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‘Lady Gaga went to our chippy’: how Yorkshire became a cultural powerhouse

English Teacher won the Mercury prize, Amy Gledhill won the Edinburgh comedy award – and now even Beyoncé wants a piece of the action. Why has ‘God’s own county’ become such an artistic force?

“The way big cities such as Sheffield and Leeds interact with historic places like York, fancy market towns like Harrogate or the tiny rural enclaves, is the magical fertiliser pouring on to Yorkshire culture.” The weather on the moors is almost science-fiction Shanaz Gulzar, her Mercury-nominated fourth studio album, was inspired by a black history exhibition in Chicago, but her musical DNA was shaped by her time in Helen, a noisy Leeds female guitar band; and, before that, by wild nights at the city’s Brighton Beach club, dancing to Britpop, funk and soul. “When I came back from uni,” she says, “I saw Bradford in a new light and it just poured out of me.” The current recipient of the Kay Mellor Fellowship, she remains inspired by the late Leeds-born creator of Band of Gold and The Syndicate, who “really advocated for working-class voices and women writers”.

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