Scratched blank on a bridge outside Bradford Interchange, the words “Welcome home, sexy” have made thousands of train passengers smile over the years. But whoever wrote the graffiti almost never thought it would be used as a brazen motto for Bradford’s bid to be the UK’s city of culture.
“It’s us, it’s Bradford. It’s a little naughty, hospitable, welcoming,” said Shanaz Gulzar, chairman of the city’s nomination team, who admitted that some thought the slogan was “a little too Bradford.” for the judges.
It worked, however, as Bradford has won competition from Southampton, Durham County and Wrexham Borough County to occupy the city’s crown of culture in 2025.
“It’s tremendous,” said Zulfiqar Ali Karim, chairman of the Bradford Mosque Council and, as an assistant lieutenant in West Yorkshire, the Queen’s man in Bradford. “A lot of people have seen Bradford as a disadvantage compared to other northern cities, and they’ve probably rejected us as dead and buried,” he added. “But in terms of football, this is our promotion to the Premier League.”
Bradford has been unpopular with outsiders for decades, overlooked in favor of Manchester and Leeds despite its huge potential as the UK’s youngest city.
The city that sent wool to the world had begun to rediscover its self-confidence before the Covid-19, with a growing cultural and independent scene, a smart public space outside the Victorian town hall, a new center bright commercial and a 4,000-seat live. music venue under construction.
However, Bradford is the fifth poorest local government area in England and the pandemic has left it with the second highest unemployment rate in the UK, according to the Center for Cities think tank. The need for investment is acute, but the city recently lost the “Northern Powerhouse” railroad, the trans-Pennine high-speed rail line that many felt would have transformed their prospects economically.
Banners of the City of Culture in Bradford. Photography: Richard Saker / The Guardian
“It can feel very overlooked as a place,” said Maria Edwards, 38, as she watched her seven-year-old daughter, Esme Yeomans, splash Wednesday at the Centennial Square fountains. “We are a dead end on the train routes. It’s huge and there are a lot of things, but it feels undiscovered in so many ways. “
Her friend Claudia Ingolfsson, 42, said she hoped the City of Culture would bring jobs to young people for future generations: “People go to cities like Sheffield and stay, while in Bradford you don’t feel that there is a core of aspiration. young professionals staying here “.
Bradford will receive an initial £ 275,000 to develop its plans for a year of events, along with the possibility of raising £ 3 million in national lottery funding. Long-term impacts should be significant; Nearly 800 jobs were created in Hull when it was the city of culture in 2017, and Coventry has benefited from a £ 500m regeneration activity since its title was announced in 2021, according to independent analysis.
From left: Amza Ahmed, 22, Libby Russell, 23, Celine Roblin-Robson, 31, and Georgia Batterley, 25, in Bradford. Photography: Richard Saker / The Guardian
Raising morale could be as important as the extra investment. Kristian Cleworth, an arts worker, was so fed up with the misconceptions about Bradford that she created a website to share only good news about her hometown.
“We almost accepted the jokes and raised eyebrows and didn’t push the positives,” he said. “Bradford has been held back since the 1960s. The big change in the architecture and planning of the city: people have seen it as a loss of heritage and it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy of moans and groans.”
The 2001 riots, which saw some of the worst violence in mainland Britain in decades, were “old history” for Cleworth, 32, while Karim, who grew up in Bradford in the 1980s, said that the district was now “probably one of the most harmonious cities in Europe.” Communities have learned to celebrate each other, he said, not just to live together.
Gulzar said the city of culture was an opportunity, 21 years after the riots, to keep people from linking Bradford to disharmony. “Why are we still talking about this 20 years later? It is part of our history, but since then two generations have been born and raised and this is not their lived history. Bradford is a city in the world. ”
What you may not know about Bradford
It is the youngest city in the UK. More than a quarter of the district’s 542,000 residents are under the age of 18 – compared to 21% nationally – and 30% are under the age of 20.
It is the fifth largest city in England and one of the most diverse: children speak 160 languages in local schools.
St George’s Hall is one of the oldest such venues in the United Kingdom, having opened in 1853. Two suffragettes sabotaged a speech by then-Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in protest of his opposition. to the vote of women. The two activists, Mrs. Runciman and Miss Fitch, had been hiding under the stage for 24 hours.
Bradford has more than 4,000 listed buildings, most of which date back to its 18th-century heritage as an industrial center, including Salts Mill.
Salts Mill, a former textile factory in the village of Saltaire, a World Heritage Site, in West Yorkshire. Photography: Richard Saker / The Guardian
It also has a World Heritage Site in Saltaire. Described by Unesco as an “exceptionally complete and well-preserved industrial village”, Saltaire was built by the industrialist Titus Salt.
Many people know Bradford for his famous creatives, such as David Hockney and the Brontë sisters, but few realize how close the country town is. Bradford is located on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, while Ilkley, famous for its cow and calf, a rock formation consisting of an outcrop and a rock, has stunning views and is part of the Bradford district, but it feels a world far from the bustling center. .