Festival News

radford Literature Festival (BFL) increased visitor attendance by more than 40% this year with record audiences of over 70,000. The festival’s BAME audience also grew with 51% of 2018’s visitors coming from black or minority ethnic backgrounds, up from 49%…

This year’s Bradford Literature Festival (BLF) attracted record audiences of more than 70,000 – a 40 per cent increase on last year and a huge rise from a humble audience of 968 when it began as a two-day event four…

For the second year in a row, she has been nominated in the Publishing and Writing category of the h 100 Awards, an annual celebration of the talent working across the UK’s creative industries and organised by The Hospital Club,…

Syima Aslam co-founded the Bradford Literary Festival with Irna Qureshi,  combining their passion for books and film to create a cultural and literary extravaganza celebrating the written and spoken word. It had 10,000 visitors in its launch year (2015), 32,000 in…

Kate Bush should buy Emily Brontë a drink. Wuthering Heights was the inspiration for (and the name of) the singer’s iconic debut single in 1978. Still, it’s hard to buy a pinot grigio for a 19th-century genius, so Bush has…

Events took place throughout the city, including free drama shows next to the Mirror Pool. Improptu, fun performances took place in the city centre for the hundreds of children cooling off while enjoying the sun in the Mirror Pool. To read…

Welcome to Yorkshire has unveiled its shortlist for the prestigious White Rose Awards. The awards recognise the best tourist attractions and businesses in the county – and over 170 of them entered this year. Read more here.  

The university has been one of the main partners of the festival since it was set up in 2014, and this year will be hosting the first Bradford Comico, a celebration of comics, among dozens of other events. Now in…

Kate Bush is to make her second tribute to Emily Brontë, providing words for a permanent art installation on the wiley, windy moors that inspired Wuthering Heights. Bush will join the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the Scottish makar, or…

In a rare public work, she has written an inscription for a stone that will be placed near the Brontes’ home. Bush said being asked to pen a passage about Emily was “an honour and, in a way, a chance…