I’m Making Ink From Bradford’s Football Stadium

Athletes seem to follow me around. An ex-colleague once played professionally for a football club. One of my best friends at school missed out on being a full-time goal keeper due to injury. When the Grand Départ for the Tour De France was hosted in Yorkshire, I created a Calligraphy that boldly sat on the Brontë landscape. This Saturday, I was leading a talk and workshop in Arabic Calligraphy when a former Cricketer popped his head round the corner to chat about the exhibition on Calligraphy and Boxing.

It’s been two decades since I penned a comedic little book centred around football and calligraphy. Akram Khan Cheema (ex Senior Inspector of Schools for the Bradford District) showed it to Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) and apparently the singer liked it.

In recent years I have taken boxing lessons from Tasif Khan, Superflyweight Boxing Champion, and I was reminded of the enormous amount of discipline that professional sport requires. Arabic Calligraphy and sports require a tremendous amount of dedication to craft. But are there other parallels?

A couple of years ago, opportunity seemed to meet experience when Jill Iredale, Curator at Cartwright Hall, and I met to discuss an intriguing possibility: Bringing Arabic manuscripts from the British Library as one of the headline events to celebrate the City of Culture 2025. Kindly assisted by Daniel Lowe, the British Library’s Curator of Arabic Collections, we took a group of Bradford boxers down to London for them to choose the manuscripts.

I was tasked with creating a piece of Art that encapsulated both boxing and calligraphy. There was probably an expectation that I’d create a boxer out of calligraphy, perhaps similar to one of my old calligraphy figures (right):


In recent years I have taken boxing lessons from Tasif Khan, Superflyweight Boxing Champion, and I was reminded of the enormous amount of discipline that professional sport requires. Arabic Calligraphy and sports require a tremendous amount of dedication to craft. But are there other parallels? A couple of years ago, opportunity seemed to meet experience when Jill Iredale, Curator at Cartwright Hall, and I met to discuss an intriguing possibility: Bringing Arabic manuscripts from the British Library as one of the headline events to celebrate the City of Culture 2025. Kindly assisted by Daniel Lowe, the British Library’s Curator of Arabic Collections, we took a group of Bradford boxers down to London for them to choose the manuscripts. I was tasked with creating a piece of Art that encapsulated both boxing and calligraphy. There was probably an expectation that I’d create a boxer out of calligraphy, perhaps similar to one of my old calligraphy figures (below) Breath of Information 2021 But this seemed far too easy, and was there any merit in forcing the beautiful calligraphic script to follow the shapes of a boxer? And, anyway I had already been agonising over forms and letters. If letters adapt too much to form, do they lose their magic? Last year I was the first Arabic calligrapher to exhibit in the National Crafts centre in Sleaford. For the exhibition I went back to traditionally rooted calligraphies and pigments:


Back in Bradford, I wondered if I could take inspiration from taking my easel into the boxing ring itself :

The atmosphere in the gym was electric and in the middle of composing calligraphy I had the urge to don gloves and join the boxers. In hindsight, this was great as it really connected me with the vibrational matter of the boxing gym. When we do calligraphy, we deal in vibrations, in subtleties. The boxing coach is very much like the calligraphy master in that both impart life-wisdom as well as technique. Both disciplines share exacting movements of the limb and hand, a very high degree of mastery – a calligraphy and boxer each strive to improve their muscle memory. And, just like a boxer who strives to leave very little room for his opponent to strike him back, a calligrapher almost grapples with words and phrases to create a harmonious piece. There is almost always a stray letter that just refuses to blend in with the rest.

All sports have in general transferable skills, a sense of self-discipline, respect for the teacher, hand-eye control, humility, self-control, and balance. Under bright lights when I am conducting a live calligraphy session in front of the public armed with recording devices, one has that expansive yet urgent feeling similar to that of playing a semi-final match.

There is however a major divergence between the two. In combat and team sports one is often competing both against the opposition and, in many unfortunate cases, must be wary of political manoeuvrings to oust you in your own team. Calligraphy does not have this competing aspect at its core; and does not, like boxing, for example, cause physical harm. Calligraphy has the opposite effect – of disabling and attracting someone who may be an opponent of the written script or of Arabic, through grace.

After a Calligraphy practise session I am more energised and relaxed, whilst after a boxing session one is exhausted, battered and alone.

Sport though continues to inspire and intrigue. I have made some ink from Bradford City Football club and you can discover all about on the opening night of the exhibition 13th June and a live calligraphy session at the 14th as part of the City of Culture celebrations.

This article was written by Razwan Ul-Haq, 2025