This year Bradford will be bursting with pride and passion as the city starts its reign as City of Culture 2025. It’s a big deal and comes with the promise of drawing new visitors to the city and giving the people who live there a year to remember. Here’s what to look out for – and be a part of.
City Park and Centenary Square will host RISE, an open-air spectacular that heralds the start of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture. It’s created by Kirsty Housley, the award-winning theatre director, in collaboration with Steven Frayne, the Bradford-born magician formerly known as Dynamo.
January 10&11
Grue
Head to Damart Mill, Bingley for a walk-through experience for culture-lovers young and old. In an enchanted landscape pass through secret doors, a fairy forest and even go underwater on your quest.
Dreamed up by artist Steve Wintercroft, produced by Yorkshire’s ARCADE and built entirely from recycled and repurposed materials, Grue is an ancient word for ‘shiver’ – but you can warm up with a drink and a snack.
8-23 February
The world’s most exciting visual arts prize is comes to Bradford for the first time. The annual Turner Prize showcases and celebrates the most exciting new developments in British art. In the year the UK celebrates the 250th anniversary of JMW Turner’s birth, the Turner Prize heads to Bradford.
In spring, names of the shortlisted artists will be announced. And in autumn, their work will be presented at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, with the winner announced in December 2025.
Richard Hawley and Black Dyke Brass Band
Beautiful St George’s Hall will be the setting for this made-in-Yorkshire soundclash, pairing a world champion brass band with one of Britain’s best-loved singer-songwriters. Following an opening selection of Black Dyke favourites, hear a set of Hawley classics with added brass.
April 12
The Big Brass Blowout
This opens with a special concert at Saltaire’s Victoria Hall, with BD1 Brass leading a musical and cinematic celebration of Northern England.
Echoes of the North: Four Chapters in Time is a silent movie taking audiences down the highways and byways of Northern life in the early 20th century. The music is by award-winning composer and BBC presenter Neil Brand as the first ever all-brass soundtrack to a silent movie and will be performed live to a screening of the movie.
April 11
Bassline Symphony
Bassline is among the most thrilling musical subcultures of the 21st century. Bradford is a hotbed of this electrifying music, but it’s never sounded quite like this – with the trademark crackling rhythms and pulsing low end supercharged by Opera North’s magnificent orchestra. Hear new symphonic versions of classic cuts in a showcase at St George’s Hall.
May 9
The Bradford Progress
Over a weekend in May, the Bradford District will come alive with music made by musicians and singers who call the district home – a sonic journey ending in the centre of the city.
The Bradford Progress is created with and for the people of Bradford in collaboration with Paraorchestra, the pioneering ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians led by artistic director Charles Hazlewood, and Jeremy Deller.
May 2025
Join Opera North on an immersive sound walk over the moors above Haworth. Penistone Hill Country Park is one of the wild glories of Bradford District. Earth & Sky invites you to take a fresh look at this expansive landscape – with music as your guide
Bradford 2025 and Opera North have invited composers Caterina Barbieri, Nyokabi Kariũki and Gwen Siôn to create new music and sound works inspired by this untamed upland – and by the music of Bradford-born composer Frederick Delius, which is rooted in the natural world.
Earth & Sky is part of Wild Uplands, a series of artworks created for the vast skies and epic moorland views of Penistone Hill.
May-October
Explore
Bradford on Foot is a collection of themed walks and tours around 2025’s UK City of Culture, from secret streets and hidden gems to the great wide open.
Walks are being selected by walking groups, historians, schoolchildren, artists and residents. There’ll be 25 routes to follow in 2025, from country hikes to neighbourhood strolls.
Spring 2025
Hockney’s project
Bradford-born artist David Hockney has drawn the world around him for 60 years, using everything from pencils to iPads.
The artist spent four years studying at the Bradford School of Art, which he joined in 1953 at the age of 16. The focus was on life drawing – but he went on to discover a love of painting, often using the streets of post-war Bradford as a subject. Inspired and supported by David Hockney, Bradford 2025 is now inviting people of all ages across the UK to take part in a drawing project to reflect everyday lives.
Memories of the Future
A new project from world-renowned dancer-choreographer Akram Khan and Akram Khan Company, making their first visit to the city, and Helen Linsell of Dance United Yorkshire. The show is being created for 60 dancers drawn from communities across Bradford, spanning cultures and generations, many of them will be performing on stage for the very first time.
Memories of the Future is partly inspired by the themes of identity, belonging and home in Khan’s beautiful Jungle Book reimagined, which Akram Khan Company are performing in January at the Alhambra Theatre.
July 5
Revisit the much-loved children’s classic – on the very train tracks where the film was shot.
Mike Kenny’s enchanting stage adaptation of E. Nesbit’s classic novel has won thousands of admirers since it premiered in 2008. Now, for the first time, the production will take a ride along the iconic Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, familiar to millions from the film adaptation of The Railway Children.
Exclusively for Bradford 2025, the show begins when you board a steam train at Keighley, then travel the full length of this historic railway. When you reach the end of the line at Oxenhope, you’ll find a purpose-built auditorium within the station’s Engine Shed – and a new version of the production, which tells the story of three children forced to move from London to Yorkshire after their father is falsely imprisoned.
July 16-September 7
Contains Strong Language
Contains Strong Language is the BBC’s annual celebration of poetry, performance and spoken word – and it comes to Bradford for the first time.
There’ll be four days of performances, readings, events and activities at venues across the city, and a host of BBC radio programmes will be recorded or broadcast live from Bradford – including The Verb, BBC Radio 4’s ‘cabaret of the word’. Much of the weekend will be free.
September 18-21
Food love
Meet Our Mothers is a collection of treasured family recipes from across Bradford District, compiled especially for Bradford 2025 by artist Deepa Mann-Kler. It will include recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation – food that celebrates Bradford District’s status as a true hotpot of cultural cuisine. Published in autumn.
Edible Archives have been touring Bradford, collecting stories, histories and recipes from people across the district. The result is The Bradford Selection: a series of biscuits inspired by different Bradford communities and cultures.
The biscuits will be presented in a limited-edition collectible tin with a bespoke zine and audio experience. Available from spring 2025
Andrea Dunbar
She wrote vividly and brilliantly of the Bradford she knew. Born and raised in Buttershaw, Dunbar made her name as a teenager when The Arbor, her first play, premiered at London’s Royal Court, one of the world’s leading theatres for new writing. She followed it with Rita, Sue and Bob Too and Shirley, two plays that combine domestic drama, social comment and wicked humour to extraordinary effect. The Dreams I Had presents staged readings of selections from her works, celebrating the explosive talent of this once-in-a-generation writer.
Date TBC
