Wyke Dragons was a free community cycling performance presented by Summat Creative that took place on 1 November 2025 at 5.30pm at the Wyke Cycle Circuit. The project was an imaginative spectacle featuring over 100 illuminated “dragons”—some on two wheels and some on three—pedalled by a diverse range of participants from across Bradford, including pupils from Atlas Primary School and Southfield SEND school, local cycle clubs, and Summat Creative’s squad of Special Olympic Yorkshire and Humber athletes.

The full project involved extensive community and school-based workshops from May to September 2025. During the final performance, the dragons approached the cycle circuit from all four directions before circling, seeking, and ultimately coming together in a grand finale to assemble one gigantic illuminated dragon, symbolising the celebratory coming together of diverse people from all over Bradford.

Summat Creative co-produces creative and sports projects with people with Learning Disabilities. In every project everyone who works with them is paid fairly, treated equitably and has their needs, divergences and differences respected. In all their projects they employ people with Learning Disabilities, those who have been out of work due to caring responsibilities and those who are marginalised in society.

Event details here.

Created from community conversations, research and lived experiences, the piece honours the Windrush generation and shines a light on the lasting impact of their stories in Bradford.

Blending verbatim voices, live music and new writing, it explores themes of love, unity, freedom and connection across generations. It’s a celebration of resilience, influence and creativity – acknowledging the roots of Black-origin music while inviting audiences to reflect on how those sounds continue to shape society.

Bradford-born soul singer Sinead Campbell leads a collective of outstanding Yorkshire musicians and artists in this collaboration. Each performer has been carefully chosen for their deep connection to music of Black origin and culture, bringing passion and reverence to the stage.

At its core, Love. Unite. Freedom. is about visibility, empowerment and carrying wisdom forward. There’s something new for everyone to take away with them – whether you’re getting lost in the sounds of the 70’s or discovering the underground sounds of the 90’s. Don’t miss your chance to experience this powerful new work that will move you to dance, cry, reminisce, laugh and celebrate.

Sinead Campbell is a soul singer and musician. Her sound blends vintage soul with the warmth of contemporary grooves, creating music that tells stories of love, resilience, and self-discovery.  Sinead has had the privilege of performing alongside acclaimed artists such as Basement Jaxx, Arrested Development, and Soul II Soul, and has graced the stage at festivals like Live at Leeds and The Great Escape. Recently, she relaunched her music career with a new sound that reconnects her with her roots. Her latest single, “With You,” has been featured on BBC Radio 1.

In addition to her music, Sinead is a creative producer and holistic vocal coach, dedicated to supporting Bradford’s music sector and advocating for inclusivity. She creates spaces that inspire connection, authenticity, and self-expression, where people feel empowered to share their stories. As a dual heritage woman of Jamaican, Irish, and English descent,  Sinead is passionate about embracing and celebrating the diversity that shapes identities. This project is an extension of her commitment to music, community, and cultural storytelling.

Book tickets for the event at Loading Bay.

Theatre with Legs (TWL) are performance makers Jess Murrain and Lua Bairstow. We create queer and experimental live art using contemporary poetry, experimental sound composition, movement and music. We seek to experiment with subversive and counter-cultural storytelling-where the personal meets the political, seeking always to queer performance and to undermine the white gaze and cis gender gaze. Theatre with Legs have been making and sharing work in Bradford since 2016 including in residency and in public facing performance. With the support of Bradford 2025, and Neuroqueering Humans Network, Theatre with Legs now seek a radical exploration of Neuroqueering as verb, adjective, action, and identity.

Shadmanny! was part of the Bradford South Asian Festival and took place on October 11-12, 2025, at the Bradford Arts Centre.

The event was a “desi” takeover to celebrate the joy and culture of South Asian weddings, embracing the ‘Shadmanny’ spirit.

Highlights included:

• An immersive, all-singing, all-dancing ‘baraat’ parade to kick off the festival.
• Two days of music, film, dance, food, wedding-themed arts/crafts, and storytelling.
• Workshops and sessions such as Rangoli, Mehndi Masterclasses, Gajra Making, a Bollywood Dance Session, and the ‘Antakshari!’ singalong.
• Film screenings, including Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Band Baaja Baaraat.

Full event details here.

Ascendance is a charity working in the Dance for Health sector, combining professional work with a community dance company, weekly classes and outreach projects. A regional flagship for Dance with Parkinson’s work, Ascendance provides a caring and crucial service in the community through the delivery of exercise, creative and performance opportunities that improve physical and mental wellbeing, coordination and social cohesion.

Unseen was a new screen dance project from Ascendance, combining voice work, art and movement that will be co-created with artists across Bradford into a series of five short films.

The project featured:

1. A specially commissioned documentary film by local filmmaker Pishdaad Modaressi, capturing the journeys of people who dance.
2. A community artwork exhibition created in collaboration with artist Serena Nassini.
3. A live opening performance by Ascendance on Saturday, May 24.
4. Two special morning dance sessions for the over 50’s (suitable for all abilities) on Sunday, May 25, and Monday, May 26.

Full event details here.

Plug It Up was a free three-day DIY sound art festival produced by the Bradford Sound Wom*n Network in partnership with Yorkshire Sound Women Network, taking place at Theatre in the Mill in October.

The festival featured a range of hands-on workshops and performances, including:

• Workshops: Spatial Composition with the Bells & Whistles Scratch Orchestra; a Pom-Pom Synth workshop (e-textiles); an Open Wave-Receiver Radio workshop; and a Junk Instrument Orchestra workshop for children.
• Performances: A Sound Poetry Open Mic (Spitting Yarns); a performance by Swedish artist Ann Rosén using her custom ‘Pencil Barrier/Graphite Barrier’ instrument; and a performance by New York-based Maria Chávez using abstract turntablism with broken vinyl.
• The final day included the Gallery II Closing View, featuring new work by emerging Bradford sound artists.

Full event details here.

Smoke-Blackened Walls & Curlews, is a music and spoken word performance by Matthew Bourne, Ben Cottrell & Keeley Forsyth that will take place on November 8, 2025, from 7-10:30 PM at The Underground in Bradford.

This performance will centre on a little-known composition commissioned for the 1970 Bradford Arts Festival by British jazz composer Graham Collier (1937–2011). Collier’s original work, Smoke-Blackened Walls & Curlews, combined jazz with texts by local authors like J.B. Priestley and Ted Hughes to create a cultural narrative of the region. For this Bradford 2025 event, improvising pianist Matthew Bourne, composer Ben Cottrell, and narrator Keeley Forsyth, alongside an ensemble of West Riding-based musicians, will revisit the original material. They will also present a newly composed companion suite to extend Collier’s work and offer a contemporary portrait of the region, thereby bringing historical and current narratives together. The project also will celebrate Collier’s significant contributions to British jazz and improvised music ahead of what would have been his 90th birthday in 2027.

Event and ticket details here.

Days After Harvest was a free public installation by Double Pivot that celebrates Bradford’s Mango Season. This project was displayed at Darley Street Market from September 5 to 7, 2025.

The core of the installation was the Giant Mango Box, a 14x scale replica made from timber and vinyl, which paid tribute to the ubiquitous cardboard packaging used to import honey mangoes from Pakistan. Every summer, millions of these mangoes travel up to four thousand miles to reach the UK, becoming central to a three-month-long seasonal trade in Bradford. The project aimed to highlight the cultural and economic importance of this trade, particularly in the face of threats like climate change and geopolitical tensions. Featured inside the Giant Mango Box were three short films, directed and edited by Haider Mahboob, which offered different perspectives from within the mango trade, serving as extracts from an upcoming documentary.

Double Pivot is a public arts studio formed by Joseph Cole and James Arkwright – two Glasgow School of Art graduates living and working in Bradford. Their goal is to deliver captivating and relatable projects in public spaces. Whether working alongside communities to make something new, or showcasing something brilliant from the real world, they strive to find the confluence of ideas in the humblest of settings.

Event details here.

Otherhood is a new play by Old Bird Theatre that explores themes of radical love and found family. This immersive theatre experience, which mixes a soundscape with real-life stories, focuses on a grieving widow and a queer millennial who discover the power of finding family in unexpected places while navigating the heartaches and joys of aging child-free. The production ran at various venues across the Bradford District from September 23 to October 16, 2025. The performance switches between the here and now and an audio storytelling realm where the audience travels in time to an imagined, fantastical Bradford.

Emma Adams is a queer, neurodiverse playwright, screenwriter and dramaturg living in Bradford. She’s written plays for houses, libraries, swimming pools, graveyards and stages, working with many local companies including Red Ladder, Leeds Playhouse, Theatre 503 and Freedom Studios. Emma is a core member of The Writing Squad, mentoring elite young writers in the North.

Deborah Pakkar-Hull is a Bradford-based director and theatre-maker specialising in small-scale theatre touring. She has held Artistic Director roles at The Play House in Birmingham, the York Mystery Plays and Leeds-based company Blah Blah Blah, and has directed more than 20 shows for schools, theatres, community and heritage venues.

Full event details here.

Bradford-based CARBON:Imagineering, led by Imran Ali, are a group of creative technologists working at the intersection of emerging technologies, media and art, navigating their technological, ethical, creative and political implications through digital design and development.

Veiled Reality is a design fiction on the future of hijabs and niqabs. It takes the form of a immersive, interactive first-person story delivered digitally, speculating on a future where emerging technologies, feminism and religion collide in the genesis of wearable ‘shroud computing’ and ‘smart veils’.

Previous large-scale digital experiences from CARBON:Imagineering include a VR experience for visitors to the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand; BD Stories, an anthology of mobile live theatre plays set in Bradford; and Philkari x Skechers, a fictional mash-up between Skechers and Punjabi artisans.

The Human Arcade by Losing the Thread is a collaboration between Bradford-based large format visual artists Jim Mitcham and Geoff Kendal.

An evolution of the popular Window Vipers art installation, which premiered at BD:Is Lit 2023, The Human Arcade invites people of all ages to interact with large-scale, fully playable games. With huge joysticks and oversized games controllers, this interactive piece was conceived as a love letter to the golden age of 8-bit arcade machines and computer gaming. The Human Arcade will invite everyone, young and old, to unleash their inner gorilla, get ponging and blast some asteroids along the way. Ready Player One…?

Artist Lucy Barker created a participatory and playful dance on Bradford Moor to mark Bradford 2025, triangulating the heritage of Emily Brontë, Kate Bush’s pop masterpiece and Bradford’s community and landscape.

Bradford is surrounded by moorland, few of them natural. Not all bodies can roam so simply. Is there any better feeling than dancing like no one’s watching? This project encouraged participation wherever people happened to be: on the moors, in their garden, or at work. Participants were invited to use a beautiful hand-drawn map by Chris Goddard and fun instructional videos as inspiration for a walk, a lie down, or a dance. The suggested activities were highly imaginative and diverse, ranging from making favourite shapes from bed to waving a dramatic tea towel. The goal was to connect with the glorious moorland and engage in creative, lighthearted movement, with participants encouraged to share photos and videos of their creations on social media.

Full event details here.

Rose Illingworth: Born to the Boats, a historical theatre production by Northern Duck Productions that explores Bradford’s canal-life history. The play was staged aboard canal boats in Bingley and Saltaire from May 3 to May 18, 2025.

The narrative, inspired by producer Meg Wilson’s ancestor Rose Illingworth, tells the poignant coming-of-age story of Rose as she approaches her 18th birthday. Having grown up on her family’s canal boat and found freedom on the water, Rose is faced with a life-changing decision: stay aboard and continue the tradition of canal life, or step ashore to marry a kind boy with deep roots on land. The show took place inside Kennet, an original Leeds & Liverpool short boat, where audience members descended into the boat’s hold for the performance. An accessible performance was also held in Roberts Park for those unable to board the boat.

Northern Duck Productions, a new venture, reimagines storytelling with a modern twist, prioritising unheard narratives. Embracing their working-class roots, they amplify underrepresented stories, deeply rooted in Bradford’s community. Together, Meg and Jaz craft compelling plays and musicals, resonating with diverse audiences. Northern Duck’s commitment to innovation and impactful narratives drives them to continually explore fresh creative avenues, promising an exciting journey ahead.

Event details here.

Pins for Peace, is a free, large-scale exhibition presented by local art instigators Mek Summat and The Peace Museum that celebrates the simple pin badge. The exhibition will run from 27 September to 30 November, 2025 (10 AM – 4 PM) at The Peace Museum in Bradford, with a free drop-in format.

Inspired by The Peace Museum’s collection of pin badges, the project brings together contributions from a wide array of artistic talent, including local artists and those from further afield. These artists will add their visual voices to a collective call for peace. The exhibition’s centrepiece is a collection of giant badges that will not only fill the walls of the museum but will also spill out onto the streets, popping up in various outdoor locations across Bradford.

Mek Summat came to life in 2019, their purpose being to bring a variety of high quality and inclusive arts / community events to the Bradford district. The vision being to support and promote the growing local creative community, while producing events that would also attract audiences from far and wide. Their focus has always been to provide a showcase for the diverse and perhaps sometimes overlooked demographics within the creative sphere. Motivated by this, they have produced a wide range of events under the ‘Mek Summat’ banner, from art markets, to exhibitions, ‘hands on’ art workshops, concerts and the publishing of books and zines.

Exhibition runs until end of November – find out more.

According to the 2021 census, 25.5% of Bradford is of Pakistani heritage. Nearly 70% of those are Kashmiri/Pothwari and speak the invisible Pahari-Pothwari. Written literature in Pahari-Pothwari is rarely seen in Bradford and elsewhere – and this project will create new writing in Pahari-Pothwari with translations in English.

The project worked with two Bradford secondary schools and hosted sessions online for adults, resulting in the production of two anthologies of new writing in Pahari-Pothwari, which also included English translations. The showcase was the culmination of this work, featuring spoken performances and offering the anthologies for purchase. An intergenerational Mushaira showcased this work at Loading Bay, the culmination of this work, featuring spoken performances and offering the anthologies for purchase.

Nabeela Ahmed is a writer, multilingual poet and spoken word artist. Her poetry manuscript was shortlisted by Verve Poetry Press in 2023 and she published her novella, Despite Our Differences, in 2018. She teaches creative writing, hosts Bradford Writes events to platform Bradford writers, and is responsible for organising the only public Pahari Mushaira in Britain through Intercultured Festival.

Event details here.

STATUESQUE was a visually stunning walkabout act bringing to life the statues from the parks of Bradford and Keighley and will be performed for three days as part of the Beacon Tour in Bowling Park, Cliffe Castle Park and Lister Park.

The project introduced three new walkabout costumed characters, designed and made by artists Naomi Parker and Rachel Hyde (director of Chicks on Sticks), which were inspired by the familiar statues found in Bradford’s parks: Lister Park’s bronze stag, Bowling Park’s wooden bear, and a drumming squirrel. These characters were joined by other favourites, including Bracewell the Dragon and Salt and Pepper the Alpaca.

Each STATUESQUE performance featured a family-friendly workshop where participants were able to make their own parade creations, and a carnival parade, allowing participants and community members to show off their creations.

Naomi Parker is a designer and maker living and working from her studio in Bingley. Rachel Hyde is a performer, costume maker and mosaic artist based in Todmorden. They recently collaborated on a beautiful new walkabout called YE BIRDZ which has been performing nationally since August 2024.

Event details here.

Bring It Back was a high-energy, immersive theatre experience written by and starring award-winning Bradford actress Natalie Davies, that explores Bradford’s musical heritage. The performances ran from 23–25 October 2025 at the Bradford Arts Centre.

Part love letter and part comeback mission, the show follows Nadia Uddin, a thirty-something washed-up DJ who desperately wants to reignite the buzzing nightlife of Bradford’s past – full of bassline, bhangra, and dancefloors packed until 6am. The immersive production mixed film and live stream video with a DJ performing live on the decks. To complete the experience, a post-show DJ set immediately followed each evening performance, featuring local DJs such as Dipak Mistry, Dean Loynes (Phat Fingerz), and Aimee Barber.

Bradford born and bred, Natalie Davies has been working as an actress on stage, screen and radio since 2011. Credits incl. ‘The Full Monty’ (Disney), ‘Hullraisers’ (Channel 4), Bradford’s City of Film feature ‘Eaten By Lions’ (Netflix/ UK Cinema Release) and ‘The War After the War’ directed by Johnny Vegas and starring Sir David Jason (BBC Radio 4). Telling the stories of my city is at the heart of her artistic practice, with my own autobiographical show ‘Full English’ produced in 2021 in partnership with Kala Sangam and Bent Architect, winning Best Stage Production at the Asian Media Awards in 2021.

Event details here.

HONK! Bradford transformed Bradford District into a vibrant hub of live acoustic music, featuring street performances from bands across the world, stunning costumes, and audience participation. The festival celebrated cultural diversity with school and community involvement and a brand new pick-up band for local musicians.

Performances across the district culminated in a Big HONK! in City Park on Saturday 27 September 2025, fostering community bonds and inspiring future street performances. The weekend was a cultural celebration echoing the global movement of HONK!, uniting communities through music and activism.

Since 1983, Bradford’s iconic Peace Artistes have brought their joyful noise to the streets of West Yorkshire, the wider UK and Europe. Born out of Bradford University’s Peace Studies department to bring energy to CND peace marches, they draw on global street band traditions with music inspired by a variety of cultures. A Peace Artistes’ performance has up to 24 musicians playing saxes, brass and percussion – and all dressed to thrill! They can be found on the street, at community events and at festivals.

Event details here.

HOPE/ACT, was a collaborative set of installations created by the People Powered Press using the world’s largest letterpress printing press, with contributions from groups around the Bradford district. The installations were exhibited from May 2025 until the end of the year at various venues.

The People Powered Press worked with members of four groups from around the district: People First Keighley & Craven (a self-advocate charity for people with learning disabilities), students at Co-op Academy Grange (as part of the First Story’s Young Writers Programme), Bradford’s Gypsy and Traveller community, and a girls’ group based at MAPA Bradford community centre. Through creative writing workshops, the participants wrote new poetry, which was then collected into a series of free zines. Each group then collaboratively created a single phrase that encapsulated the issues they explored. The groups then visited the People Powered Press workshop in Shipley to help hand-print the letters of their phrases into a family of four giant murals, which were subsequently exhibited at three indoor sites: City Library, the National Science and Media Museum, and MAPA.

The People Powered Press is a non-profit company based in Shipley, formed in 2021 around the largest letterpress printing press in the world. It engages communities through creative writing, typography and letterpress printing to amplify the voices of local people with important and interesting things to say about the world and their place in it, co-creating prints, zines and large-scale murals for exhibition in indoor and outdoor public spaces.

Installation details here.

Razwan Ul-Haq always wanted to make local inks by making tinctures and crushing discarded stones from Bradford mills, Bradford’s natural stones, and plants from Bradford’s rich natural environment.

This project, titled Augmenting Bradford’s DNA, was a multi-disciplinary, district-wide celebration of Bradford that explored how art and culture were directly related to where someone lives. Since 2024, with the help of Bradford residents, Razwan extracted ink from the city’s resources, including bricks from Bradford’s iconic architecture, soil from Bradford City Football Club, rocks and stones from the rivers of Bradford, and various plants.

After the inks were made, they were used in participatory calligraphy workshops during 2025. Artworks created by participants and by Razwan were then used to create an abstract video of calligraphies that was shown around Bradford in 2025. Razwan also developed the RUH theory during this project, which explored how to retain human art and craft in a fast-developing world. The final artworks and original pigments were exhibited at various locations, including City Library, Keighley Library, Manningham Library, and the Bradford Industrial Museum, until the end of 2025.

Razwan Ul-Haq is an artist who specialises in Arabic calligraphy, particularly the Nastaliq script. He is one of only a handful of calligraphers practicing Nastaliq calligraphy using traditional materials in the UK. His commissions include work for the Queen and land art for the Tour de France in Yorkshire. His work has been seen on Channel 4 and ITV, and in The Times and USA Today.

Installation details here.

Plug It Up was a free three-day DIY sound art festival produced by the Bradford Sound Wom*n Network in partnership with Yorkshire Sound Women Network. The festival took place from October 17–19, 2025, at Theatre in the Mill.

The event was a festival combining workshops and performances, led by female and marginalised gender artists who worked with sound in innovative ways. It featured a range of hands-on activities, including a Spatial Composition workshop with the Bells & Whistles Scratch Orchestra, a Pom-Pom Synth workshop using e-textiles, and an Open Wave-Receiver Radio workshop. Performances included a Sound Poetry Open Mic (Spitting Yarns), a performance by Swedish artist Ann Rosén using her custom Pencil Barrier/Graphite Barrier instrument, and a performance by New York-based Maria Chávez using abstract turntablism with broken vinyl. The final day concluded with the Gallery II Closing View, showcasing new work by emerging Bradford sound artists.

The event was produced by the Bradford Sound Wom*n Network, an organisation dedicated to arranging meet-ups, sessions, and workshops for women, womxn, and people of gender minorities to learn and share skills in DIY sound-based creative activity. They partnered with the Yorkshire Sound Women Network, which strives to support a flourishing industry that welcomes, encourages, and progresses the inclusion of women and people of minority genders at all levels, from the studio floor to the board room, and reflects the diversity of its participating communities.

BRAVE Festival 2025, a joyful two-day celebration of the power, beauty, and brilliance of Black culture through the arts, directed by Tricia Arthur-Stubbs. The festival took place during Black History Month on 18-19 October 2025 at the Bradford Arts Centre.

BRAVE, which stands for Black Roots and Voices Expressed, brought together a vibrant mix of professional artists, community performers, and local creatives. The festival featured dynamic performances rooted in Black cultural traditions, alongside interactive workshops in African dance and drumming, Caribbean Carnival dance, Steel Pan, and Swing. It also included creative, family-friendly activities like costume-making and storytelling. The festival operated on a “Give What You Decide” or “pay as you feel” basis to ensure accessibility and inclusivity for all.

The festival was run by Swirl Education, an organisation founded by Tricia Arthur-Stubbs, who has over 20 years of experience as a performer, workshop leader, and creative. Drawing on her Trinidad and Tobago heritage, she specialises in Caribbean Carnival Dance and bases her work on the belief that dance should be fun, accessible to all, and capable of bringing about positive change.

Tricia to bring joy, unity and inclusivity through movement. Some of her recent work has included, making the Leeds Carnival more accessible by working on a Carnival Arts project with adults with learning disabilities and complex needs. Tricia also ran a pilot of Black Roots and Voices Expressed Festival (BRAVE Festival) in 2023 which was a joyous day of workshops in arts with Black origins that was open to all.

Event details here.