Hate has no seat here!

Emma shares an update from Leeds Craftivists…

This month the Leeds Craftivists have been adding their voice – in our customary craftivist style – to the West Yorkshire Citizens ‘Hate Has No Seat Here’ campaign.

After listening to the concerns of local communities, the Citizens team are asking West Yorkshire Combined Authority for simple, transparent ways to report hate crime on buses, as well as trauma-informed training for bus drivers, to make bus travel safer for everyone.

In 2024 we successfully campaigned to Tracy Brabin to bring the buses in West Yorkshire into public ownership. This gives the Combined Authority all the power they need to make the changes we’re asking for.

However, that won’t come into effect until 2027 – and we need change now! So to make these changes for safer travel, we need to bring the private bus operators on board with our campaign asks.

That’s where our craftivism came in. To support Citizens in meeting with power-holders at the bus operators, we crafted little buses to remind them about our campaign.

As the new network in West Yorkshire will be called the ‘Weaver Network’ we made the buses out of woven paper, and carefully chose colours that represented the brand of each of the operators. We wrote a friendly message on the back: “Will you jump on board with our Hate Has No Seat Here campaign? Next stop safer buses for everyone in the Weaver Network!”

Craftivism keeps people at the centre of our campaigning, creating thoughtful objects to encourage power-holders to make positive change. We hope this little act of craftivism will keep the Citizens campaign in their minds, and show that we want to work with them, not against them, to make bus travel better for everyone.

At our next Leeds Craftivists meet-up we will be crafting little messages of support to leave on buses letting people know that ‘Hate Has No Seat Here’. If you want to join us, sign up for our next Craftivists session on 11th May!