Shanaz Gulzar is taking stock the day after Bradford’s city of culture year officially wrapped. There’s a lot for the creative director to reflect on: more than 5,000 events have taken place and £51m has been spent during a year that was by far the biggest city of culture since the project started in 2013.
Her personal highlights include the opening ceremony Rise in January, when temperatures got as low as -8C; seeing 600 people turn up to the start of The Bradford Progress – Jeremy Deller and Charles Hazlewood’s sprawling musical epic with the Paraorchestra; and the exhibition of Victor Wedderburn’s photographs that captured Black Bradford in the mid-1980s.
“Also how much audiences and people saw themselves in the work and all communities of that were recognised,” she adds. “The way artists have actually absolutely fallen in love with the city and the people and said, ‘We wouldn’t have known this place if it hadn’t been for this opportunity.’”
The artistic director is understandably basking in the afterglow of a successful year. But as with the end of any city of culture, questions linger. Can the energy that was generated during 2025 be sustained? Will the talent who built the programme stay? Perhaps, most importantly, will the city experience an economic boost? In other words, what will the legacy look like?
In Bradford those questions are particularly urgent. The city has some of the most deprived areas in the country. About 40% of Bradford’s children are living below the poverty line, while 12% of working age people have no qualifications. City of culture was never going to be a panacea but it offered some much needed optimism.
Walking through the city centre, there are signs of the need. Next to the shiny new Darley Street market and in the shadow of colourful hoardings created by the local artist Ben Holden sit tents and empty shops. Homelessness and vacancies aren’t distinctly Bradfordian issues but it does have more empty shops than most cities in the country.
That backdrop partially explains why the celebrations were so wild when Bradford won the bid in May 2022. “Things like this don’t happen here” was the refrain that echoed but the circus was coming to town.
Evie Manning, the co-artistic director of theatre company Common Wealth, recalls being told by a theatre critic for a national newspaper that city of culture was just “a branding exercise for failing cities”. At first the Bradfordian found the comment insulting but witnessing 2025 up close she recognises there’s more than a kernel of truth in the statement.
“When you grow up here, you really do believe it’s the worst place in the UK because you are told that the whole time,” she says. “This year has made people look and think about living here differently. There’s a whole generation of young people coming up who won’t believe what I did about Bradford.”
Gulzar’s task wasn’t just about curation or changing attitudes – it was also about a hyper-localised “levelling up” agenda and she wants to show me around some of the places city of culture investment has touched.
We head to the 1 in 12 Club, which is run by anarchists and has been open since 1981. Located in an old fabric warehouse, it was showing its age. An initial injection of £90,000 was doubled after work started and the scale of the task in front of the collective who own the building became apparent. Fire doors had gaps in them, an old kitchen was more of a dumping ground, the electrics needed some serious TLC. Now they’re dreaming of installing a lift after receiving more heritage funding.
It’s obvious why Gulzar wants to show me around the club: this is exactly the kind of thing that wouldn’t have happened if city of culture hadn’t come to town. “We’ve become more muscular,” says Gulzar. “The arts sector has gotten stronger. It knows that the work it makes is of consequence, it matters, it’s appreciated and it’s needed.” In total £9m was pumped into capital projects around the city, the first time investing in existing infrastructure has been part of the project’s remit.
They also installed the first visitor toilets at the Brontë Parsonage Museum; relocated the Peace Museum to Salts Mill where its annual visitors increased from 3,000 per year to more than 50,000; and they installed a lift at Ilkley Playhouse. None of that is sexy. But in a city with a council that by its own admission faces financial challenges which rank “among the most significant in local government nationally”, it is work that simply would not have happened otherwise.
Not everyone has been won over by the city of culture year. Ishtiaq Ahmed, an independent councillor from the Heaton ward of the city, is more sceptical. Although the event organiser says it put on events in all 30 wards, he feels not enough was done to bring in non-traditional arts audiences. “The whole point of it was that we kind of reach a wider audience,” he says. “Have we just reached those that were already in the know? Its impact shouldn’t just be felt by those who are already plugged in.”
His other point is about legacy. He asks: “Will this investment lead to long-term funding, stronger grassroots support, opportunities across Bradford’s neighbourhoods or will the momentum just fade away once the banners come down?”
We don’t yet know the answers to those questions, but the long-term health of other city of culture projects paints a difficult picture. Hull lost momentum once the chief executive of its legacy company left two years after its 12 months in the spotlight, while Derry had no money for legacy projects and Coventry’s post-event programme ended up in administration. All of those cities benefited from the year but turning the short-term investment into long-term uplift was very difficult.
In Bradford, it’s not clear how much of the 2025 budget is left but it will be ploughed back into cultural events via Bradford Culture Company Ltd, with projects planned until 2027. The 200-capacity Loading Bay venue, which was a temporary space that hosted events throughout the year, will hopefully become a permanent – much needed – mid-sized venue.
The delayed opening of Bradford Live has meant the city now has a 3,500-capacity venue in its centre. But whether the city can sustain it and the smaller Alhambra and St George’s Hall remains to be seen. Abundance is not a problem Bradford is used to having.
The most important part of the legacy might be intangible though – the kind of thing that can’t be measured but felt. I speak to Jane Gray and Adam Metcalfe, two members of the Bantam of the Opera choir which was formed during 2025 and was composed of Bradford City fans who sang on Sports Personality of the Year.
“At Bradford City matches now we’ve got a new chant and it goes ‘City of culture you’ll never sing that’,” says Metcalfe. Coventry and Hull fans might have something to say about that but the chant shows how much 2025 has bled into the wider community.
Gray has been amazed at the impact city of culture has had. “I think it’s brought everybody together,” she says. “And things like the Darley Street market being finished, it just seems to have … a sense of hope and possibility. The closing ceremony was all about looking forward and people rising again. It was very empowering and I think that summed up this year.”
Bantam of the Opera will continue beyond 2025, and many in Bradford will hope their cultural awakening does too.