Bradford 2025 unveils first programme for year in culture spotlight

Bradford 2025 has unveiled the first part of its programme for the city’s upcoming year as UK City of Culture.

The Brontës, David Hockney, Andrea Dunbar, Dynamo magician Steven Frayne, Akram Khan, Jeremy Deller, Clio Barnard and The Turner Prize feature in the year-long programme.

Shanaz Gulzar, creative director of Bradford 2025, believes the programme will “showcase the exceptionally rich, diverse talent that Bradford holds”.

She said: “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to celebrate our extraordinary cultural heritage, and for our young population to become leaders and changemakers, starting a new chapter in the story of Bradford.”

As well as celebrating a host of Bradford-born artists, writers, musicians, performers and local cultural organisations, the year-long programme also welcomes national and international partners to this extraordinary year.

Taking place across the district throughout 2025, the programme will celebrate contemporary culture in all forms and showcase the rich history and heritage of the area.

Bradford 2025 will be launched by a large-scale outdoor theatrical event called RISE created by magician Frayne and directed by Kirsty Housley.

Highlights of the year-long programme include:

• The Turner Prize, which showcases and celebrates the most exciting new developments in British art, will be hosted at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, from September.
• RAW! is a nation-wide drawing project inspired and supported by Bradford-born artist David Hockney to encourage people of all ages across the UK to take part in a drawing project to reflect their everyday lives.
• In May, the district will come alive with music made by the singers and musicians who call it home with a sonic journey ending in the centre of the city, with Paraorchestra, Charles Hazlewood and Jeremy Deller’s The Bradford Progress.
• Akram Khan will collaborate with Dance United Yorkshire in July for a new intergenerational project Memories of the Future, featuring 60 dancers drawn from communities across Bradford, inspired by Khan’s Jungle Book reimagined.
• The wide skies and expansive moorland that spurred Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is the stage for Wild Uplands, four new contemporary visual artworks created by national and international artists placed across Penistone Hill Country Park.
• Four fantasy writers and illustrators from Ghana and the north of England revisit the Brontës’ imaginary world of Angria for a new collection of stories and animations to be published as part of the annual Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing in September.
• Bradford 2025 is paying tribute to Andrea Dunbar, marking 45 years since the premiere of her first play The Arbor and 35 years since her tragically early death, with staged readings of selections from her works, celebrating the explosive talent of this once-in-a-generation writer.
• The National Science and Media Museum will reopen in January following a multi-million-pound transformation and feature a new digital installation by Marshmallow Laser Feast from April.

Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture is supported using public investment from HM Government, City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, West Yorkshire Combined Authority and through National Lottery funding from Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage Fund, National Lottery Community Fund, Spirit of 2012 as well as private investment and donations from a number of trusts, foundations and corporate sponsors.