Teapots and Twirls was born in 2012 when swing-dancing friends Jules and Tessa hatched a plan to bring more tea, cake and dancing to the people of Leeds.

Tea enthusiast Jules had recently won a Yorkshire Tea competition on Facebook and had been offered a visit from Yorkshire Tea’s travelling tea van, Little Urn, complete with as much free tea as she and her guests could handle.

Meanwhile, cake-and-jazz aficionado Tessa had been wanting to put on more swing dance events with live music… so after putting their heads together over copious amounts of tea and cake, Teapots and Twirls was born.

The very first tea dance was held on a sunny Saturday at the end of May 2012 at Interplay in Armley, with all proceeds given to The Prince of Wales Hospice. An army of cake bakers was assembled via Twitter, fabulous raffle prizes were donated, 50 metres of bunting was sewn by Jules and live music was provided by the most excellent Leeds City Stompers. Dancers came from far and wide to swing the afternoon away and we raised a fantastic £512 for the Hospice. And Yorkshire Tea had such a nice time that they told the world about it on their website!

Since then our lovely tea dance has gone from strength to strength, with more people coming each time to quaff tea, scoff cake and lindy hop ‘til they drop. We’ve held some wonderful lindy and charleston workshops, danced to some fantastic live bands and heard some smashing singing from the High Spirits Choir. And we’ve raised loads of money through our raffles for charities at home and abroad.

At Teapots and Twirls our tea will always be free, our cakes will always be delicious, our dancing will always be awesome and our raffle will always be for charity. We love live music and we welcome all ages (our oldest guest was almost 90, while our youngest was just two weeks old!). It’d be ace to see you there, so be sure to swing by soon!

Teapots and Twirls have now adopted the Safety in Swing Dance Code of Conduct, known as the STEPS Code (Safety, Trust, Engagement, Prevention, Support). Click here for more information about what this code means and for points of contact, should you need to speak to someone.

*And occasionally Sundays