Swimming with Jaws - in the local pool

Here's Jane Earnshaw, director of I Love West Leeds Festival, which thought up the idea of screening Jaws at the pool while the audience swam around. The Northerner ran a preliminary piece which you can read here.
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes

A red carpet was laid out Hollywood-style at the Edwardian baths which were built in 1904 and are listed Grade II.
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes

Pop and popcorn were ready for the audience - more than 140 swimmers plus friends who defied drifting snow and some of the coldest temperatures seen in Leeds this century. They got a warm welcome indoors
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes

Plenty of kids came along too, partly to scared witless by Jaws but also for a swim and a gentler film earlier in the evening.
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes

That was Finding Nemo - and here's one of his friends, floating benignly over the handsomely restored pool
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes

If you didn't want to swim, or had got a bit tired, the balcony was perfect for watching the film, with its beautiful mahogany handrail resting on wrought iron pillasters
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes

The pool was pleasantly busy, decorated with model lighthouses and equipped with floating chairs for swimmers wanting a rest
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes

And then it was time for...Uuuurrk! Jaws!
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes

Best to stay out of the water, thought some. But there were plenty willing to risk a shark leaping up Bramley Fall hillside from the river Aire or Leeds-Liverpool canal
Photograph: lizzie Coombes

Things got tenser when someone discovered the pool's stock of 'shark floats', each with a triangular fin. Campaigner Fran Graham noted: "During Jaws - people weren't sitting in their floating chairs, they were hugging them like life-rafts"
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes

And if you didn't have a pool-chair to grip, a cuddle did just as well. All 200 tickets were sold for the event which will be followed by a second swimalong film evening in July. Next up, a school holidays obstacle course in the water with a pirate ship and an inflatable...shark. Find out more about Bramley Baths here and about the Friends of the Baths here.
Photograph: Lizzie Coombes