Bradford Literature Festival First Five Years in Review
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"A CACOPHONY OF VISUAL ARTS, LITERATURE, MUSIC AND MEANINGFUL EXCHANGE OF GOODWILL." BLF Visitor
"I CAME AWAY IN AWE OF THE TALENT AND VARIETY." BLF Visitor
CONTENTS Director's Introduction
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Bradford Literature Festival
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A Flagship Cultural Event
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Tangible Social Change
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Celebrating Diversity
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An Acclaimed Artistic Programme
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Publishing Advocacy
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Innovative Creation
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Meaningful Stories
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Generating Cultural Tourism
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Championing Local Artists
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Building Communities
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Supporting The Local Economy
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Children & Young People
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Working With Schools
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Organisational Diversity
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Showcasing Bradford
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Sponsors & Funders Thanks
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Contact Us
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Published 2020 3
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DIRECTOR'S INTRODUCTION In 2019 Bradford Literature Festival reached a milestone - its fifth ‘birthday’. It is my great pleasure to share with you these key findings from the evaluation of our first five festivals, which tells a clear and compelling story; we are succeeding in our ambition to deliver transformational impacts in our local communities, our city and the national sector. BLF’s overarching mission to support the socioeconomic regeneration of Bradford through the creation of an international destination festival was unashamedly ambitious, but as this evaluation shows, the confidence in our city and communities as partners in this work was not misplaced. The local and national partnerships which have enabled us to drive investment towards social cohesion, and build confidence in Bradford as a cultural hub, are key to this success. I am particularly proud that we have succeeded in creating a festival where a representative and diverse roster of artists and audiences feel safe and welcome, coming together each year to take part in BLF. This has been central to creating a step change for diversity nationally, and for the literature sector in particular. Considering the wider context, however, has been a more sobering exercise. UK literary engagement is falling significantly behind that of its international counterparts, whilst authentic diverse representation in the culture sector - particularly the literary sector - is at an all-time low. The Covid-19 pandemic, in the midst of which we publish this evaluation, represents an unparalleled threat to the future health of the arts and culture sector. In all of this, cities like Bradford, with some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country, young, diverse populations and historic low-levels of engagement with the arts, are the most vulnerable - and have the most to lose. This evaluation attests to our commitment to those communities, a commitment that remains our highest priority as we move into our next five years. Whilst we celebrate our successes to date, we will not rest on our laurels nor take what has been achieved thus far for granted. There is a long way to go and there are challenging times ahead for all of us. As we continue to chart this ambitious course – ambitious for ourselves, our city, and our sector – we face rougher seas than we could possibly have imagined five years ago. Support and partnership in all of their forms will be key to our success on the next leg of this journey; we hope that you will join us.
Syima Aslam CEO & Artistic Director 5
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BRADFORD LITERATURE FESTIVAL
BLF supports the regeneration of our city, through the delivery of a world-class cultural event. The first five years of the Bradford Literature Festival have seen the festival grow from a 25 event ‘weekender’ of literary and cultural events, to a vibrant 10-day programme of 500 events, held in late June and early July each year. Encompassing the best of literature, music, theatre, cultural discussions, lectures and family events, the festival is unique in the country for its diverse and imaginative approach to high quality arts and cultural programming.
A year-round Communities and Education Programme focusing on the Bradford district has been developed alongside our public festival programme, ensuring the festival never loses its Bradford roots, whilst our position as a nationally and internationally renowned ‘destination festival’ has helped to secure Bradford's place as a nationally important cultural hub.
"THE MOST INCLUSIVE ARTS EVENT I HAVE EVER ATTENDED." BLF Visitor
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A FLAGSHIP CULTURAL EVENT
BLF is a flagship cultural event for the city, drawing visitors from across the UK and overseas, and supporting the city's development as a national and international tourist destination. Since 2015, BLF has welcomed almost 250,000 visitors with a third travelling to the festival from across the region and 15% travelling nationally. We also welcome international visitors from as far afield as Australia, India and the United States. In 2018, BLF was named the 'Tourism Event of the Year' at the Welcome to Yorkshire White Rose Awards, and with regular coverage across outlets
including the BBC, Channel 4, The Guardian, The Times, Lonely Planet and Harper's Bazaar, BLF generates positive PR for the city more widely. In supporting the local authority's strategy for culture-led regeneration, BLF has helped create the conditions for Bradford's bid for UK City of Culture 2025.
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TANGIBLE SOCIAL CHANGE
BLF operates the most comprehensive free-ticketing policy of any major literature festival in the country, for people from low income backgrounds. Under our Ethical Ticketing model, 57% of our tickets were allocated free in 2019 to people on low incomes. BLF believes that everyone should have access to high-quality cultural experiences, and the many positive impacts on health, wellbeing, academic achievement and aspiration offered by engagement with the arts. That’s why since 2015 we’ve made free tickets available to people who face
financial barriers to attending – and we know that this approach is making a huge positive impact. In 2019, 65% of our audiences reported household incomes below the national average (up from 48% in 2018), whilst 29% reported household incomes below £20,000 per year.
"THE FESTIVAL GIVES PEOPLE WITH LIMITED FINANCES THE OPPORTUNITY TO ACCESS HIGH QUALITY LIFE-ENHANCING EVENTS. IT OPENS PEOPLE'S EYES TO THE WONDERFUL POSSIBILITIES OFFERED BY LITERATURE." BLF Visitor
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CELEBRATING DIVERSITY
BLF is a festival for everyone - our artist roster and audiences are amongst the most diverse to be found at any major literary event in the UK. Our diverse festival marries the vibrancy and richness of Bradford’s communities and cultures with an international outlook.
To date 2,090 artists have graced the BLF stages - 44% from diverse backgrounds, with roots in 72 countries.
In our first five years, 75% of events in our history strand have featured ‘world history’, and one in ten festival events explored world affairs and politics.
Our world-class programme reaches diverse audiences across the board 51% BAME, 49% female, 10% LGBTQ and 14% over 65s over five festivals.
"PROBABLY THE FIRST TIME I WASN'T THE EXOTIC INTERLOPER AT A PARTY I'M NOT REALLY MEANT TO BE AT." John Siddique, Poet
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AN ACCLAIMED ARTISTIC PROGRAMME
Every year BLF brings household names, talented local artists, world-class academics, exciting new literary talents and spiritual leaders together to take part in our acclaimed artistic programme. With authors and poets such as Jeanette Winterson, Onjali Rauf, Lemn Sissay, Simon Armitage, Ben Okri, George the Poet and Elif Shafak all counted amongst festival alumni, the BLF programme is packed full of worldclass literary talent. We have brought our audiences events with musical artists like Lady Leshurr,
Saul Williams and Akala, and television personalities such as Christopher Eccleston, Simon Callow and Nadiya Hussain. We've also hosted activists, political and religious leaders such as Harriet Harman, Mona Eltahawy, Shaykh Habib Ali al-Jifri, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, Ilhan Omar and Shashi Tharoor.
"THIS IS STILL THE ONLY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY THAT HAS ANY SPACE FOR THE PUNJABI POETIC TRADITION THAT IS SO IMPORTANT TO ALL OUR COMMUNITIES, BUT IS SORELY NEGLECTED." Virinder Kalra, Professor in Sociology, University of Warwick
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PUBLISHING ADVOCACY
In just five years, we've quickly become an important part of the national literature ecosystem, representing a unique opportunity for local, diverse and emerging artists to develop their practice. In the last five years we’ve prioritised building great relationships with independent publishers and writer development agencies across the North and nationally, platforming artists in the early or middle stages of their careers. Our annual strand of events 'The Art of Writing' averages a 30% BAME audience, supporting hundreds of
people from diverse backgrounds to hone their skills and talent. Bradfordian artists represent 22% of all speakers featured at BLF in the last five years, and 40% have been from the North, challenging the Londoncentric publishing model and strengthening Northern cultural development.
"ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AVENUES FOR LITERATURE TALENT DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURAL DISCUSSIONS IN THE COUNTRY." Stephen May, Literature Relationship Manager, Arts Council England
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INNOVATIVE CREATION
Our programme upends the traditional literature festival format, melding genres, languages, event formats and cultural references, helping audiences discover new artists, art forms and perspectives. From Polish to Patois, Farsi to Gujarati and Arabic to Urdu, we foster the sharing of poetry in original languages, centring cross-cultural poetic traditions at multi-line up events, unique in the UK for their high quality and diversity. In particular, the festival has garnered a reputation for diversifying the audience for poetry and moving them into new spaces, wih public audiences for this strand standing at an average of 61% BAME - a testament to our curatorial
approach, which brings together canonical poems and contemporary voices. Our poetry programme also celebrates and develops local talent; our annual Open Mic nights and inclusion of emerging local poets in our multi-line ups has energised the local poetry scene, with a Bradford boom in poetry groups and year-round spoken word events since 2015.
"BRADFORD LITERATURE FESTIVAL IS A REALLY BROAD CHURCH, BOTH ARTISTICALLY AND IN TERMS OF WHO'S BEING INVITED TO BE PART OF IT." Madani Younis, Artistic Director
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MEANINGFUL STORIES
BLF tells the stories that matter to our audiences. We offer a safe space for perspectives, conversations and discussions around both well-known and less-acknowledged narratives that other mainstream cultural events and media may not platform. From Auschwitz to Windrush, from Partition to Peterloo, 75% of our history strand is devoted to bringing absent or underrepresented, yet hugely resonant narratives to wider public audiences. Alongside contemporary stories, we move beyond the Western canon to highlight landmarks of literature from different traditions of knowledge.
From the poetry of Ghalib to Goethe's Divan, from Japan's very first novel to William Blake's Jerusalem; our programme re-interprets enduring classics from around the world to inspire enthusiasts and to make these works identifiable and accessible to new generations of readers.
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GENERATING CULTURAL TOURISM
We showcase Bradford's literary and cultural heritage to national and international audiences through theatre, lectures, tours, readings, specially commissioned responses and public art installations. Our heritage strand supports the local tourist economy with annuallyprogrammed walking tours taking in Undercliffe Cemetery, Little Germany, Manningham and the Police Museum, offering the city’s visitors (and locals!) an opportunity to delve into the rich and sometimes hidden history of Bradford. In addition to the Brontë Heritage Tour, since 2018 we’ve also offered an annual Brontë Stones Walk, showcasing the BLF-led public art project of the same
name, featuring original new works by Kate Bush, Carol Ann Duffy, Jeanette Winterson and Jackie Kay. Annual events celebrating the work of high profile local ‘heritage’ artists such as David Hockney, Andrea Dunbar, JB Priestley and the Brontës, through theatre, readings, discussions and lectures, offer new perspectives on the familiar works that have become part of our national, as well as local, cultural heritage.
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CHAMPIONING LOCAL ARTISTS
BLF consistently champions contemporary local writers and artists, showcasing Bradford's wealth of homegrown talent, repositioning Bradford as the literary hub of the North and a hive of innovation and artistic excellence. Bringing local contemporary writers, poets and playwrights such as AA Dhand, Sairish Hussain, Michael Stewart, Liz Mistry, Javaad Alipoor, Ben Myers, Asif Khan, Juliet Barker and Asma Elbadawi to their ‘home crowd’ for debuts, launches and performances is a central pillar of the BLF programme. Monthly poetry workshops, book events and talks delivered in schools yearround support the development of the
young local artists and practitioners of the future, nurturing the pipeline of creative talent that flows through the city, and helping to ensure a vibrant local element to our festival programme for many years to come. Since 2015, 22% of our artists have been from Bradford, and artists from the wider Yorkshire region make up a further 18%.
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BUILDING COMMUNITIES
BLF is rooted in local communities and has developed a yearround community engagement model linked to the festival programme, working with grassroots organisations to develop their creative practice and supporting cultural engagement. BLF is a positive driver in community building - instilling confidence, creating stronger networks, and generating cross-cultural and intergenerational activities, intercultural dialogues and creative opportunities for community involvement which are sustained beyond the festival. BLF dedicates specific resource and personnel to our community engagement work, prioritising yearly focus groups, with an emphasis on relationship building and a responsive attitude to the needs of communities.
In the last five years we’ve worked with grassroots and third sector organisations serving communities across the Bradford district, from aspiration-building talks and workshops in women's centres to storytelling at community open days. We've also delivered private events for children in care, including with poet and author Lemn Sissay, and taken authors and inspirational speakers like Frank Bruno to local hospitals and hospices.
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SUPPORTING THE LOCAL ECONOMY
The festival supports the local retail, hospitality and tourism economy, generating hundreds of paid employment and skillsbuilding volunteering opportunities each year. In five years we’ve generated 3,502 days of paid work for practitioners and artists, and booked 1,703 nights in local Bradford hotels. Of course the festival is only made possible by our army of volunteers -
537 volunteers have invested over 7000 hours across five festivals, developing crucial skills that could be applied in events management, hospitality, and logistics, along with sector-specific skills such as stage management and artist liaison.
"I FELT SO INCLUDED AND WELCOMED, AND REALLY FELT LIKE I COULD PLAY A PART. I LEARNT SO MUCH ABOUT MANAGING ROLES, AND IT HAS MADE ME EVEN MORE EXCITED ABOUT DOING WORK LIKE THIS IN THE FUTURE." Rory, BLF Volunteer and Shadowing Stage Manager
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CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE
We're passionate about making sure no child is 'left out' or 'left behind' in Bradford's cultural regeneration - our Education Programme is free for all Bradford school children and our Family Fun Days are free for everyone! Promoting a love of literature and the importance of literacy and oracy, building aspirations, and firing up young imaginations, over five festivals 48% of all programming has been devoted to children and young people. When we include the Education Programme, young people make up an incredible 70% of our festival visitors.
Since 2016, we’ve welcomed 90,646 children, young people and families to our festival's free Children's Programme and Family Fun Days. We also work with teachers, community leaders and social workers to make sure that children in care and from the most disadvantaged communities can take part in BLF.
"MY MANTRA FOR MY WORK IN COMMUNITIES IS 'NO CHILD LEFT OUT'. I THINK YOUR FESTIVAL EMBODIES THAT." Richard O'Neill, Storyteller
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WORKING WITH SCHOOLS
Our free Education Programme, which focuses on raising aspirations and improving literacy, has racked up 74,577 pupil and teacher attendances since 2017, working with 84% of secondary schools and 61% of primary schools in Bradford. In four years, our Education Programme has delivered 434 festival and in-schools events, focusing our work primarily on schools serving the most disadvantaged communities. Most of these are located in the inner city wards, where we’ve worked with
70% of all schools. To date we’ve also worked with almost 75% of primary schools in the district reporting low reading attainment, making sure that the benefits of literacy and cultural literacy are extended to all of our city’s children and young people.
"FOR A GOOD FOUR-FIFTHS OF OUR SCHOOL, GOING TO UNIVERSITY IS NOT A CURRENCY IN THEIR UPBRINGING. BEING ABLE TO SET FOOT IN A UNIVERSITY WAS POWERFUL. I THINK THERE'S A KERNEL THAT'S BEEN DROPPED WITH A LOT OF THEM TO RAISE THEIR ASPIRATIONS." Teacher, One in a Million School
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ORGANISATIONAL DIVERSITY
The organisational commitment to diversity is embedded in our recruitment and governance, and has been since BLF was founded. Founded by Syima Aslam and Irna Qureshi, two local women from South Asian backgrounds and now helmed solely by Syima Aslam, BLF is one of the few cultural organisations in the UK to be led by a South Asian, female CEO/Artistic Director. The BLF Board and year-round team in 2020 is 36% BAME, whilst our volunteers are 49% BAME. In 2019, almost half of all our volunteers were aged 16-19 and 12% of our seasonal team disclosed that they live with a long-term illness or disability.
We’re also committed to developing local talent; in 2019 almost two-thirds of our year-round team were born or brought up in Bradford and West Yorkshire. We have participated in internship schemes such as with Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries, supporting the improvement of equality, diversity and inclusion across the arts - not only within our own organisation.
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SHOWCASING BRADFORD
Across five high-impact festivals, BLF has insisted that Bradford can and should take control of its own narrative, moving beyond 'book burnings' and 'race riots' to showcase a uniquely vibrant, diverse and resilient city. As the persistent preoccupation of politicians, policymakers and the media testifies, the reverberations of world events are felt very quickly in Bradford, perceived as a bellwether for the UK’s stance on immigration and integration. Against this unique backdrop, the festival programmes sensitively and
thoughtfully, bringing together leading experts and a highly engaged audience to discuss and debate the most pressing questions of our time, challenging preconceptions about Bradford, and showcasing the tolerance, compassion and community spirit of the city we love.
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WITH THANKS TO ... Our heartfelt thanks to the many sponsors, funding trusts and grant making organisations, whose support over the past 5 years has far exceeded their financial contribution and without whom, none of our achievements would have been possible.
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"A VITAL PART OF BRADFORD'S INCREASINGLY STRONG ARTISTIC IDENTITY." BLF Visitor
"ONE OF THE MOST INSPIRING FESTIVALS IN THE UK." Peter Florence, Director, Hay Festival
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For information about Bradford Literature Festival’s year-round activities, programme information and to view digital highlights, visit bradfordlitfest.co.uk Keep up to date with Bradford Literature Festival news by following us on social media:
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25th J u n e - 4 t h J uly 2021 40