Bradford the 'biggest and the best' UK City of Culture

Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture was officially launched tonight at an event at St George’s Hall.

The event was hosted by Dr Amir Khan and BBC New Voices winner Irene Kaali, with Bradford 2025 creative director, Shanaz Gulzar on hand to announce the first programme.

The monumental year will be opened in January by Bradford-born magician Steven Frayne – better known as Dynamo – with a large-scale theatrical event called RISE, which is directed by Kirsty Housley.

Some of the other highlights include a project supported by David Hockney, The Turner Prize coming to the city, and a dance production involving world-renowned dancer and choreographer Akram Khan and Dance United Yorkshire, which will take place at The Alhambra.

Ms Gulzar said: “I want to start by saying that it’s not the whole programme for the year, because we do want to save some announcements, we want to continue to engage with artists and communities and ideas.

“The programme that we’ve just announced gives you what I call the backbone of the year.

“You get a sense of some of the artists, some of the ideas, some of the projects, some of the communities, the opportunities that we’ve created for communities to join, for young people.

“This is about a year that is going to leave lasting impact, lasting memories, and you can only do that by being ambitious and shooting for the stars.”

The focus of Bradford’s year is on its youthful population and the fact it covers a wide variety of locations – from urban to rural – and the events will take place across the district.

It is also centred on Bradford as being integral to the rest of the UK.

Ms Gulzar said: “Bradford is the beating heart of this country, Bradford is a microcosm of the UK.

“We are young, we are diverse, we are urban, we are rural.

“If you can get something to work in Bradford it can work elsewhere.

“We’ve always been innovators and inventors and this programme is to celebrate the fact that we have a DNA of creativity, we have a DNA of innovation and invention, we are the word, we are the art, and we are the science.

“When I applied for this role, one of the first things that I started to think about was the right to the imagination for all of us.”

The programme laid out encapsulates this and gives everyone access to their imagination, a route to that point, according to Ms Gulzar.

She said there is an “appetite” for opportunities in the city too, showcased in the amount of applicants for various positions.

Bradford 2025’s youth panel has 17 members, with 67 people applying, while the team also sifted through 200 applications for apprenticeships with them, whittling the number down to nine.

A callout has also just gone out for young creatives, where Bradford 2025 will take on 10 young people aged between 18 and 24 in jobs working across the entire programme.

Ms Gulzar said: “No other City of Culture has been able to do that.

“We have a responsibility to do that because we are the youngest City of Culture, so we need to be able to say to our young people, our city and district, and our sector, if we can do it, you can do it.”

But how does Bradford 2025 compare to its predecessors?

Derry, in Northern Ireland was the inaugural UK City of Culture, in 2013, followed by Hull 2017 and Coventry 2021.

Ms Gulzar feels Bradford blows all of them out of the water.

She said: “We’re the biggest and the best, we absolutely are – we know that, even having not gone into the year yet.

“I suppose it starts with even how we launched our programme, we wanted to cram as many people as we could into a space to make it as inclusive as we possibly could because this is about people.

“It’s about the artists, it’s about the partners, it’s about our communities, it’s about our audiences, it’s about our storytellers, our journalists, it’s about all of us.

“I wanted everyone in that space to be able to celebrate with us at this moment of announcing the programme.

“I want people to take that away from our year – I want people to have FOMO, the fact that if they’re not in Bradford in 2025 they’re seriously missing out.

“We are the biggest City of Culture, quite literally geographically and population – we are 144 square miles, no other City of Culture was; we are over half a million population across that city and district.

“We are incredibly young, incredibly diverse, we are urban and we are rural – so that already sets us apart from a logistical and literal perspective.

“But actually I would say the driver of our programme is creating opportunity for young people, bringing them along with us in this journey, not just as artists but learning behind the scenes – finding out about the business of being a UK City of Culture, the business of the arts and culture and creativity.

“I want to see our industries, the culture and creative industries to help create more opportunities for young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds.”

With the first programme announced, it is now just over three months until Bradford 2025 kicks off.

Asked how she feels about being “almost there”, Ms Gulzar, who is also an acclaimed artist, producer, and presenter, said: “Really excited, obviously trepidation as well, because you’ve imagined and worked and developed something and now it’s in the public domain.

“I love that moment when a show opens – I’m very rarely watching the show, I’m watching people, because you’ve been working for this moment, you create these projects, you create these exhibitions and shows for people to engage with and interact with.

“And that’s the moment that I absolutely love and I cannot wait for when we launch with RISE and we’re going to open the year with one of the best-loved sons of this city, Steven Frayne – who was formerly known as Dynamo – to be leading the charge into the year.”