A MURAL depicting landmarks such as the Alhambra and Valley Parade has been created by a teenager to promote Bradford’s City of Culture bid.

Sixteen-year-old Leena Duong of West Bowling won a districtwide street art competition organised by Bradford 2025’s team of youth ambassadors, and now her design has been turned into a colourful city centre mural.

Leena’s mural, at Glydegate Square outside Fountains Church, highlights some of Bradford’s most well-known locations including the Alhambra, the National Science and Media Museum and Bradford City’s football stadium.

Leena has been helping professional street artist Jameson to paint her bright, bold design.

The street art competition was held as part of a programme to rally young people across the district behind Bradford’s bid to be UK City of Culture 2025. Fountains Church is a partner and funder of the scheme.

As part of the bid, the Bradford 2025 team has recruited a team of youth ambassadors to connect with young people, and promote Bradford as the youngest city in Europe. The youth ambassadors chose Leena’s design from many entries from across the district.

The competition was one of several projects organised by the youth team in recent weeks.

Bradford 2025 Youth Ambassador Sarah Manning said: "We’ve been working closely with the Bradford 2025 team and have organised a whole series of creative consultations and engagement activities to both spread the word about the bid and listen to what young people in Bradford want.

"Within the last few months, and despite the Covid challenges, we’ve been keeping the young people of Bradford busy. We have distributed more than 500 creative activity packs to homes during lockdown. We ran this competition for 11 to 18-year-olds to design a new mural to be featured on a city centre landmark. We led a programming consultation session, and also spent time doing detached youth work, engaging in conversations about the culture of Bradford, including surveys and videos.

"As well as appointing us as 2025 Young Ambassadors the bid team have also been working with secondary-age students on the creation of a new video game based on Bradford, and primary-age pupils on a huge piece of quilt artwork.

"During this time, we’ve directly engaged with more than 1,557 people with our work so far - and we’ve only just begun! There’s been great feedback from the Bradford 2025 team too; the activities that have been vital in making sure that the bid speaks to, and for, our young population."

She added: "It’s exciting that so many children and young people are getting involved in the bid. We’ve taken over the Bradford 2025 social media channels to shout about our work and reach younger audiences through video and other platforms.

"With almost 30per cent of the city's population aged under 20, the support of young people across the whole of our district will be absolutely vital for a successful City of Culture bid.

"So far there have been some incredibly interesting thoughts and ideas."