Three up-and-coming sculptors working in Leeds have received a significant boost to their early careers. Elrick Boldy, Ewan Summerton and Iona Ogilvy-Stuart were this week announced as the recipients of the 2026 Accelerator Bursary, a joint initiative funded by Leeds Art Fund and delivered by Leeds Art Gallery together with Assembly House Leeds. The bursary is aimed at the precarious moment after graduation, offering recent graduates from Leeds Beckett University, the University of Leeds and Leeds Arts University support as they establish their practices. Beyond the funding, the programme is designed to nurture the city's wider art scene and to encourage young artists to stay in Leeds and build their careers there, countering the gravitational pull of London. The three recipients work broadly in sculpture but with sharply different approaches. Boldy, a Leeds Arts University graduate, explores the limits of communication through asemic writing, rendering drawing-like symbols in plasma-cut steel that is curved, waved and treated with rust-like patina. Summerton, from Leeds Beckett, builds large-scale sculptures and video works from unwanted materials salvaged from skips alongside surveillance footage, probing the hidden infrastructures that govern daily life. Ogilvy-Stuart, a University of Leeds graduate, works in bronze, waxes, clay, synthetic fibres and found organic matter to address social and ecological urgency and the deep presence of geological processes. The artists were chosen through a competitive open call held last autumn. By backing sculptors at the very start of their professional lives, the Accelerator Bursary offers exactly the kind of small, targeted intervention that can determine whether emerging talent puts down roots or drifts away from the city that trained them.