A city that plays together is a city that belongs to everyone.

Treehouse Festival is a city-wide celebration of play, imagination and making - rooted in

Leeds, reaching across every neighbourhood. The idea is simple and ancient: a treehouse is

somewhere you build together, somewhere you go to see the world differently, somewhere that

belongs to whoever made it.

In 2027, Leeds will be full of them. Tiny treehouses in shop windows, giant ones in parks, ones

woven from willow and ones conjured from cardboard. Architects and three-year-olds working

from the same brief. Urban farms, heritage venues, schools, artists, and community anchors all

contributing something of themselves.

A city using every talent it has to make something that has never existed before, and that

could not exist anywhere else. We want land managers, retail centres, and businesses to

steward and support it: to engage their staff, open their spaces, and invest in play. Because the

real question isn’t what the festival can do for a city. It’s what we can collectively grow.

WHY IT MATTERS

The city children deserve

Children growing up in Leeds’s inner city wards are less likely to have access to tree canopy,

birdsong, or daily contact with nature. In a warming city, green space is not an amenity - it is a

health intervention. Play sufficiency the right of every child to have enough time, space and

permission to play is unevenly distributed by postcode.

And city centres, for all their proximity, are largely not designed for children and families: they

are passed through, not inhabited. Treehouse Festival changes that. It brings nature into the

streets, families into the centre, and children into the conversation about what their city is for.

It does not wait for the perfect conditions. It creates them temporarily, joyfully, and with

enough momentum that temporary starts to feel permanent. A city that plays together is a city

that belongs to everyone.

“A city that plays together is a city that belongs to everyone.”