Culture
The city hosts an annual Pride Parade (Leicester Pride), a Caribbean Carnival (the largest in the UK outside London), the largest Diwali celebrations outside of India and the largest comedy festival in the UK Leicester Comedy Festival. One of the best known places in the city is Melton Road, near the city centre, which contains many diverse retail stores and restaurants for both locals and tourists. From clothing to fine cuisines, specialist bridal/groom makeup and home appliances, this road promotes and holds many authentic cultures globally. Melton Road is regarded as the pin point of Leicester as a multifaith city. For many residents of Leicester, Melton Road is a place with strong links to their roots and origins. From an ethnic point of view, this is just one of the many sites within the city that enables every person to feel a sense of homeliness and strong pride of cutlture.
The Leicester International Short Film Festival is an annual event; it began life with humble beginnings in 1996 under the banner title of "Seconds Out". It has become one of the most important short film festivals in the U.K. It usually runs in early November, with venues including the Phoenix Arts Centre.
Arts venues in the city include:
- Curve: New purpose-designed performing arts centre, designed by Rafael Vinoly, opened in Autumn 2008, replaced the Haymarket Theatre
- The De Montfort Hall
- The Y Theatre
- The Little Theatre
- The City Gallery, one of the region's leading contemporary art galleries
- The Peepul Centre, Designed by Andrzej Blonski Architects, the £15 million building was opened in 2005 and houses an auditorium, restaurant, cyber café, gym and dance studio for the local people, as well as being used for conferences and events. The centre has even been host to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other senior Labour Party figures for hustings during the deputy leadership contest.
- Phoenix Square, which replaced the Phoenix Arts Centre in 2009.
- Fabrika The Independent Arts Centre, 68-70 Humberstone Gate. An Independent Art centre designed to help everyone in the community in a number of different ways.
Read more about this topic: Leicester
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator—the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
“It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)