The Floor Flag Manifesto for Making and Feeding Futures of Leeds: A permanent feature in Leeds Art Gallery: Art Space
A Call to Action
We urge policymakers, urban planners and community leaders in Leeds to implement these steps to create a supportive, inclusive and safe environment for all families. These actions recognise the need for broad changes across different aspects of life. By embracing shifts in attitudes, culture, infrastructure, systems, values and education, Leeds can promote sustainable feeding practices, improve public health, support gender equality and enhance the well-being of our communities.
1. Prioritise Safety: Address violence against women and girls, enhance lighting in darker areas and create alcohol-free zones to ensure public safety.
2. Provide Shelter and Facilities: Create sheltered areas and facilities, including benches, playgrounds and comfortable indoor rooms where parents can comfortably feed their children or rest while their children play.
3. Provide Free Drinking Water: Ensure access to free drinking water for everyone, especially breastfeeding mothers and people who need hydration.
4. Create Clean and Green Spaces: Promote healthier urban environments by reducing car dependency, creating green spaces and improving air quality.
5. Increase Free-to-Access Spaces: Expand non-commercial, free-to-access spaces, allowing people to feed, care or rest without financial barriers.
6. Improve Knowledge of Breastfeeding: Enhance public knowledge and support for breastfeeding, addressing societal stigma and harmful negative beliefs.
7. Value Breasts and Bodies as Life-Giving: Reclaim and desexualise breasts and all feeding bodies, normalising breastfeeding as a nurturing feeding practice.
8. Host Intergenerational Events and Spaces: Create designated areas for food, picnics, and communal dining, celebrating intergenerational experiences and the diverse families, tastes and cultures of Leeds.
9. Celebrate Normal Child Behaviour: Celebrate normal infant and child behaviour in Leeds, whether climbing, running, spinning, jumping, or getting messy and noisy.
10. Make Space for Feelings: Acknowledge and address the full spectrum of feelings for parents and children in public spaces, from comfort to discomfort, boredom to upset.
The Manifesto Floor Flag calls for a city centre in which people of Leeds can safely breastfeed and care for their children. Created through collaborative workshops, with Bosom Buddies breastfeeding peer support group, women from the Shine Project and members of the public, it embodies the collective vision of mothers, parents, carers and children for a more inclusive, healthy and caring Leeds City Centre.
Unlike traditional flags flown high on poles, a floor flag lies on the ground, creating an inviting space for gathering, thinking, talking, and connecting. Featuring key phrases from the manifesto and quotes from participants, it provides a space to express emotions, share experiences, and imagine new futures for caring and infant feeding in Leeds. The floor flag aims to build a strong sense of community and support, breaking down barriers and challenging problematic societal norms of motherhood, parenthood, childhood, feeding and caregiving. The central pinwheel, or windmill, symbolises the multifaceted and ever-changing nature of individuals and their power to change things, demonstrating that cities are constantly evolving.
The flag’s themes and 10 manifesto points emerged from workshops with Leeds Bosom Buddies breastfeeding support group, Shine young women’s group and gallery visitors, all responding to the question “How would Leeds City Centre be different if feeding and caring for our children was prioritised?”
The flag will remain in Leeds Art Gallery, continuously inspiring change towards safer, healthier, and more inclusive urban environments that prioritise care and feeding, including breastfeeding.
The flag is dedicated to the women and people from Leeds who contributed to the project and is only possible thanks to their generosity of time, creativity and intelligence.
Photos by Fiona Finchett for Feed.
Floor Flag Manifesto Presented at Leeds City Council
On Tuesday 9 July 2025, I presented a deputation at a full meeting of Leeds City Council alongside Lyndsey Jakeman and Hayley Nobes from Shine Young Mums and Angela Thompson from Leeds Art Gallery. A deputation is a formal opportunity for members of the public to address the council and share concerns, proposals, or community-led initiatives that deserve civic attention.
We used this platform to share key recommendations from the Floor Flag Manifesto. Together, we highlighted the urgent need to reframe care not as a private responsibility, but as a public good essential to urban health, equity, and sustainability.
Crucially, Leeds City Council voted unanimously in support of the manifesto’s aims. This powerful show of political will signals cross-party recognition of the need for action, and affirms the value of design-led, community-driven interventions in shaping a more caring city.
The success of this deputation reflects the strength of collaboration across sectors—bringing together charities, cultural institutions, curators, designers, and academic researchers to centre the voices of those too often excluded from decision-making processes.
This is an important milestone in the project, and a promising step toward embedding care into the fabric of civic life in Leeds.
With thanks to
AHRC Design Star, The University of Brighton, Arts Council England, Vicky Carr - TextBook Studios, Elaine Speight - The Feed Project, In Certain Places - University of Central Lancashire, Shine Mums Group, Leeds Bosom Buddies, Leeds City Council, Angie Thompson and all at Leeds Art Gallery.