Bradford will host a major cultural conference next spring, bringing together artists, producers, cultural leaders and communities to shape the district’s creative future beyond its landmark UK City of Culture 2025 year.
Attendees from Bradford and beyond can expect to hear how collaborative place-based working aids sector stability and raises the ambition of local arts and culture development.
Connecting Culture: The Bradford Way will take place on Wednesday 25 March 2026 at Bradford Arts Centre.
Created by a consortium of four key cultural partners, the conference is part of The Bradford Way – a long-term partnership supporting the district’s artists, communities, culture-makers and heritage practitioners. The event will be an important opportunity for creatives, individual specialists and producers, cultural companies and associations to share ideas, connect and explore what’s next for Bradford’s cultural sector as well as how this learning can be applied in other areas across the UK.
An Arts Council England-funded Place Partnership – a strategic place-based intervention to make a long-term difference to the cultural and/or creative life of the local community – The Bradford Way unites Bradford Producing Hub, Cultural Voice Forum, The Leap, and City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council.
Established in 2024, the programme is designed to strengthen the district’s cultural community – including those behind the once-in-a-generation achievement of securing UK City of Culture status. Each partner is deeply embedded in the city and district, making them perfectly placed to deliver a plan for culture that goes far beyond 2025 – fostering cultural and heritage development, creating positive change, and laying strong foundations for a thriving cultural future that feels authentic to the place and its people.
Peg Alexander, Chair of The Bradford Way, said:
“Bradford is young, ambitious, and creative – and we do things our own way. The Bradford Way is a lasting commitment to our district and how we celebrate that uniqueness. This conference is about the bigger picture for Bradford and what comes next to support and connect artists, culture-makers, creatives and communities.
2025 has been an outstanding, transformational moment in our story. Through The Bradford Way, we will continue to celebrate and inspire our ‘Bradfordness’ for years to come, connecting culture as a hook to prove what’s possible.”
The conference will:
- Demonstrate how The Bradford Way has piloted new ways of working in order to secure Bradford’s creative future
- Celebrate Bradford’s hyperlocal creativity
- Reflect on Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture
- Lead a national conversation on cultural investment
- Explore how to sustain momentum and grow opportunities for artists, producers, and communities
Delegates from across the district and beyond will take part in speaker sessions, breakout discussions, and networking opportunities designed to inspire collaboration and shape the next phase of Bradford’s cultural journey. Attendees from the wider region and across the UK will also hear how collaborative, place-based working can, and has, added stability to local arts and culture.
Throughout its first year, the consortium has worked to develop a more equitable cultural ecosystem, laying the groundwork for a resilient, sustainable and inclusive sector.
Key milestones so far include:
- Business Support: Bradford Producing Hub’s Expanding Horizons programme provided business development support to eight cultural organisations, while Sustain nurtured local dance artists and producers.
- Creative Network Growth: Cultural Voice Forum, currently structurally supported by Bradford Producing Hub, has expanded its database of sector professionals, independent artists and freelancers, establishing new subnetworks and increasing access provision as well as hosting regular networking events to broaden support and connection.
- Community-Led Culture: The Leap, Your Way Awards have helped many grassroots ideas flourish – from Leeds Road Festival to Sendiverse aimed at Learning Disabled and Neurodivergent young people and their families.
- Practical Tools & Training: Bradford Council delivered BD: Toolkits training to support local event organisers. Through their Festival Fund 11 local groups also received funding to take their festivals to the next level.
- Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England
Pete Massey, Director, Yorkshire and The Humber, Arts Council England, said:
“2025 has been a hugely exciting year for Bradford – it has been an amazing opportunity for the world to see the rich creative and cultural landscape of the district. I’m proud that we have been able to support The Bradford Way, which will play a key part in continuing that success through supporting local creatives to develop their careers within the sector, as well as encouraging communities across the district to engage with arts and culture. Connecting Culture conference is another important milestone for The Bradford Way and the work it is doing to cement the legacy for Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture.”
Save the Date: Wednesday 25 March 2026
Further programme details and booking information will be released later this year. In the meantime, prospective delegates are invited to express their interest in receiving updates.
Notes for editors:
Images are available to download here
For further information, case studies, interviews or images, please contact Anys Williams at Anita Morris Associates.
Anys@anitamorrisassociates.co.uk / 07909 151441
Bradford Producing Hub
Bradford Producing Hub (BPH) is a charity and arts development organisation based in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Established in 2019 as a response to inequality in the arts, BPH supports artists through funding, mentoring, training, commissions, and tailored programmes, with care, inclusion and equity at its core.
In its first four years, BPH worked with over 5,700 artists, distributed nearly £500,000 in grants, and enabled more than 50,000 hours of creative work. Now an independent charity, it serves as the Cultural Capacity Partner for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, helping to prepare and strengthen the city’s creative workforce.
BPH’s approach is rooted in Bradford’s bold, community-led creative identity. It collaborates with artists to co-design development and responds to emerging needs. Beyond 2025, BPH is focused on embedding sustainable systems, championing diverse voices, and growing an inclusive, thriving arts ecology in Bradford.
Bradford Cultural Voice Forum
CVF is a facilitated network of around 630 cultural freelancers and creative and heritage sector professionals, who work in the Bradford District’s cultural sector.
CVF is a member-led organisation that exists to share knowledge, resources, and opportunities. They bring together independent professionals, organisations, and volunteers to discuss key topics, upcoming events, build and strengthen networks and share funding opportunities for the creative and cultural sector across Bradford.
The Leap CIC
The Leap is an action learning programme, aiming to capture and share our knowledge and experience with others to increase understanding about and broaden and strengthen support for community-led culture.
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council
CBMDC is the local authority of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England.
Bradford Council’s Culture, Policy and Events team commissions and platforms talent and new work in a calendar of festivals and events. They inspire local audiences and have national and international reach.
Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture
Bradford 2025 runs from January 2025 to December 2025 and is a celebration of Bradford city and district, taking place across its city, towns, villages and green spaces. It will showcase the rich history of the area and spotlight its dynamic contemporary culture in all forms; dance and theatre, music and film, visual arts and crafts, food and sport.
Bradford 2025 is created for, with and by the people of Bradford – and it has young people at its heart. With more than a quarter of its population aged under 20, Bradford is one of the UK’s youngest cities. Bradford 2025 is proudly reflecting this youth across all aspects of its programme, from education, skills and training projects to new artistic commissions centred on the lives, concerns and ambitions of young people today.
The City of Culture designation has already brought significant investment to the region and been a catalyst for development. It is set to have a lifelong impact through its reshaping of the local curriculum, skills and training programmes, investment in existing and new creative spaces, and open up opportunities for cultural participation.
About Arts Council England
Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. Our vision, set out in our strategy Let’s Create, is that by 2030, we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish, and where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences. Between 2023 and 2026 we will have invested over £467 million of public money from Government, alongside an estimated £250 million each year from The National Lottery, to help ensure that people in every part of the country have access to culture and creativity in the places where they live. Until Autumn 2025, the National Lottery is celebrating its 30th anniversary of supporting good causes in the United Kingdom: since the first draw was held in 1994, it has raised £49 billion and awarded more than 690,000 individual grants.
Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. Our vision, set out in our strategy Let’s Create, is that by 2030, we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish, and where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences. Between 2023 and 2026 we will have invested over £467 million of public money from Government, alongside an estimated £250 million each year from The National Lottery, to help ensure that people in every part of the country have access to culture and creativity in the places where they live. Until Autumn 2025, the National Lottery is celebrating its 30th anniversary of supporting good causes in the United Kingdom: since the first draw was held in 1994, it has raised £49 billion and awarded more than 690,000 individual grants.
About the Place Partnership Fund
The Place Partnership Fund was launched by Arts Council England in 2021. By investing in local organisations working in partnership with each other, it aims to make a step-change in the cultural and creative life of local communities. Since 2021, over £40 million has been awarded to over 70 projects around the country. Of these, over 30 are in Priority Places, areas where Arts Council England investment has historically been low. Place Partnership projects have reached over 17 million people so far, giving local communities, especially children and young people, access to high quality creative and cultural experiences on their doorstep and giving them a sense of pride in where they live.