How Bradford became Britain’s great lost city

A few years ago I attended a screening inside Bradford’s National Media Museum on a date with the woman who would become my wife. After the show, I noticed another couple – smartly dressed in their mid-50s – filling out a feedback form. Possessing excellent eyesight and a journalist’s inherent nosiness, I peered over at their form. They said they were visiting from Harrogate and loved the cinema before adding: “It’s just a shame it is in Bradford”.

That is the outside perception which has long dogged Britain’s seventh-biggest city. Arguably it is a view shared by some of those in Government conducting the integrated rail review, which was published this week and outlined the future of transport in the north.

Bradford had been earmarked for a gleaming new station on the site of a wholesale fruit and veg market, connecting the city with a new high speed line running from east to west. But despite having the worst rail connections of any English city, Bradford has once more been overlooked. The only scant solace offered to us Bradfordians under the new rail plans is that we will be able to reach our glitzy neighbour Leeds quicker than before – as if we should somehow be thankful for the opportunity to leave.

For whatever reason, parts of the outside world still view Bradford as this awful place and somehow we remain this forgotten city. Maybe the shadow of Leeds really is that big? Maybe the outside world only remembers the race riots of 2001, or never looks beyond the terrible ring roads designed by 1960s town planners?

But this is a city with an extraordinary heritage. The Brontës, David Hockney, JB Priestley and – to give a few more recent cultural phenomenons – the popstars Zayn Malik and Kimberley Walsh all called Bradford home. While recent decades have been shaped by industrial decline, Bradford is an increasingly dynamic place. We are the youngest city in Britain with 26.3 per cent of the population under the age of 18. Some people think the multiculturalism we have here is a weakness, but a lot of us see it as a strength.

The Bradfordian character is defined by a combination of so many things. But I like to think of it as that Yorkshire spirit, infused with added Masala.

I was born here in 1977 to a mixed race family which at the time was a rarity in itself. My mother was English, the daughter of a pub landlord, and my dad had come over when he was about nine from Bangladesh. They both did all manner of jobs; however, when I was growing up he worked as a bus driver.

We actually lived in Keighley (within the Bradford district but outside the city itself) but my dad’s side of the family all lived around the Bradford City Football Stadium so we were always visiting.

There is a famous curry house nearby called the Sweet Centre (which is still in operation today) on a back street off Lumb Lane. Some of my earliest memories are sitting at the counter with my dad, eating the traditional Asian breakfast of chana puri. Opposite the curry house was one of the dark satanic mills which made Bradford this incredibly rich city during the 19th century when the textile trade boomed.

As a child we used to go to another one of those mills – many of which were shuttered in the post-war era – which had been transformed into a flea market. I used to buy badges to sew on my jumpers there. The bright colours of my auntie’s saris fluttering against the soot-stained Yorkshire stone of these buildings still sticks in my mind.

Aged 11, I was awarded a scholarship to Bradford Grammar School after an inspirational headteacher at my local primary signed me up for the exams. The school has an alumni that includes Alistair Campbell and early on in my time there I remember getting involved with drama and being cast in a few plays at the school’s Hockney theatre.

We studied the plays of J.B Priestley and Keith Waterhouse (from nearby Leeds). On weekends we used to go and play at the moors above Haworth where the Brontës lived. Growing up I had everything I needed on my doorstep. It was only when I got into the industry later in life that I became aware of the London-centric nature of the arts.

On Wednesday afternoons we used to finish school early – ostensibly to play sports but I always went to the cinema. Later in my teens I started to get a different sense of Bradford as definitely a bit dangerous. Certainly we didn’t want to wear our brown school blazers around town.

There was also a sense of a wider decline gripping the city. The closure of the Bradford Odeon in 2000 was a massive moment for me – it felt like a statement being made about the culture of the city. Similarly the building site of the abandoned Westfield Shopping Centre (construction of which collapsed during the financial crisis) was another all-too visible scar.

The rail announcement this week has been so difficult for a lot of people to swallow because in recent years Bradford has started to fulfil its potential. The hole in the ground has been finally filled in with a new shopping centre. In the absence of major funding, a DIY punk spirit has infused the city and it’s been really interesting to watch.

A lot of stuff has been happening under the radar and there are some amazing local theatre groups like Common Wealth and Theatre in the Mill, new artists studios, beat poets and rappers. Both my wife and I work in the arts, me as a playwright, her as a dancer creating work with international festivals – and we do it from Bradford. We don’t see any reason to leave, no pull away from the city to pursue our careers in culture elsewhere.

Alongside that DIY spirit we have the National Media Museum and the incredible Alhambra Theatre that can host really big events. Last month Bradford’s bid to be the UK’s city of culture in 2025 was longlisted. Add to that, splendid Victorian architecture, landscaped city parks, and the most beautiful Waterstones book store in the country, as well as the finest curry in Britain and there are exciting times ahead of us.

In the past, Bradford might have rolled over when bad news like the integrated rail plan was announced, and accepted it as just another example of Bradford being forgotten, playing second fiddle to Leeds and condemned as some industrial throwback.

This time there seems to be a sense in Bradford that this may be a setback, but it doesn’t have to mean a step backwards for the city.

As told to Joe Shute