National Lottery Funding Boost For Bradford Heritage

Over £400,000 of National Lottery Heritage Fund investment has been made to empower the communities of Bradford to celebrate their heritage following the year as UK City of Culture 2025, and ensure that its cultural legacy will continue to thrive

We are thrilled to continue our commitment to Bradford as a City of Culture. Bradford boasts some of the most amazing heritage assets and stories that are pivotal in creating the district's unique sense of place, identity, and helping people connect to their past. We are excited to see what is next for Bradford and we are thrilled that we can continue to play a role in ensuring that Bradford remains a City of Culture with heritage at its heart, thanks to money raised by National Lottery players.Helen Featherstone, Director, England, North at The National Lottery Heritage Fund

£160,000 has been awarded to Better Communities Bradford for Hidden Threads: Revealing the Heritage of South Asian Muslim Women in Bradford. The project will preserve and share the traditional textile heritage and stories carried by generations of South Asian Muslim women and ensure this unique part of Bradford's heritage is recorded, celebrated, and safeguarded for the future.

Despite being home to one of the largest South Asian Muslim communities in the UK, much of the traditional textile heritage carried by women who settled in Bradford from the 1960s onwards remains undocumented and largely absent from formal archives and public heritage spaces.

These skills and stories including traditional embroidery techniques such as phulkari, sozni, crewelwork, tilla embroidery and Kashikadri, the stories of migration, and family traditions have been passed down through generations within homes and communities rather than through museums or written records.

Now thanks to funding from the Heritage Fund, Better Communities Bradford will work with South Asian Muslim women to record and represent their heritage through oral histories, photography, exhibitions and digital archives.

Abbas Najib, Chief Executive of Better Communities Bradford, said:
"We are delighted to receive this support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, Hidden Threads will help preserve not only beautiful textile traditions, but also the memories, stories and experiences that travelled to Bradford with generations of South Asian Muslim women. We are proud to help ensure that this heritage is not lost and can be appreciated by future generations."

The Bradford Community-Led Heritage project from The Leap has received £249,974 to deliver a community grants programme aiming to showcase the cultural traditions, knowledge and skills of Bradford's diverse communities dating from the 1940s to the present day.

Community organisations will have the opportunity to bid for grants between £500 and £10,000 to create activities and outputs that will shine a spotlight on the heritage that means the most to them and safeguard these important traditions and skills for years to come.

Following the delivery of activities created through the programme, organisations will take part in the Bradford Heritage Festival in summer 2027.

This investment into Bradford from the Heritage Fund enables The Leap to support communities across our district to take an active role in preserving and presenting their own heritage.' Through the community-led heritage programme, The Leap will help ensure that many of the traditions, skills and histories that define our district are documented, valued and safeguarded for future generations.Zulfiqar Ahmed, Executive Director at The Leap

These recent awards cement the Heritage Fund’s commitment to investing in the legacy of Bradford’s tenure as City of Culture 2025 and sit alongside our continued support of Bradford Culture Company. Continued Heritage Fund investment into Bradford’s cultural sector will help to create more opportunities for local people and can be seen in action through works to Bradford Playhouse’s building on Leeds Road that will secure the building as a safe and inspiring creative space for the future.

The Heritage Fund awarded £4.95m to Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, the year-long celebration of Bradford city and district, which laid the foundations for long-term transformation through its cultural programme, training opportunities, education initiatives, artist-development and capital investments. Estimates show that more than 3 million people got involved with the festivities.

Projects being delivered by Bradford Culture Company with the continued investment from the Heritage Fund will help connect people to the district's vast landscapes. Local artists will undertake residencies within the Bradford Pennine Gateway National Nature Reserve; a new 18-mile Bradford Pennine Gateway Trail will be launched in September, and local filmmaker Matt Radcliffe will create a documentary about Bradford’s rural spaces. In addition, images by photographer Victor Wedderburn will be published in a book released in November, published by Trolley Books and distributed by Thames and Hudson, exploring Bradford’s African Caribbean communities in the ’80s.