The National Science & Media Museum, which reopened in January following a huge redevelopment, saw the opening in April of a major new immersive experience. Created for Bradford 2025 by experiential artist collective Marshmallow Laser Feast, YOU:MATTER blended art, science and creative technologies to explore the web of relationships that bond us to the universe – and you can still catch it until 22 March 2026.

We took Bradford 2025 on tour around the district in The Beacon, our very own travelling venue – and in April, this stunning performance space went on the road for the first time.

The Beacon opened its doors in Wibsey Park with Our Patch’s Big Family Welcome, heralding a packed month of performances, events and community activities – everything from folk legend Eliza Carthy in concert and Teen Scene’s Easter Party to Woodland Tribe’s Great Adventure Build, (part of PLAY, our year-round families programme) CBeebies Bedtime Stories and the National Literacy Trust’s Bradford Stories Bus.

Our year-long celebrations of Bradford’s rich cinematic heritage continued in April with our very own Drive-In Cinema. Over three days and nights at Cannon Mills, people drove up to enjoy Hollywood icons and Bollywood classics on our monster screen – all from the comfort of their own cars.

Frontline 1984/1985 threw the spotlight on a fascinating part of Bradford’s history – the city’s African Caribbean communities in the 1980s. Presented at Loading Bay, Bradford 2025’s pop-up venue, it was the first exhibition from local photographer Victor Wedderburn, whose evocative images featured long-lost community landmarks such as Roots Record Shop and the Perseverance Hotel.

Bradford-born writer Lanre Bakare was joined by Wedderburn in April at the launch of his first book, We Were There. And later in the year, Wedderburn’s photographs reached new audiences with a second exhibition at the National Science & Media Museum.

April saw the unveiling of Growing Together, a new mural created especially for Girlington Community Garden by Baildon-based artist Sven Shaw. This beautiful artwork showcasing the national flowers of countries connected to Girlington’s communities, from Poland to Pakistan.

Growing Together was the third artwork created for BD: Walls, a district-wide series of new street art commissioned by and created for Bradford 2025. BD: Walls launched in 2024 with works by NeSpoon (The Portal) and Peachzz (Roots), and continued to bring vibrant street art to locations across the district throughout 2025.

This month also saw the launch of our BD: Walls Talent Development Programme, a free street art initiative for artists based in West Yorkshire. Through the programme’s sessions, participants built on their skills and contributed to the creation of a new mural, later unveiled in July 2025.

DRAW!, our nationwide drawing project supported by David Hockney, welcomed illustrator Rose Blake as our guest artist for April.

Rose, whose work includes Hockney’s beautiful book A History of Pictures for Children, invited us to draw a view from a window – and you can see a selection of drawings at our website.

The end of the month saw the unveiling of a major new public sculpture for Bradford city centre. Saad Qureshi’s Tower of Now pays tribute to Bradford’s rich variety of cultures through mirroring the district’s architecture, whilst also incorporating architectural features from around the globe. It soars 15 metres above Hall Ings – and it can still be seen in the city.

Our Writing Home programme worked with people who had recently moved to Bradford over a series of weekly sessions to develop original pieces of creative writing inspired by the sculpture.

Our tireless Creative Engagement team enjoyed another packed month. There were more school poetry workshops, and Intergenerational Play sessions (see March’s round-up for more on those) – plus:

• Our Patch our community creativity programme, grew and grew in Spring. In April, the team took creativity to more places than ever before, reaching over 2,700 people across the district, including young people taking part in Bagsy the Backseat to plan their own adventures on public transport, who took their first journey, a Pic Knic Knac trip to seek treasure in Ilkley’s charity shops.
• Bradford Digital Creatives invited more young people to share stories about their pasts, their presents and their futures – guided by workshops with local and international digital artists, and all leading up to a festival in summer 2025.
• Stand & Be Counted Theatre joined us to host new creative sessions for people seeking sanctuary in the city with Bevan, our brand new Soapbox Group – who later made the rail-journey soundscape for The Railway Children.
• Fresh, Yorkshire Dance’s annual youth dance festival, came to Bradford for the first time, with workshops at Loading Bay and performances at the Alhambra Theatre.

• We welcomed Opera North to St George’s Hall for two concert performances of Verdi’s captivating Simon Boccanegra.
• Nathaniel J Hall (First Time, It’s a Sin) brought his powerful, personal drama Toxic to Loading Bay.
• Animal Farm met Pokémon met Final Fantasy in the truly wild asses.masses – a video game played live by the audience.
• We announced that Bradford is the first ever UK Cultural City of Sanctuary.
• We launched 25 Things to Do in Bradford.
• And we said goodbye to a trio of exhibitions: Extraordinary Portraits at Loading Bay, Nationhood: Memory and Hope at Impressions Gallery and Fighting To Be Heard at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery.