Bradford Playhouse has secured planning permission for a transformative accessibility project. Key upgrades include a lift from street level to the bar, box office, and accessible seating, plus new front-of-house toilets and exterior improvements. To support this, they have launched a crowdfunding campaign, running for eight weeks. Every donation will help break down barriers and make live theatre accessible to all.

Bradford-based writer and actor Tahir Shah is set to take the stage in the highly anticipated production of A Thousand Splendid Suns. This powerful adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling novel will tour in Birmingham, Nottingham, and Leeds from April to June 2025.
 
With Shah’s screen acting background (BBC Alma's Not Normal, The Responder), this will be his stage debut in his first major role. Expect an unforgettable theatrical experience as A Thousand Splendid Suns weaves a tale of resilience, love, and survival

Bradford Cathedral is hosting the Woven Lives exhibition from 8 July to 1 September 2025, as part of the Weaving Stories season of events during the UK City of Culture year.

This year’s Female Pilot Club BBC comedy writing scheme has previously shortlisted three Bradford writers as semi-finalists – Kirsty Smith with Hildegard of Bingley, Seeta Wrightson with BD5 Girls, and Jen Banks with Shit Hippy, chosen out of over 400 entries received. Seeta and Kirsty have now been announced among the five finalists, and will be paired with industry mentors to help polish their scripts in preparation for a live read-through by top flight comedy talent at a London showcase event in 2025.

The District's arts and culture sector will benefit from over £1m from Arts Council England’s National Lottery-funded Place Partnership Fund awarded to support ‘The Bradford Way’ until March 2026. The investment will enable an ambitious cultural programme to be developed for groups and people of all ages and backgrounds that will support an authentic step-change as we move through the year of culture in 2025, and build a meaningful and sustainable legacy.

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Delivered by a new consortium comprising The Leap, Bradford Producing Hub, Bradford Council and Bradford Cultural Voice Forum (the inclusive home for all people working locally in the cultural and creative sector, whether in organisations or as a freelancer), ‘The Bradford Way’ will help to develop existing and potential cultural sole traders and micro businesses, whilst guiding them through a joined-up support network made possible by the consortium and this funding. This new way of working will encourage new and different people and cultures to flourish, unite communities, develop skills, support the local economy and bring exhibitions and workshops into non-conventional spaces.

Over 1200 students in Bradford schools have co-created new artworks with professional artists thanks to a first-of-its-kind project delivered by Born in Bradford and the National Science and Media Museum, in partnership with Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture (Bradford 2025).

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Through the Bradford Digital Creatives project, Year 8 and 9 students at Appleton Academy, Bradford Alternative Provision Academy, Carlton Bolling, Carlton Keighley and Belle Vue Girls’ Academy have enjoyed hands-on experiences in data visualisation, audio storytelling, games design, animation, image manipulation and artificial intelligence with renowned artists including Impact Gamers, Caro C, Arfaan Amini Playfool and Make Amplify.

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The project – which is funded by the Arts Council, Bradford 2025 and Bradford Council - aims to increase young people’s participation in arts and culture, support their health and wellbeing, and contribute to the development of a hub of digital talent in Bradford. It will also contribute towards internationally significant research into the impact of creativity on young people’s lives, as part of Born in Bradford: Age of Wonder, the world’s largest study of adolescent health and wellbeing.

Lauren Padgett has created a Bluesky starter pack for organisations and individuals involved with, or promoting, Bradford arts, culture, and heritage. The aim is to build a Bradford culture community on Bluesky, particularly in support of Bradford 2025.

The starter pack is available via a pinned post on Lauren’s Bluesky profile and can also be found under the "starter pack" tab on her profile. If anyone would like to have themselves or their organisation added to the starter pack, or if there are suggestions for updates, they are encouraged to reply directly to the pinned post.

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Lauren’s handle to connect is: @drlaurenpadgett.bsky.social - "See you where the skies are blue!"

The baton – created for the Cathedrals Cycle Route and Relay – has arrived in Bradford Cathedral, where it will be on display during 2025 when Bradford is the UK City of Culture. The baton has been on display in Newcastle Cathedral, but was brought down to Yorkshire this week when a party from Newcastle came to visit their counterparts in Bradford. The photo shows the Very Revd Lee Batson, Dean of Newcastle, and the Very Revd Andy Bowerman, handing over the baton.

This year’s theme for Advent and Christmas at Bradford Cathedral is ‘Follow The Star: Calm and Bright’ – and you are invited to visit the Cathedral this December for services and events, or to discover more about the historic space. The Cathedral will also be decorated with a Christmas tree in the West End, lit up by candles during many of the services, and there will also be two cribs within the State Gate and the Holy Spirit Chapel.

You can now pick up a copy of the latest what’s on – covering January to April 2025 – from Bradford Cathedral, The Broadway Bradford, the Bradford 2025 ticket office, Impressions Gallery, City Hall and more soon.

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Highlights include Beacon of Hope, an exhibition by Carlton Bolling students sharing perspectives from Bradford’s intercultural landscape; Gideon, a moving performance on the enduring impact of art amidst oppression; and the start of our Re:Imagine series, designed to spark bold ideas, this season on intercultural conversation. Don’t miss our Wednesday@One organ recitals either as we hear Music in Times of War.

Tickets are now available for events taking place between January and April 2025 at Bradford Cathedral as part of the UK City of Culture year. The first wave of events at Bradford Cathedral during the first four months of the UK City of Culture year have just been announced, and will include a play, a talk, tours, an exhibition, music recitals, and much more.

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The theme for the first third of the year is ‘Creativity Under Pressure’: “Arts and culture are at their most powerful and meaningful when they flow from the crucibles of life. At times of upheaval, trauma and change, artists, poets, musicians rise up to express in new creative ways the unchanging, universal truths of humanity.

Bradford Cathedral Chorister Maria has successfully auditioned for the role of First Boy in Opera North’s upcoming touring production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

Discover more about the creation of the Bradford Cathedral model for 2025 and learn more about the building's history on the way!

The Cathedral Music Trust has invested £500,000 in Cathedral Music, including £15,000 to Bradford Cathedral through the Cathedral Music Support Programme.

Written by Leeds-based composer Dr Niki Zohdi, Kambaramayanam-34 is now available to hear on Bradford Cathedral’s Soundcloud page at https://soundcloud.com/bfdcathedral/kambaramaynam-34

The piece was inspired by his recent travels to the Tamil Nadu region of India. The piece uses an ancient Tamil poem as its starting point. A rumbling pedal drone continues for the entirety of the piece with interjections of different material played on the organ manuals.

Anthony Gray, Assistant Director of Music at Bradford Cathedral, says:
"It was a delight to be able to play this new work as part of my recital for this term's season of concerts. Niki and I have been friends and colleagues since being choristers together at Blackburn Cathedral, and I am delighted he was able to write this piece for me. It is great to be able to feature new music by living composers in our recital series, alongside the regular themed programmes from some of the great organ composers of the past. It was also a thoroughly engaging process in learning Niki's piece, with a different form of notation (notated spatially by chronological time, rather than conventional rhythms with a tempo marking) and we had great fun collaborating, as we continue to with a multitude of other creative projects."

Dr Niki Zohdi says:
"It was a great experience to work with such a good friend and fantastic organist in Anthony on my new piece Kambaramayanam-34 last month. The piece came alive on the Bradford Cathedral organ with its wide range of colours and registrations. It was truly a privilege to share my music with such an open minded audience, and it was great to see the audience numbers so high!"

The piece was recorded on Wednesday 8th May 2024 by Dr Stewart Smith.

Bradford Producing Hub has been named by the PRS Foundation as one of the first grantees of its new Talent Development Network, bringing together organisations working at the frontline of talent development, and strengthening the local music ecosystem.

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This funding will allow Bradford Producing Hub to launch the first round of its new musician accelerator programme, AMPLIFY later this year. Supporting early to mid-career music creators across the Bradford district, AMPLIFY will provide training and development, mentoring, and performance opportunities, alongside connections with other musicians and the wider industry, to help music creators take a transformational step in their professional careers. 

Pictureville Presents… Cinema at the Mill While the doors to Pictureville Cinema at the National Science and Media Museum remain temporarily closed, their off-site cinema programme continues. From 11 April they are taking up residency at beloved community venue Theatre in the Mill for five weeks to bring you a programme of cult and classic cinema. News of the programme will be announced soon, with the first week's screenings completely free!
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30 stories will be showcased, highlighting the sites, stories and people that have made Heritage Open Days so magical over the years.

Out of all the stories and images submitted from across the UK, Bradford Cathedral has made it to the shortlist, but they need your help to be included in the final 30 stories that will form the Heritage Open Days Gallery.

Voting is straight forward - all you need to do is:
Go to the voting page on the Heritage Open Day website
Click 'Yorkshire and the Humber' to expand the menu
Click 'The Cathedral' to find out more
Pick your 1st and 2nd choice and press 'submit'

Voting closes on Sunday 30th June 2024. 

Maggie Myers, Director of Education and Visitors at Bradford Cathedral, says:
"Being part of the Heritage Open Days' Anniversary Gallery will make us eligible for a small grant to help with the cost of putting on this year's Heritage Open Day on the 14th September, but more importantly it will ensure that even more people, from all across the UK, get to hear about our wonderful Cathedral that we all love so much."

Plans have been approved for a £6m new Community, Arts, Heritage and Future Technology Centre in the heart of Saltaire. Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, Bradford Council’s Portfolio Holder for Regeneration, Transport and Planning, said: “This is a once in a generation opportunity to enhance Saltaire for the future. It is important it is done to an extremely high standard and in a sensitive way which respects the history of this very special place, and the plans certainly reflect that.” The new centre, which is being Government-funded through the Shipley Towns Fund, will benefit both local people and visitors, and is being delivered by Shipley College and the Saltaire Collection.

The building, which will be located at the corner of Victoria Road and Caroline Street on land provided by Bradford Council, will provide additional classroom and administration space to support Shipley College, for technology-based teaching and learning. It will also become the new home for the Saltaire Collection – a large collection of historic artefacts and documents. There will be a public exhibition space, and community classroom to enable people to learn more about the history of Saltaire.

Dance United Yorkshire’s outreach groups have all been successful in securing places in regional dance platforms, providing performance experience for all our participants.

Resi/Dance Youth Company were accepted into Sadler’s Wells choreography programme last year and have been working on their performance of 'See. Hear. Speak. Do.' since November 2023. Making Moves is a brand new choreography programme which sees 48 dance companies from across the UK pair up with a professional choreographer to develop a new performance piece. Resi/Dance Youth Company will be performing at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance on Thursday 11th April alongside other groups from across the country.

Our Performance Company were accepted into FRESH. An annual festival of high quality youth dance from across Yorkshire, hosted by Yorkshire Dance. This year the festival will be held at CAST in Doncaster on Saturday 23rd March. Performance Company, consisting of 20 dancers will be showcasing their new piece 'Homeostasis' for the first time. Dancers take part in a full day's programme of workshops in a wide range of different dance styles, led by professional dancers and culminates with an evening of performances to audiences of hundreds of dance lovers.

Women's Company were accepted into Northern School of Contemporary Dance - Community Dance Platform on Saturday 25th March. Our women will take to the Riley Theatre stage and perform their piece 'Look Up' choreographed by Helen Linsell. An exciting and energetic evening of dance bringing together groups from across our region.

Trios and Trio Sonatas: JS Bach’s six trio sonatas at the centre of Bradford Cathedral recital series. The free recitals take place every Wednesday at 1pm from the 10th January to the 27th March 2024

A brighter future for Saltaire’s historical collection thanks to £93k lottery grant. The Saltaire World Heritage Education Association has been awarded a grant of £93,172 by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to improve the charity’s long term resilience and prepare for the relocation of the Saltaire Collection to a publicly accessible space. 

The Saltaire Collection is currently located in the Exhibition Building Library at Shipley College, and visitors wishing to see the important objects, including original architect’s drawings and plans for the village, can only visit in small numbers by appointment. ​The funding, made possible by National Lottery players, will secure professional support to improve business planning for the charity and crucially open up the collection for Bradford’s diverse communities. This will include engagement work across the district to identify how to reduce and remove the barriers experienced when accessing Saltaire’s heritage. 

The project, named ‘Bright Future,’ will hire a museum development project manager to identify a new accessible home for the collection, and who will work with museum design experts to complete the preparatory work that will lead to national museum accreditation for the collection. UNESCO states that Saltaire is a complete and well preserved example of an  industrial community, founded in 1853. Whilst the history of its founder, Sir Titus Salt, is relatively well known, the dramatic context for the rise and fall of the district’s textile history, the social histories of Saltaire’s workers and residents over time and the stories of those involved in its continued development are rarely surfaced. 

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Commenting on the award, Stephanie Webb  (Chair of the Saltaire World Heritage Education Association) said: “We’re delighted that we’ve received this support thanks to National Lottery players. The Saltaire Collection reveals much that is unknown about Saltaire’s world heritage and it’s great to know that we are a step closer to making this widely accessible and preserving it for  centuries to come."

Saltaire Collection holds a remarkable, long oral history that commences in 1894 (just 2 years after the Salt Family sold Salts Mill and Saltaire to a Consortium of Four Bradford Businessman). This is a personal memoir of a Saltaire resident, but the author’s name, family names and some other details have been changed for confidentiality reasons. The story gives a fascinating insight to all aspects of life in Saltaire from 130 years ago to mid 20thC.

Ethel’s story will be told in short episodes over the coming weeks, we hope you enjoy it!

Ethel’s arrival in Saltaire: 1894 aged 6yrs.

"One day in June 1894, my family removed from West Bowling to Saltaire, six months previously my father (a textile worker) had obtained a post at Salt's Mill, with the same wage, but being paid for all holidays and sickness, which was a great boon to a family of six. It made life much easier for him too, for during that six months it had been necessary for him to leave home before 5am every morning, in order to catch the 5.30 train from Bradford Forster Square stations and so arrive at the Mill for the 6am start. The day we removed, there was a dispute at the Mill, and all the workpeople were out in the streets and the Clerk of Works (Mr. Baker) was escorted from his home in Albert Road down to the mill by a policeman. Whatever the dispute it was soon settled, and things were back to normal next day. We were allotted a house in Helen Street (rent 4/- per week) and began to settle in."

Tahir has recently won the 509Arts WordSmithery New Writing Competition. Tahir was one of four winners out of 30+ submissions. Tahir's original play 'Smart Whips- Dumb People' is his first attempt to writing for stage, the piece explores the relationship between two friends and Smart Whips. Tahir is now in the process of looking to offer a mentor a paid opportunity to help develop his script further.

Please reach out to Tahir if you feel like this could be you! Tahir_shah@hotmail.co.uk

The Congruence Engine is a three-year research project that started in November 2021. It is using the latest digital techniques (including AI) to connect industrial history collections held in different museums and archives across the UK.  

"Hello CVF, I'm excited to share that I've recently started working as a freelance arts evaluator in Bradford, specialising in community engagement. Following 2 years as a Senior Consultant with The Audience Agency, I’m really looking forward to working more closely with arts organisations in Bradford and supporting them to understand the impact of their work. As an evaluation consultant, I support arts and heritage organisations to evidence and communicate the value of their work in a way that is rigorous, accessible and engaging. I have led on a broad range of evaluation projects, for organisations of different sizes and remits, including NPOs, CPPs and NLHF-funded projects. I work on projects of different sizes and scales from long-term national programmes with multiple activity strands, to small scale projects run by community organisations. I specialise in creative and arts-based projects which make evaluation more fun and accessible. I also support organisations to develop their own evaluation strategies, so that they can:

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• Identify tangible outcomes that relate to aims, mission and values.

• Build confidence in embedding data collection and evaluation across their ongoing programmes and activities.

If you’d like to have a chat about evaluation, I’d love to hear from you. You can find out more about me and what I do through my website, where you can also get in touch."

1872: WHEN SAMURAI CAME TO SALTAIREThe Iwakura Embassy’s visit to Bradford and to Titus Salt’s model village1872 saw something unique in Saltaire. The village welcomed a group ofJapanese dignitaries, theIwakura Embassy. And 2023 sees, for the firsttime, the publication of a comprehensive history of this remarkable event. 

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Entitled1872: WHEN SAMURAI CAME TO SALTAIRE, the SaltaireHistory Club’s paper can be found on the websites of both the History Club and Saltaire Collection-https://www.saltairehistoryclub.org/research-publicationsorsaltairecollection.org

The Embassy’s visit was remarkable because, only a few years before, Japan had been closed to foreign influence and contacts. Remarkable also, because the dignitaries were very senior indeed: their leader, Iwakura Tomomi, was Japan’s Foreign Secretary. Remarkable, because the ambassadors were on a round-the-world journey which would last over 20 months, taking in North America and much of Europe, and meetings with the US President, Queen Victoria and Chancellor Bismarck. Remarkable, because they had chosen to visit still-incomplete Saltaire, in their quest to discover how Japan might catch up with thenewly-industrialised and prosperous ‘Western Civilisation’.

Today, Japan has the world’s third largest economy: in 1872, it was just emerging from 800 years of feudalism. The Embassy’s journey was a key step on Japan’s road to modernisation. Saltaire was part of that!

As the Bradford district gears up for the UK City of Culture celebrations, Shipley based 509 Arts has been awarded a major grant by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to reveal stories of Bradford’s mass mill closures at the end of the 20th Century.

Lost Mills and Ghost Mansions will collect stories and memories from people who worked in the mills from the 1970s onwards and map the sites where mills and textile mansions once stood. With support from Bradford Council, 509 Arts will work with Bradford Community Broadcasting and other local partners to reveal the last years of Yorkshire’s ‘wool city of the world’.

509 Arts and BCB want to hear from people across the district with memories of Bradford’s mills from the 1970s onwards. The collected memories will become part of a rich textile artwork commissioned with arts organisation Saltaire Inspired that will tour around the district.

BCB will be working with schools and communities to uncover stories of mills that have been closed and forgotten and will create special programmes for broadcast. A website packed with information and online learning materials will be available in the new year and in June 2024 Lost Mills and Ghost Mansions will conclude with a major outdoor celebration at a mill site somewhere in Bradford.

Alan Dix, Artistic Director of 509 Arts, said: “There were once 350 working mills in Bradford and almost every family in the district was connected to the textile industry in some way. Mill buildings were everywhere: Barkerend, Listers, Dalton, Salts, Albany and many more were once household names. Today, most of them are gone. Some have been demolished, some are derelict, some have found new purpose and some, sadly, have burnt to the ground. Lost Mills and Ghost Mansions will work with mill workers who remember the last years of Bradford’s mass textile industry. Many are now in their 70s and 80s, and we will explore their stories with today’s young Bradfordians, who may not know what life was like in the late 20th Century when textile mills employed whole communities.

“The face of Bradford has changed dramatically in the past 30 years and the mills and textile mansions that were so dominant are rapidly disappearing. Lost Mills and Ghost Mansions will employ a small team to work across the district, recording mill workers' stories and documenting the places where mills once stood. Bradford 2025 supported our application and this project will be a great way of getting people involved in preparation for our City of Culture celebrations.” Mary Dowson, Director of Bradford Community Broadcasting, sees the project as a great opportunity for Bradford people of all backgrounds in the run up to Bradford City of Culture 2025.

“We are so pleased to be working in partnership with 509 Arts on this project. BCB’s vibrant network of contacts with community organisations, schools and local groups will mean we can dig deep into those times and the changes that were happening in Bradford. Lost Mills and Ghost Mansions will provide a rich seam of stories, interviews and features for broadcast across the district.”

Humayan Islam, CEO of BEAP Community Partnership based in Manningham, said: “Community elders in Bradford have stories that no-one has heard. People came from across the globe to work in Bradford in the 60s and 70s and their experiences of mill life needs to be collected before it's too late. Working with 509 Arts and BCB will bring Bradford’s recent history into focus for today’s young people and the district’s future generations.”

The Peace Museum is moving to Salt's Mill!

The Peace Museum has received a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant of £245,651 towards our 'IMAGINE: Creating The Peace Museum of the Future' project. Made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, the project will create brand-new public exhibition and engagement spaces at Salts Mill in Saltaire.

We are aiming to reopen the museum to the public in summer 2024. Supported through The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the funding will be used to create engaging and accessible exhibitions, and to develop a dedicated learning space in our new home. Opening in these new premises will create many more opportunities for visitors, researchers, and community groups to explore the diverse range of stories told by the our collection.

With Salt's Mill being a key Bradford landmark and located in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Saltaire, we're confident that opening at this venue will allow a larger number of people to freely access peace history for the foreseeable future. We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us over the years, particularly while we've been closed to the public. We are still fundraising to support the costs of reopening the museum, including expanding our team to help us to welcome more visitors.

You can find out more about supporting the project at peacemuseum.org.uk/donate

"I'm excited to share that I was successful with my first ACE Project Grant, Making Inner Horizons accessible, environmentally responsible and commercially viable. I want to be open about this, and share that receiving access support for the first time, enabled me to eliminate my barriers to applying. I have been working towards applying for this, for several years, so it feels surreal that it will soon become a reality. For this project I will research and develop a new series of work with a technician, using Inner Horizons, 2019, as a starting point to create limited series of sculptures that can tour in different locations simultaneously, to generate income. I will research how to make future editions of this sculpture accessible to the physically impaired, through a series of consultations with physically impaired artists, during my exhibition at The Art House, Wakefield. I will showcase Inner Horizons in my first gallery group show, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park at the end of the summer, for their wonder and curiosity programme.

I will be mentored by Mediale and Luke Jerram to learn about touring models, to financially sustain my practice. More information to be announced - follow me on Instagram @catscottart and sign up to my mailing list to be the first to find out more."

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Image courtesy of Mediale. Image by Adam Garbutt.

A Chance to see a hidden piece of history in Saltaire: One of the tunnels. In this special instalment from Bradford Through The Lens You Tube Team bring you one of the SECRET TUNNELS under Exhibition Road, Saltaire. It will give you an idea of the millworkers who were able to access skills education during the Victoria era. Use the link to see the video and hear the story of this tunnel. https://youtu.be/xN6jVHoOuHA The Saltaire Collection is very grateful to Bradford Through The Lens for making this short film. Ever since the event in 2017 when ‘the secret tunnels of Saltaire’ were opened for the public and so many visitors couldn’t get to see them due to the interest the event created, we have been asked ‘could you open the tunnels again’. For this tunnel, the only way we could do that was by asking Bradford Through The Lens to make this film. We hope that you enjoy the film and the hidden history of the tunnel. Thank you for watching and especial thanks to those of you who take a minute to answer the survey questions which will very much help a piece of audience research, funded by the heritage Lottery programme of grants, that we are undertaking.

National Science and Media Museum to be transformed ahead of City of Culture 2025 The National Science and Media Museum is about to undergo a radical and ‘once-in-a-generation’ transformation ready to inspire millions of visitors to Bradford City of Culture in 2025. Huge changes will be delivered by December 2024, through a £6 million capital project called ‘Sound and Vision’, including two new galleries, a new passenger lift and improvements to the main entrance. To facilitate these works, the National Science and Media Museum has announced a period of temporary closure from June 2023 to summer 2024. Pictureville Cinema will remain open throughout.