkunzimana, Ed Carlisle & Mike Love
Good Deeds
Mahbub Nazir
Leeds Poverty Truth Commission
Kidist Teklemariam, Ian Mayhew, Andrew Grinnell, Jon Dorsett & Vik Perrett
Climate Action Leeds
Sue Hoey, Joy Justice, Alice Wallace, Debbie Purdon, Beth Bingley, Jenifer Walper Roberts
Leeds Community-led Research Network
Alice Wallace, Sue Balcomb, Mike Love & Irena Bauman
Finance & Operations
Claire Welling, Maia Kelly & Mike Love
Resident of Chapeltown, Leeds for the last 50 years. Sometime screen printer, community worker, college tutor, justice educator; currently interested in co-housing and local history.
Ed is a Leeds City Councillor (for the Green Party) and community activist. Originally from Sheffield, he studied at Leeds and Bradford Universities, and has lived and worked in inner-city south Leeds over the past 20 years. He’s been involved with T4P since 2003, variously as a trustee, project manager, and volunteer. Ed has also co-founded and/or co-led a wide number of community initiatives, including the Big Bike Fix, the Holbeck Viaduct project, Beeston Festival, Leeds Repair Café, Cross Flatts parkrun, South Leeds Life newspaper, and the regional Same Skies thinktank; he’s supported dozens of other projects. Ed is married to Tania, with two children.
Gillian is based in Leeds. Over thirty years as a lawyer and artist she has engaged with third sector organisations in non-executive roles across a range of sectors, including the textile industry, arts organisations, and diversity, faith and equality initiatives.
Olivier Nkunzimana is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo and has been living and working in Leeds for the last 16 years. Olivier has been involved in Together for Peace since his arrival in Leeds in 2006 through different projects and events. He considers himself a citizen of the world who is passionate about global cultures, languages, and world views. The love of nations largely informs his vocation; in the last 15 years Olivier has been working with newly arrived refugees from around the world, supporting them to integrate in their beloved city of Leeds. In his spare time he enjoys playing and watching football, and is increasingly enjoying outdoor activities — especially hiking.
Born in Halifax, raised in Leeds and now in Bradford for the last decade. Working as a teacher for the last 14 years as well as on community based projects for young people. I got involved with Together for Peace when I went on a Learning Journey to Israel-Palestine in 2013. This work towards interfaith dialogue and sharing space with people to appreciate commonalities over differences has been something I’ve always resonated with. My current work as a teacher working with young people from inner city Bradford presents itself with opportunities to encourage them to explore their own identities and how they can develop their skills to make a difference to their communities.
Mike has been with T4P from very near the beginning in 2002 when he became chair of the T4P festival committee. He went on to work continuously as a T4P practitioner until becoming a trustee in 2022. He previously worked as a solicitor specialising in housing rights and has been on the boards of several local and national charities. He was a long-time member and sometime vice-chair of the city’s communities partnership board. A connector of people and of ideas, and with a deep love for Leeds, he has recently completed his PhD on the politics of cities. Since 2008 he has been a practitioner and trainer in the ‘Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter’ (AoH).
Our current funders are
The National Lottery Climate Action Fund
Tudor Trust
Leeds City Council
UK Research & Innovation