Bradford 2025 is GO!

Our friends at the BBC helped us welcome the nation to Bradford 2025. Sophie McShera, the Bradford-born star of Downton Abbey, took 2.2 million viewers to her favourite places in the city on The One Show – catch up on iPlayer (until 7.30pm on Saturday 8 February).

A week later, Bradford’s Big Bash brought RISE to prime-time BBC One with a documentary on the making of the show. Some 1.3 million people have watched on iPlayer – and it’s available all year, so you can watch it as many times as you like.

And that’s not all: Bradford 2025 featured on BBC One’s Morning Live, BBC Breakfast, BBC Look North, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky News, to name just a few – and our friends at BCB (Bradford Community Broadcasting) came live from RISE on opening night.

Three new exhibitions opened in January as part of Bradford 2025. You can catch them all for a little while longer – and they’re all free.

DRAW! invites us all to draw the world around us. Each month, an artist encourages us to create a drawing inspired by a particular theme – starting with David Hockney, who asked us all to ‘draw something beautiful’ for January.

Read more and submit your drawing – perhaps your masterpiece will feature in our DRAW! exhibition later this year. And look out for more artist invitations to DRAW! in the months ahead.

The great Asian Dub Foundation got our live programme under way in January, performing their soundtrack to cult French thriller La Haine in front of a packed house at St George’s Hall. Akram Khan Company then made its Bradford debut at the Alhambra with Jungle Book reimagined – and Akram’s back later this year to co-create Memories of the Future, a new work for dancers from communities across Bradford.

Also under way: Northern Soul, a celebration of northern women in cinema curated by director Clio Barnard. The season continues at Pictureville in February, and you can see Clio’s previews on our YouTube channel.

Nearly 400 volunteers welcomed audiences to RISE and other events. As one volunteer put it: ‘It was a joy to be welcoming so many people to celebrate Bradford: our city, our home, our people!’ If you’d like to take part in this extraordinary year, it’s not too late – read more and sign up.

We teamed up with our pals at Creative Lives to award more than 50 Do Your Thing awards to grassroots creative projects across Bradford District. Discover who they are – and watch this space to discover what gets made across Bradford in 2025.

Also in January, we…

Launched Our Patch, a major programme for the people of Bradford to take part in art during 2025.

Welcomed people to a special event in Keighley to celebrate the opening of Bradford 2025, organised by our brilliant Networkers and Community Connectors.

Distributed 4,300 books to 43 secondary schools thanks to our partnership with Penguin Books, making more books more accessible to pupils across Bradford District.

Joined the BBC Bitesize Careers Tour as it visited 16 secondary schools across the district and delivered sessions to over 13,000 students.

Teamed up with BBC Radio Leeds to invite Bradford AFC fans to join a choir called – of course! – Bantam of the Opera.

Announced the first events in Loading Bay, our new pop-up venue in the city centre that opens in March – read more and book now.

Loads! Grue kicks off PLAY, our year-round families programme. Ramadan Festival 2025 gets under way at St George’s Hall. BBC Introducing brings the best new acts to The Underground. You can sign up for aerial training, host your own event at The Beacon, learn calligraphy… and that’s just the next few weeks.

Explore everything that’s coming up on our what’s on page. What are you waiting for? It’s our time.