Bradford 2025 has been nothing short of a revelation. When the city was first awarded the UK City of Culture title, there was excitement tempered with scepticism: could a district so often positioned on the margins of national imagination carry such a responsibility, and indeed, such promise? Nine months into the programme, those questions feel almost quaint. Bradford has not only risen to the challenge, it has exceeded it with an energy that has redefined what the City of Culture designation can achieve. This has been more than a year of festivals and exhibitions; it has been a recalibration of how we understand the role of art in everyday life, how we engage with heritage and how we imagine the future of our cities.
It is impossible to deny the scale of the impact. Where previous Cities of Culture shifted perceptions, Bradford has transformed them. It has become a city in which the arts are not an adjunct to civic life but its lifeblood, carried through communities, neighbourhoods and international dialogues with a vibrancy that feels unprecedented. The legacy is already visible: derelict buildings given new life, grassroots organisations working alongside world-class institutions and a community energised not as passive audiences but as active makers, participants and co-authors.
Certain projects stand out as touchstones of this transformative year. Marshmallow Laser Feast’s expansive installation created a sensory environment that transported audiences beyond the visible, exploring ecological interconnection through immersive technology. It was both an artwork and an experience, collapsing the boundaries between science, nature and digital practice, and reminding us that Bradford has always been a place where industry, innovation and imagination collide. Similarly, Aida Muluneh’s major exhibition reframed the city’s cultural outlook through a global lens, situating Bradford within an international discourse on identity, diaspora and representation. Her vivid, staged photographs – monumental in their colour and symbolism – brought a perspective from Ethiopia that resonated powerfully with the city’s own histories of migration and hybridity.
The arrival of the Turner Prize in Bradford has been a cultural coup, its presence at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery signalling an affirmation of the city’s importance on the national stage. Yet what has been striking is how seamlessly this has been paired with OUR TURN, a festival of visual art by local creators who might otherwise have been overshadowed. Rather than setting international prestige against local expression, Bradford 2025 has held them in dialogue, ensuring that the district’s own artists are not merely framed as participants in someone else’s story, but as central protagonists in their own right.
Equally resonant was the citywide participation in Aida Muluneh’s workshops and public talks, echoing through schools, libraries and community hubs. Here, the high-profile and the hyperlocal converged, demonstrating that Bradford 2025 is not about parachuting in cultural moments but embedding them deeply into the fabric of daily life. This commitment has been epitomised by Our Patch, which has taken the arts to playgrounds, hospices and cafés, transforming the entire district into a stage.
As the year now moves into its finale season, the scale of achievement is almost hard to comprehend. We find ourselves looking back at an extraordinary constellation of projects, from the radical reimagining of Manningham Mill through STRIKE – a luminous and sonic tribute to the women whose strikes shaped British labour history – to Built by Sound, which revisits the subversive joy of the South Asian “daytimers.” These secret daytime raves of the 70s and 80s, reconstructed through mixed reality, speak not only to a local history but to a universal story of resistance, music and identity. The district has become a living gallery, where textile histories are reanimated in installations like Nisbet Road Tailor’s Shop, reminding us how migration threads itself into fashion and fabric, while emerging artists take over disused and unexpected spaces, insisting that art is not confined to white walls but belongs everywhere.
At the centre of this extraordinary momentum is Shanaz Gulzar. Her vision for Bradford 2025 has been nothing short of radical, not through spectacle alone but through a profound understanding of how to hold a city’s multiplicity in balance. Under her creative direction, Bradford has been bold enough to present global figures such as Muluneh alongside deeply local interventions, to welcome the Turner Prize while ensuring community festivals like BRAVE and 29% sit alongside it with equal weight. Her leadership is a lesson for all of us in cultural practice: that the most resonant art emerges when voices are amplified, not overwritten, and when a programme grows from within a place rather than being imposed upon it.
What we can learn from Bradford is not simply that culture can regenerate a city – that much we already knew from its predecessors. The lesson here is that culture can remake how a place sees itself, and how it is seen by the world, by privileging authenticity, risk-taking, and above all, inclusivity. Bradford has placed its young people at the heart of its story, allowed its diaspora histories to shine, and honoured its radical traditions. It has resisted the temptation of easy spectacle and instead curated a year that feels both rooted and transformative. As we look ahead to the closing event, Brighter Still, the symbolism could not be more apt. Across the winter solstice, the city will gather in dance, music, light, fire and food, turning darkness into illumination. It is a celebration not only of a year of culture, but of a future recalibrated. Bradford will no longer be spoken of only through deficit or decline; it will be recognised as a city of culture in the truest sense, where creativity is inseparable from civic identity.
Bradford 2025 has been more impactful than any other City of Culture because it has transcended the boundaries of a cultural programme. It has become a philosophy of living together, of telling stories otherwise unheard, of refusing to separate heritage from innovation. Its legacy will not only be found in the restored architecture or the numbers of visitors, but in the changed perception of what Bradford is and what it can be. This is culture not as entertainment, but as transformation. This is a city that has risen.
Find Out More about Bradford 2025’s Closing Events: bradford2025.co.uk
Words: Anna Müller
Image Credits:
1. Back in the Pink – Out Out. Emma Bentley Fox.
2. Nabeela Ahmed – Secret Location near St Ives, Bingley. From the series Hardy and Free © Carolyn Mendelsohn.
3. Bring It Back, Natalie Davies.
4. Mela Kalay, Calverley Woods. From the series Hardy and Free, June 14, 2025 © Carolyn Mendelsohn.
5. Alice Parsons, Grassington Moor. From the series Hardy and Free May 15, 2025 © Carolyn Mendelsohn.
