As [cloud] reflects on its British Leicester base and international networks, this essay examines how the city’s diverse sociopolitical fabric and artist led infrastructures are shaping a globally relevant model of collaborative, justice driven and transnational contemporary art practice.
[cloud] is formally based in Leicester, a city whose sociopolitical character offers a vital lens through which to understand its contemporary art movement. It also holds a formal base in France, which grounds the organisation in a European context that has gained heightened cultural significance since the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. From these two centres, Leicester and France, [cloud] operates as a trans international organisation with active networks across the United States and the wider world. Its commitment is to total community without limits and to the overlooked, underrepresented and often unseen artists whose practices deserve space, visibility and long term support. This aligns strongly with contemporary art theory that positions artistic practice within expanded and borderless communities. Thinkers such as Nicolas Bourriaud, Grant Kester and Édouard Glissant argue for art as a relational, dialogic and globally entangled activity. These frameworks make clear that [cloud]’s international model is not only organisational but also conceptually embedded in contemporary critical discourse.
Leicester itself is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the United Kingdom. It is the first UK city in which people who identify as White British no longer form a demographic majority, as recorded by the 2021 Census. This reflects a civic space shaped by plural identities, multilingual communities, long traditions of migration and sustained practices of collective resilience. Leicester carries the legacies of deindustrialisation alongside growth in design, health research, digital innovation and higher education. The city’s politics frequently emphasise cultural participation, community cohesion and accessible regeneration.
This sociopolitical environment shapes an artistic landscape in which practice is embedded in what Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger describe as “communities of practice,” defined by mutual engagement, shared repertoires and distributed knowledge. In Leicester, this manifests not only in studio practices but in how organisations, artists and communities collectively create the conditions for cultural production. For [cloud], being formally rooted in Leicester means working within an ecology where diversity, interdependence and social justice are everyday conditions that shape how art is made and how it circulates. Its base in France strengthens its access to European artistic exchange, providing a counterbalance to the restrictions introduced by Brexit. Its translocal links across the United States and wider world reflect contemporary art’s growing reliance on what Glissant termed “relation” and “opacity,” principles of connection that value difference and resist homogenisation.
It is from this foundation that this week’s Critical Wednesday examines Leicester’s contemporary art movement. From the outside Leicester is sometimes framed as an “in between” city in the national cultural map. From within it is a place of continuous experimentation, cooperation and inventive structural thinking. Much of this activity is concentrated in the Cultural Quarter, a walkable cluster of studios, cinemas, digital labs and creative hubs where artists test new forms of work and new models of sustainability.
Two Queens is a central pillar of this movement. Founded in 2012 by graduates who chose to stay in Leicester rather than follow predictable metropolitan pathways, it has grown into a nationally recognised artist led space. Its programme foregrounds experimental, research driven and process based work, reflecting Claire Bishop’s argument that contemporary practice often requires forms of participation, collaboration and risk that exceed institutional conventions. Two Queens’ transition to a Community Benefit Society, including a community share offer, marks a rare form of cooperative cultural governance that mirrors current international interest in the “commons” as discussed by writers such as Gerald Raunig and Silvia Federici. This approach positions artistic production as a shared endeavour rather than an individualised pursuit.
Daniel Sean Kelly, co director of Two Queens, embodies this expanded mode of practice. His artistic work spans painting, print and ceramics, creating speculative environments that draw on contemporary mythologies. Alongside this work, Kelly writes publicly about cooperative governance and economic reform in the arts. This hybrid practice reflects wider debates in contemporary art theory about the artist as organiser, mediator and civic agent, aligning with Grant Kester’s notion of “dialogical aesthetics” in which artists construct sustained, collaborative and socially embedded processes.
Leicester Print Workshop provides a complementary foundation. Originating in the 1980s and now a RIBA award winning centre, it operates through an open access model that unites professional artists, learners and community groups. Its blend of lithography, etching, screen printing and digital processes reflects a broader move in contemporary practice toward hybrid and post digital methods. In this sense the workshop functions as a site of what Bourriaud calls “postproduction,” where artists reorganise existing tools and cultural materials to generate new meaning.
The Cultural Quarter further strengthens this ecology. Phoenix, the city’s cinema and digital arts centre, alongside LCB Depot, a hub for creative industries and exhibitions, form a network where interdisciplinary work emerges almost by default. This proximity enables what Homi Bhabha would call “third space” cultural production, where new forms arise through the meeting of multiple identities and artistic languages.
Regionally, Leicester’s role is supported by CVAN East Midlands, whose research maps how artist led spaces, cultural workers and independent institutions form the backbone of the region’s creative life. This reflects international scholarship describing the importance of decentralised and distributed artistic networks in a globalised art world. Mercer, Glissant and Harding all propose that cultural value increasingly arises from translocal alliances rather than from traditional centres of power.
For [cloud], these theoretical frameworks resonate directly with its mission to champion overlooked, underrepresented and unseen artist practices. Leicester’s sociopolitical fabric, its diasporic histories and its cooperative artistic infrastructures form a natural environment for this work. The organisation’s base in France ensures European connectivity, while its partnerships across the United States, Europe and beyond align with contemporary theories of global community, relation and solidarity.
Across Leicester’s studios and galleries, artists are producing speculative installations, expanded documentary forms, hybrid prints, sound based work, community archives and experimental multimedia. These practices reflect a city in which hybridity, multiplicity and collective authorship are not the exception but the norm.
For the future of multimedia practice in the East Midlands, Leicester offers a powerful case study. Here artistic experimentation intersects with demographic plurality, collaborative governance and justice based cultural work. Leicester is not only the formal home of [cloud]. It is an active collaborator in the organisation’s trans international mission to build unrestricted, borderless and equitable communities of artistic practice.
The message for the global cultural sector is clear. Transformative artistic futures are emerging in places like Leicester, where cooperation, diversity and international networks intersect. In the glow of studio lights, in the ink of open print workshops and in the gatherings of artist led spaces, a more generous and globally connected cultural world is already taking shape.
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