Play brings old mill back to life

Drummond Mill opened in 1886 and was regarded as a pioneer of worsted coating. After the Second World War, it employed many of the migrants who settled in Bradford, mainly from Pakistan and Eastern Europe, and eventually closed in 2002.

This week the building is once again alive with the clatter of millworkers’ boots. It has been reopened for an ambitious production based on memories of people who worked there. The Mill – City Of Dreams, presented by Bradford-based Freedom Studios, is a promenade play involving the audience following the action around the building.

Interpretations of the mill’s past and the lives of former workers, performed by a cast of professional actors and local people, unfold in long-empty spaces, including the enormous weaving shed and top-floor glasshouse.

Dramatic sound and lighting effects transform the site into something both intimate and epic.

The £175,000 production took nearly two years of planning. Members of Freedom Studios interviewed many former mill-workers, bringing them together at a reunion at Bradford’s Ukrainian Club last month.

Writer and director Madani Younis became fascinated with Bradford’s mills when he came to live here a decade ago.

Discovering that the mills were a starting point for many people settling in Bradford, he was keen to celebrate the cultural diversity making up much of the city’s workforce.

Madani, who has worked on the play with Jonathan Holmes, a specialist in site-specific events, says it captures stories of identity, migration and struggle, in “a huge space that once throbbed and hummed with very particular sound and activity”.

“This is a creative response to the changing city of Bradford that embraces both its present and its illustrious past,” said Madani.

“The mills are our history, present and our unforgiving truth. If you stand still long enough in their empty shells, the deafening sounds of machinery, men and women, children and hope continue to reverberate. These mills belong to the city of Bradford, its people and their dreams.”

Over the next four years, Freedom Studios will, through its work, creatively respond to the question ‘Whose Britain?’ reflecting the nation’s changing diversity.

The Mill – City Of Dreams, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Bradford Council, the Arts Council and the PRS for Music Foundation, is co-produced by Imove, co-ordinating creative talent from the region for a programme of events leading up to London 2012.

Drummond Mill owner Khalid Pervaiz, who allowed the building to be reopened for the play’s three-week run, plans to bring it back into use.

“We are working with Bradford Council on a change-of-use application. We want the community to benefit from this building once again,” he said.

“Our aim is for a residential, leisure, business and retail complex that will provide housing and employment for the area. We have permission for flats and leisure use. There are some business tenants operating there, and we have a planning application for retail use, which we are making amendments to.”

Mr Pervaiz said the play will bring the venue back into the public eye, highlighting the scale of the Lumb Lane site.

“The building is in good condition. We have a caretaker looking after it. People don’t always realise what a large place it is. There’s a lot of parking space, too,” he said.

“We want to get the mill back in use for the community, it will be a big boost for Bradford.” The audience at The Mill – City Of Dreams will include former millworkers.

Former twister Nellie Jowett, 84, her sister Eunice Sutcliffe and their friend Zene Mozil were at last month’s reunion.

“We started work there when we were 14 and were there until we got married,” said Mrs Jowett, who met her husband Tom, an overlooker, at the mill.

“All our family worked there – four brothers and three sisters. It was a happy time. We made lots of friends and used to have nights out together.

The Mill – City Of Dreams runs until April 16. Tickets are available on (01274) 432000.