First Programming Set For Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture

The first events in the programme for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture were announced. 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. Events, performances and activities will spread from the city to the towns, villages and green spaces across the district, running from January to December 2025.

From the UK’s first free school meals, a City of Sanctuary and home to the UK’s only Peace Museum, the UK City of Culture will highlight Bradford as a forward-looking city of change. Bradford is one of the youngest cities in the UK, with over a quarter of the population under the age of 20 and has one of the most diverse communities in the UK.

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. Bradford residents will be involved in many of the performances and activities, telling stories about their city and district.  Many elements of the programme will be free.

Programme highlights of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture include:

• A large-scale outdoor theatrical event created by the district’s own magician, Steven Frayne (formerly known as Dynamo) and directed by Kirsty Housley, will launch Bradford 2025. RISE will explore the themes of heritage, people and magic found in unexpected places (10 & 11 January).

• DRAW! is a nation-wide drawing project inspired and supported by David Hockney. The Bradford-born artist has drawn the world around him for 60 years, using everything from pencils to iPads. Inspired by Hockney, Bradford 2025 is inviting people of all ages across the UK to take part in a drawing project to reflect our everyday lives (throughout 2025).

• For Paraorchestra, Charles Hazlewood and Jeremy Deller’s The Bradford Progress, the district will come alive with music made by the singers and musicians who call it home – a sonic journey ending in the centre of the city (May).

• The Turner Prize, which showcases and celebrates the most exciting new developments in British art, will be hosted at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, in the year that the UK celebrates the 250th anniversary of JMW Turner’s birth (from September).

• Akram Khan collaborates with Dance United Yorkshire for a new intergenerational project Memories of the Future, featuring 60 dancers drawn from communities across Bradford, inspired by Akram Khan's Jungle Book reimagined (July).

• 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 (from May).

• 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 (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 2025 following a multi-million-pound transformation and feature a new digital installation by Marshmallow Laser Feast (from April 2025).

• Film director Clio Barnard (Ali & Ava, The Selfish Giant) will curate a series of films from working-class northern women, behind and in front of the camera at the National Science and Media Museum’s Pictureville, Yorkshire’s biggest independent cinema (February).

• Mike Kenny’s Olivier Award-winning adaptation of E Nesbit’s The Railway Children will  take place on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway line, a place familiar to millions from the film adaptations of the classic novel (from July).

• Ice Age Art Now presents work by people living in Europe at the end of the last Ice Age, some as much as 32,000 years old. These astounding works reveal the deep roots of drawing, sculpture, realism, abstraction, signs, symbols and more. This exhibition features a wealth of rare items from the British Museum and local treasures from the collections of Bradford District Museums & Galleries. (from June).

• The first UK City of Culture exhibition to include all four nations of the UK will travel to four cities, featuring local heroes from Bradford, Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast photographed by Aïda Muluneh, as part of a series of new artworks from the acclaimed Ethiopian artist (from January).

• Opera North takes up residency across the year with an immersive sound walk featuring new music from three leading composers inspired by the music of Bradford-born composer Delius (from May); the Orchestra of Opera North join forces with bassline musicians, singers and DJs for Bassline Symphony (May); singing and performance workshops in schools (year-round), and the company’s first ever performances of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra (April).

Music will be key to the programme including: a 3-day contemporary-classical New Music Biennial (June); Big Brass Blowout, a weekend celebrating brass music of all kinds – including Bradford’s Black Dyke Band, one of the world’s oldest brass bands (April); Dialled In will lead a celebration of contemporary South Asian music (August); and Asian Dub Foundation will live-score the French thriller La Haine to mark the film’s 30th anniversary (January).

Shanaz Gulzar, Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture Creative Director, said: “I am delighted to announce the first events in the programme for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, which showcase the exceptionally rich, diverse talent that Bradford holds. 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.”

Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport said: "Next year's UK City of Culture programme promises some fantastic experiences throughout the year, enabling Bradford to tell its incredible story and show off its rich local heritage to the world.

"This celebration of talent born and bred in the city will help to get more people of all ages and backgrounds involved in cultural events, creating good jobs and opportunities for young people."

Bradford 2025 will transform the district through arts and culture to fuel a creative, social, and economic renaissance. It will cement Bradford’s reputation as one of the most welcoming places in the UK where artists, producers, audiences and creative entrepreneurs can flourish. The UK City of Culture programme includes the regeneration of existing community and cultural spaces, as well as the introduction of new and sustainable extensions to community organisations. The programme will have a lifelong impact through its reshaping of the local curriculum, skills and training programmes and investment in existing and new creative spaces.

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, The 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.

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