UK City Of Culture: What’s On In Bradford This Year?

From David Hockney to Zayn Malik, Bradford is spinning out its new status, says Ed Vaizey. Here’s what’s on in the UK’s City of Culture this year.

Bradford: UK City Of Culture 2025

Bradford is this year’s UK City of Culture, an accolade that comes around once every four years. Since 2013, Derry, Coventry and Hull have all enjoyed the attention it brings.

As culture minister in 2010, I was intimately involved in the creation and roll out of this award – though it wasn’t my idea. Liverpool was a great success as the European Capital of Culture (remember Europe?) in 2008. One of Liverpool’s main cheerleaders was Phil Redmond, the veteran television producer who helped create Grange Hill, Brookside and Hollyoaks. Phil thought the European Capital of Culture had been so good for Liverpool that he wanted more cities to benefit. Unfortunately, each European country only receives the award every 20 years (the last Capital of Culture in the UK before Liverpool had been Glasgow in 1990), so he came up with the idea of a UK award every four years. Which, considering Brexit, was rather prescient.

So it came to be that I stood on a hotel roof in Liverpool to announce – live on The One Show – that Derry in Northern Ireland would be the first recipient of this new designation. And, in 2013, I found myself on Derry’s ancient battlements, accompanied by special branch detectives, shaking the hand of Martin McGuinness, the former IRA man turned Sinn Féin politician.

A surprising amount of cities bid to be the UK Capital of Culture in every four-year cycle, and that is a very good thing. It means that every four years, a few local councils sit down and think hard about their cultural offering, how they can make it better and more attractive, and how it can be co-ordinated and presented. It is both a useful stock take and a stimulus for new ideas. The winner gets absolutely no money (Britain is skint), but it does bring some investment and some national cultural events move out of London to be held in the winning city.

What’s On In Bradford?

How has Bradford decided to use its new status in 2025? For starters, Bradford is a UNESCO City of Film. The National Film Media Museum was built here in the 1990s and has now reopened after a multi-million pound refurbishment. The Railway Children is being reenacted on the very railway line where both the 1968 BBC series and the 1970 film were shot, with a purpose-built auditorium in the engine shed.

Bradford is a young city, with a quarter of its population under 20. It has tapped up local boys Zayn Malik (an ambassador) and Steven Frayne, Britain’s greatest magician formerly known as Dynamo. Akram Khan, whose live retelling of The Jungle Book in January reimagined Mowgli as a refugee caught in a world devastated by climate change, has been commissioned to create a new contemporary dance piece for July.

As to the visual arts, there is a nationwide drawing project inspired by Bradford-born David Hockney, who also has an exhibition at Bradford’s National Science and Media Museum. The Turner Prize, Britain’s oldest and most prestigious award for contemporary art, will be in Bradford from September, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, with the winner announced in December. Four new site-specific artworks will be created for Penistone Hill Country Park, on the moors that inspired local writer Emily Brontë. The artist Jeremy Deller and conductor Charles Hazelwood have curated with the Paraorchestra a musical experience with local musicians, and Opera North is taking up a residence.

What this boils down to is a year-long festival of creativity, much of it inspired by Bradford’s literary and artistic heritage. For at least a year, Bradford’s civic leaders will be focused on what their city has to offer in terms of culture, and they will have an opportunity to showcase it to the world. It can only be a good thing. The trick will be if they can involve as many people in the city as possible, and leave a lasting legacy on which to build. Fingers crossed.

DISCOVER

Stay up to date and explore all of Bradford’s City of Culture events at bradford2025.co.uk