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.

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 until mid-January 2026, 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 – and they were all free…

DRAW! invited us all to draw the world around us. Each month in 2025, an artist encouraged us to create a drawing inspired by a particular theme – starting with David Hockney, who asked us all to ‘draw something beautiful’ for January.

See all of the DRAW! artists and themes, and explore some of the amazing artworks you sent to us.

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 made its Bradford debut at the Alhambra with Jungle Book reimagined. Akram returned later in the year to co-create Memories of the Future, a new work for dancers from communities across Bradford.

Also under way in January: Northern Soul, a celebration of northern women in cinema curated by director Clio Barnard at Pictureville in February. See introductions to this season from Clio on our YouTube channel.

Our Patch is our year-long programme inviting people and community groups in Bradford to take part in art and get creative during 2025 – and it got under way in January with a bang.

The year’s first Our Patch workshops encouraged people across the district to join in with DRAW!, from babies at the TFD Centre in Holme Wood to elders at the Clarke Foley Community Hub in Ilkley. These free workshops kickstarted the DRAW! Tour, a year-long series of free drawing workshops that aimed to visit every ward in the district during 2025.

Also this month, Our Patch teamed up with Bradford 2025’s brilliant Networkers and Community Connectors, Bradford Council, Incommunities, Keighley Creative and local businesses to celebrate the opening of Bradford 2025 with an Airedale Shopping Centre takeover.

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!’

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. Find out more about all of the projects at this dedicated page.

Also in January, we…

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 pop-up venue in the city centre that opened in March – read more about Loading Bay.