Bradford Literature Festival 2019: In-depth Review

2019

Bradford Literature Festival In-depth Review

www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk | @BradfordLitFest | #BradfordLitFest

"A TRULY BREATHTAKING EXPERIENCE" Visitor, BLF 2019

"THE MOST INCLUSIVE ARTS EVENT I HAVE EVER ATTENDED" Visitor, BLF 2019

CONTENTS 5 Things You Didn't Know About Bradford Lit Fest 2019

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Why Bradford Literature Festival is Needed

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Director's Report

4

Facts & Figures: Audiences

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An Internationally Recognised Festival, Rooted in Local

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Communities A Safe Space to Explore & Learn

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Festival Top 10: Books

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Festival Top 10: Events

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A Whole-Festival Approach to Diversity

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National Youth Theatre: A Partnership With Local Resonance

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Facts & Figures: Festival Impact

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Talent & Sector Development

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Why Early Years Matters At BLF

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The BLF Education Programme

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Community & Grassroots Partnerships

26

With Thanks To...

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Board Members & Team

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2020 Pledges

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Contact Us

32

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5 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT BRADFORD LIT FEST 2019 Year-Round Engagement BLF works year-round to deliver great literature and literacy-based activity. In the year leading up to the 2019 festival, BLF delivered 45 events in Bradford’s communities and schools, with partners including World Book Day, National Writing Day, the Through Care After Care Service, and Bradford Pride. The festival also went international, curating content for the festival programme at Lahore Lit Fest.

From Bradford to Brisbane 51% of our audience is from Bradford, 20% travel nationally to attend BLF. This year we also welcomed audiences to the festival from as far afield as Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States.

Award Winning BLF won the White Rose Awards Yorkshire Tourism Event of the Year for the first time. Helping to put Bradford on the map as a cultural hotspot and tourist destination is integrated into all of our work.

Education The festival delivers an Education Programme, which is free to attend for all schools in Bradford; this year 18,904 children aged four to 18 and 2,027 educators were able to access workshops, talks, theatre, book events and poetry performances through BLF.

200,000 + in Just 5 Years Midway through the 2019 festival, we welcomed our 200,000th audience member to BLF, since the festival’s inauguration as a 10-day event in 2015.

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WHY BRADFORD LITERATURE FESTIVAL IS NEEDED "The festival gives people with limited finances the opportunity to access high quality life enhancing events. It opens peoples eyes to the wonderful possibilities offered by literature."

Visitor, BLF 2019

For 10 days at the end of June and early July each year, Bradford Literature Festival delivers a programme that draws renowned speakers and artists from around the world to Bradford, to participate in a uniquely diverse arts and cultural programme. Hailed as the "exemplar of the Creative Case for Diversity" and "the most exciting literature festival in the UK", BLF represents a safe public space where the extraordinary times in which we live - politically, socially and culturally - can be explored, interrogated, and better understood.

As one of the newest and largest literature festivals in the country, BLF is upending the traditional model, with a programme that looks beyond publishers' catalogues for content, a ticketing model that centres access for socioeconomically diverse audiences, and a decidedly international outlook that balances the needs of our local communities with an understanding that to be successful we must represent national and international relevance and excellence.

The organisation works year-round in local communities to deliver literacy-building and literaturebased activity for the most disadvantaged children, young people and families. Our year-round activities include schools exchanges with Hay Festival, schools and public talks from internationally acclaimed authors such as Angie Thomas, storytelling and craft workshops in community spaces, and writing competitions for new authors. We see that this work helps to build engaged audiences, who feel empowered to take part in the summer festival.

Whether undertaking detailed engagement work in communities or delivering literary giants to packed auditoriums of hundreds during the summer festival, what BLF offers is inspiration. Bringing the most enquiring, creative minds to Bradford to inspire our audiences can set in motion a ripple effect that impacts positively on cultural and civic engagement, educational ambition and social mobility, boosts the local visitor economy, improves perceptions of the city and promotes the dialogue between communities.

Bradford has been through some tough times; we continue to live with the long shadow cast by austerity across our public services, and there have been painful cuts to budgets for our schools, libraries and parks. Yet the news that broke shortly after BLF 2019 closed that Bradford is launching a bid to be the 2025 UK City of Culture - shows the resilience of our city, and the determination of our creative sector and political leaders to reimagine Bradford as a place where anything is possible and everything is still to play for.

Bradford Literature Festival is proud to be one of the arts and culture organisations delivering the vital work that supports the regeneration of our city, as a tolerant, prosperous and creative place to live, work and grow.

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DIRECTOR'S REPORT This year BLF hosted incredible thinkers and artists from across the world: Elif Shafak, AC Grayling, Marcus DuSautoy, Juan Felipe Hererra, Imtiaz Dharker, Shashi Tharoor, Farzana Yaqoob, Jeanette Winterson, George the Poet, Saul Williams, and Simon Armitage. We also delivered more opportunities than ever for emerging artists and those wishing to ‘dip a toe’ into the ocean of creative practice for the very first time, with student curators, open mic sessions, reading groups, writing workshops and literary agent ‘meet-ups’.

Syima Aslam CEO & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

In the five years since Bradford Literature Festival was introduced with a ‘petite’ weekend programme in September 2014, the festival has grown from 25 events and 968 audience members, to a 10-day literary and cultural celebration that draws tens of thousands of people to Bradford, from our local communities and much further afield.

Each summer, the festival hub rises in City Park, and the festival springs up in venues around the city, for a varied and accessible programme that wends its way from lectures on the Brontës and local heritage tours to political debate and discourse, from spoken-word poetry to Sufi whirling, lectures on mathematics and physics to geopolitics and the sexual economy. There are workshops on unconscious bias, short story translation, bullet journaling, and there are even ‘baby raves’ and family yoga sessions.

Founded as a safe space where people living nationally, internationally and in this city’s diverse communities could come together to share wisdom, seek mutual understanding, and explore new ideas, the BLF programme seeks to reflect both the interests and concerns of the communities in which we are based, and remind us that we are part of a much wider, interconnected global society.

It doesn’t feel boastful to write here that BLF’s programme is world-class. It is wide-ranging. It is diverse. It can also be challenging, and at times provocative, because BLF is inherently ‘of’ and ‘for’ the city in which we are based; a city that, with the youth of its population, its diversity, and its post-industrial economy, is considered a bellwether for the nation’s future.

I can write all of this without vanity, because BLF’s achievements are ultimately a reflection of the festival’s DNA - which has ‘Made in Bradford’ stamped on every strand.

Some of the most important work we deliver is an Education Programme that engages and inspires thousands of children aged 4-18, with an exciting programme of talks, theatre, storytelling, poetry, craft workshops, and Q&As.

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It would be disingenuous to pretend that Bradford is a city without challenges. Challenges are everywhere you look following decades of under-investment that have left the city still reeling in the post-austerity landscape. Schools budgets continue to be cut. Too many local families are struggling to make ends meet – families for whom buying books is not an option when there may not be enough money for food.

Yet it will remain a surprise to many in our sector that this year BLF issued 57% of all festival tickets for free, or at significant discounts, to people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. This is not ‘the norm’ for literature festivals. Indeed, this statistic might be problematic at other literature festivals, but at BLF it gives enormous cause for celebration. It means that the people who stand to benefit the most from access to the arts and culture – those from disadvantaged backgrounds – are engaging with the opportunities the festival offers.

The arts and culture must not be thought of as luxuries. In cities like Bradford, the arts and culture, literature and literacy, are essential if we are to continue to develop dialogue between communities, inspire our children and young people, enable social mobility, and keep Bradford vital and relevant, regionally, nationally and internationally.

This year marked 30 years since Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was publicly burned on the very spot we now raise our Festival Hub each year – perhaps the ultimate example of Jeanette Winterson’s assessment of Bradford as a place "with a future as well as a past".

As I consider the 2019 edition of BLF and its place in this wonderful, at times challenging city, Jeanette’s words echo in my mind; I marvel at how far we have come – and am inspired and galvanised by the prospect of where we might yet go.

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FACTS & FIGURES: AUDIENCES

Total Audience 69,862

Public Programme Attendances 48,931

Education Programme Attendances 20,931

51% Local 29% Regional 20% National 6

65% Below UK Average Household Income

55% BAME

96% Rated BLF Very Good/ Good

9.6 Net Promoter Score 7

AN INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNISED FESTIVAL, ROOTED IN LOCAL COMMUNITIES

"The programme is exemplary and a great addition to literature, diversity and cultural landscape and ecology of UK. [Bradford Literature Festival is] one of the most important avenues for literature talent development and cultural discussions in the country."

Stephen May, Arts Council England

Putting Bradford on the cultural map - in Britain and beyond Supporting Bradford’s bid for UK City of Culture 2025 and the local authority’s broader strategy for cultureled regeneration, BLF seeks to draw national and international visitors to the city with a world-class festival programme and positive PR. Winning the Tourism Event of the Year at the 2018 White Rose Awards started the festival year on an auspicious note; an accolade borne out when the 2019 Bradford Literature Festival once again grew the proportion of visitors from across the UK, up from 13% in 2017 and 2018, to 20%.

Our data tells us that the majority of these attendees were in Bradford specifically to visit the festival (94%), and 87% of those surveyed said that the festival had improved their view of the city.

Nationally and internationally renowned artists and field-leading experts delighting audiences this year included literary giants such as Jeanette Winterson, Elif Shafak, Lemn Sissay, Simon Armitage, Imtiaz Dharker, and Michael Rosen, along with internationally renowned visual artists Peter Sanders, Chris Riddell, Steve Bell, and Seamus Murphy.

This year Bradford Literature Festival has also developed and consolidated relationships with a number of national partners including Hay Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Bookseller, the National Youth Theatre, World Book Day, and National Writing Day.

These partnerships have enriched the festival offer with projects such as the Hay Festival/BLF Schools Exchange and the Northern Lights project – a crossborder initiative to bring together independent publishers from England and Scotland.

2019 also saw the completion of the Brontë Stones Project. The Anne Stone, inscribed with original poetry

by Jackie Kay, responding to the life of Anne Brontë, was installed at Brontë Parsonage Museum and unveiled at the end of the festival. The project leaves behind a lasting legacy in the form of a trail of public art/poetry installations, stretching from the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton to Haworth. The works will remain in place in perpetuity, offering future generations new perspectives on Bradford’s most famous literary export.

Bradford Literature Festival also grew its international profile, participating in three events at Lahore Literature Festival, under the banner ‘Destination Bradford‘, in partnership with the University of Bradford, showcasing arts and culture from the city to domestic and visiting audiences in Lahore.

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This year, the City Park Family Fun Days, children’s events, and new Young Adult B-Lit programme were all delivered as free activities, reaching over 30,000 visitors, with parents citing the City Park programme as a positive alternative to excessive use of digital technologies, an opportunity to educate their children (many noting it as education by stealth!), and as promoting an important love of reading.

Building local audiences; increasing access 51% of BLF’s audience is local, made up of people who live in the Bradford district. As one of the city’s flagship cultural organisations, BLF is dedicated to the regeneration of local communities through access to the arts and culture - particularly literature and literacy-building activity. While BLF may be most visible when the Festival Hub appears in City Park at the end of June, working in communities is a year-round concern for the organisation.

In Bradford, where almost one in three children live in relative poverty, ensuring the most socioeconomically disadvantaged families are able to access the festival programme and the attendant benefits of cultural activity is central to the festival’s ethos.

The BLF Education Programme, free to all school children in Bradford, reached a total of 18,904 children aged 4-18, and 2,027 educators, from 76 schools. The programme incorporated curriculumlinked performances, workshops and interactive talks on topics such as Shakespeare, World War II, and technology, alongside schools visits from children’s authors, poets, scientists, dramaturgs, journalists and artists.

Our free ticket offer, applicable across the festival programme for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, was also expanded, adding teachers and social workers to the list of people eligible for free or discounted tickets to any of our events - a worthwhile investment that will also impact positively on the children and young people in their care.

In total, 57% of our tickets were given for free or at a discount (up from 52% in 2018), the majority of these were to people living in BD postcodes, with significant take-up from the areas of Bradford where there are high levels of deprivation.

As BLF consolidates its place in the regional and national consciousness as a major literature festival, facilitating access to the best and brightest names in the arts and culture for as many of our local communities as possible remains our highest priority.

"The Bradford Literature Festival puts Bradford on the map for all the right reasons."

Visitor, BLF 2019

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A SAFE SPACE TO EXPLORE & LEARN Across the festival, our City Park activity saw attendances upwards of 30,000, the majority of whom had visited specifically to attend our free events, and approximately 65% of which came from BAME backgrounds.

A space to lay the foundations of cultural participation BLF 2019 delivered an expanded Children’s Programme of free events, including an Early Years programme across all 10 days of the festival, the first B-Lit Young Adult programme, and an upscaled City Park Family Fun Day programme, including a new popup structure dedicated to storytelling and children’s activity.

Building the essential life skills of literacy and oracy is at the heart of the family and CYP programme; this year 34 storytelling and interactive workshop sessions were delivered by children’s authors to combined audiences of 2,275.

Within the context of our city, it is critical that the festival also incorporates activity that is less explicitly ‘literary’ and is accessible to EAL families, and families whose adults may have significant literacy challenges (almost half of adults in Bradford experience these daily) - as these are the families most in need of literacy and oracy support.

This year, in addition to an increased street theatre programme, craft workshops, storytelling, interactive theatre and film screenings, the City Park Family Fun Days featured activities such as free face-painting, and a pop-up lake complete with pedalo boats and zorbs.

By including highly accessible activity at the physical heart of the City Park site, families were also able to explore the festival’s more traditional ‘literature festival’ offers, such as theatre and craft workshops, in a relaxed, low-pressure environment.

For Young Adult audiences - our hardest-to-engage age group - the launch of our new B-Lit strand of events incorporated a dynamic programme of music, film screenings, gaming, and spoken-word poetry, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. Free for 14 to 18-year-olds, these events were placed in spaces familiar to teens, such as the local shopping centre, the cinema, and a co-operative café.

A B-Lit Open Mic spoken-word night proved particularly successful, with half a dozen young people performing in public for the very first time, a number of whom requested a year-round offer…watch this space!

"Such a nice event, not too commercial, you don't feel like you have to buy or do anything and are free to do whatever, no pressure. My kids love it, they enjoy it and they learn so it's win win!"

Visitor, City Park, BLF 2019

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Reflecting a city: getting to know ourselves better Every year the Bradford Literature Festival programme incorporates speakers, topics and themes that could only be explored at a literature festival in the context of this city. Our commitment to diversity, embedded in every area of our practice, is matched by a dedication to representing our city, its people, and its unique opportunities and challenges.

The dedication to exploring our city through art and culture was epitomised this year in our partnership with the National Youth Theatre. Welcoming the NYT back to Bradford for the third consecutive year, this time the company joined us to develop and premiere local playwright Asif Khan’s new work Imaam Imraan.

Directed by Iqbal Khan, the play ran at Kala Sangam Arts Centre for four nights, and offered a unique opportunity for non-Muslims to understand the lived experience of British Muslims. (See page 16) Content inspired by Bradford and its histories and their impact on our local communities is woven throughout the festival programme. At its most celebratory, the festival annually delivers a programme of local tours variously exploring themes including the Jewish history of inner-city Little Germany, the cinematic heritage of Bradford, UNESCO City of Film, and of course, the Brontë heritage of Bradford district.

Re-presenting Bradford to visitors and local people alike, with a focus on the city’s rich sociocultural heritage, not only improves the city’s PR but also boosts the civic pride of local audiences. "[BLF] is a great event for Bradford, as it enables people in this city to access and experience events and hear speakers that otherwise we may not get the chance to. It’s really good in helping present a more positive view of Bradford and creates a lovely welcoming buzz in the town."

Visitor, BLF 2019

The festival’s more traditional panel discussions and lectures also focus on themes exceptionally - if not exclusively - relevant to Bradford and its citizens, some perhaps more sensitive than others.

This year examples included panel discussions entitled The Legacy of the Satanic Verses (30 years after the Rushdie fatwa and book burning); What Does it Mean to be Working Class Today? (particularly pertinent in Bradford’s post-industrial socioeconomic landscape); Who Says Money Can’t Buy Health? (examining social mobility cold-spots, of which Bradford is notable example); and The Politics of Kashmir (Bradford has a significant Kashmiri population).

Maintaining A Safe Space Our festival audiences told us again this year, that the festival made them feel safe (94%) and included (87%).

This feedback is also reflected in the fact that 82% of our audiences agreed that whilst visiting BLF, they mixed with people from different ethnic/ social backgrounds and age groups.

However sensitive, nuanced or difficult some topics of discussion may be, we believe that our audiences should have the opportunity to hear the voices that matter to them, speaking on the issues that affect their lives, and we are proud that Bradford Literature Festival represents a uniquely safe, egalitarian, accessible space in which to do so for our audiences.

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FESTIVAL TOP 10: BOOKS

1. Peter Sanders | Meetings With Mountains 2. A. A. Dhand | One Way Out 3. Lemn Sissay | Gold From the Stone 4. Elif Shafak | 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World 5. Luke Goss | Desert Conversations 6. Jeanette Winterson | Frankissstein 7. Simon Armitage | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 8. Karen Armstrong | The Lost Art of Scripture 9. Michael Rosen | So, They Call You Pisher! =10. Tupac Shakur | The Rose That Grew From Concrete =10. Shashi Tharoor | Inglorious Empire

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FESTIVAL TOP 10: EVENTS

1. Meetings With Mountains | Habib Ali al-Jifri, Peter Sanders, Saba Zaman 2. Desert Conversations | Peg Alexander, Luke Goss 3. Faith in Humanity | Remona Aly, Habib Ali al-Jifri, Bishop Nick Baines 4. Madam Noor Jahan Tribute Evening | Shabnam Khan 5. Sufiana Kalaam | Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad Qawwal and Brothers 6. John Barnes in Conversation | John Barnes, Jason Mohammad 7. Elif Shafak: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World | John Mitchinson, Elif Shafak 8. One Way Out: A. A. Dhand in Conversation | A. A. Dhand, Abir Mukherjee 9. Lemn Sissay in Conversation | Remona Aly, Lemn Sissay 10. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | Simon Armitage

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A WHOLE-FESTIVAL APPROACH TO DIVERSITY Diversifying the Workforce

Diversifying Audiences Hailed frequently as the most diverse literature festival in the UK, this year BLF engaged proportionately more ethnically diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged audiences (often one and the same) than in the previous festival year.

As a result of BLF’s Ethical Ticketing Policy, the percentage of our audiences attending the festival for free or at a discounted rate (e.g. people in receipt of benefits/Universal Credit, disabled people and carers, students, refugees, asylum seekers etc.) increased to 57%. 65% of our audiences also reported an annual household income below the national average.

Our audiences also remained highly ethnically diverse, with 55% identifying as BAME – a figure comprehensively bucking the trend of predominantly white, middle class audiences typical of British literature festivals.

For the first time BLF 2019 trialled a “relaxed” strand of events, with accessibility for neurodiverse audiences in mind. The strand exploring the topic of neurodiversity included panel discussions, Bigger on the Inside - a comedy show by artist Kate Fox, and a lecture by science writer Steve Silberman. To improve accessibility, the volume of the PA systems were lowered, seats were spaced further apart, and it was made clear to audiences that they should feel free to leave their seats, make noise, and stim.

We are continuing to make improvements for disabled, D/deaf, and neurodiverse audiences, to ensure that BLF is truly inclusive and engaging for all segments of our diverse audiences.

This year, for the first time, the festival programme was planned, curated, marketed and produced by a year-round core team that was 50% BAME; contrasting with a 13% BAME national creative sector workforce.

55% of our volunteers were of diverse backgrounds; 46% were aged 16-19, and 12% of our festival production team disclosed that they live with a longterm illness or disability.

As the festival grows, we will continue to honour the commitment in our Equal Opportunities Policy to recruit as diverse a festival team and volunteer pool as possible. We will also continue to explore ways in which we can contribute to a local talent pipeline, offering opportunities for skills and career development to future arts and culture practitioners.

(See page 20)

"My partner, who I attend the festival with, is disabled. She has problems with her vision and also mental health problems. I attend as her carer and so she gets a discounted ticket and I go for free. We are both really grateful for the festival's policy on this, without which, we might not be able to attend."

Visitor, BLF 2019

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Performances by the renowned Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad Qawwal & Brothers, a Madam Noor Jahan musical evening with Shabnam Khan, and a Kashmiri food salon also offered opportunities to celebrate Bradford’s rich South Asian cultural heritage.

A Diverse Programme "The festival is a vital part of Bradford's increasingly strong artistic and multicultural identity. Your inclusive policies and varied programme make me proud to be from Bradford."

Visitor, BLF 2019 As a festival based in Bradford, where 23% of the adult population live in income deprivation and 30% are BAME, a festival programme preoccupied by marketdriven or ‘stereotypically literary’ curatorial sensibilities would alienate the very communities in which we are rooted.

While the festival draws, and is delighted to welcome, names familiar on the literary festival landscape, we also delight in introducing diverse artists, who represent excellence in their fields but who may not be given significant platform at many other festivals in the UK – this year 39% of our artist roster was BAME. Artists also had roots in more than 25 countries, including Sri Lanka, Iran, Nigeria, China, Finland, and the USA.

We worked with Shubbak Festival to bring artists from across the Arab world to Bradford and London, to share platforms with established British artists.

Palestinian poet Farah Chamma delighted audiences with her dynamic political verses in three languages (before yielding the stage to George the Poet) whilst Deena Mohamed, famous in the Middle East for her creation of the hijabi superheroine Qahera, was a compelling workshop leader for secondary school students Internationally renowned speakers on Islamic topics, such as scholar Habib Ali al-Jifri and photographer Peter Sanders, spoke to record-breaking BLF audiences at St George’s Hall.

The LGBT literary salon Polari also made their way to Bradford for the fourth time, for a night of high-quality cabaret performances delivered to rapt audiences at the Bradford Playhouse.

Alongside the celebration and platforming of diverse artists, it’s critical that BLF also offers a neutral space with an implicitly dialogic approach, where challenges around diversity and cohesion can be explored within and between communities.

Highlights of this ongoing conversation this year included June Sarpong delivering an empowering talk on the hidden cost of exclusion of diverse communities; Kia Abdullah and Amit Dhand asking whether BAME writers should be expected to represent their heritage in particular – always positive – ways; there were panels exploring ‘Is the Niqab a Feminist Issue?’ and ‘Writing Working Class Women’.

John Barnes talked to Jason Mohammad about racism in football, while the Windrush scandal, the Shamima Begum case, and the ‘hostile environment’ were all interrogated in the context of ‘British Citizenship 2019: Who Belongs?’

"I can't put a gauge on the privilege it was to perform at St. George's Hall. For a British-born Pakistani artist to be given that honour is truly remarkable. I feel very touched that the festival entrusted that to me."

Shabnam Khan, Singer 15

NATIONAL YOUTH THEATRE: A PARTNERSHIP WITH LOCAL RESONANCE

This year BLF welcomed back the National Youth Theatre, with the compelling and powerful new play Imaam Imraan, written by Bradfordian playwright Asif Khan. Imaam Imraan tells the story of a Bradford-born actor returning to his roots to rediscover his identity, and presented a timely opportunity for an examination of pertinent themes such as Islamophobia, fake news, and celebrity culture.

Across four nights, our diverse audiences told us the play offered non-Muslims a unique opportunity to intimately understand the lived experience of British Muslims.

"I wish I could have brought my dad to the show, because he probably represents the group with more ignorance and stereotyping for sure. Using art as a way of being able to talk about these things is just incredible and I really wish he could have seen that […] a diverse cast within itself becomes more powerful, rather than white people talking to other people again."

Visitor, Imaam Imraan

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This year’s partnership with the National Youth Theatre also supported a significant strand of literacyand oracy-building educational activity, as well as essential life skills and career development opportunities for local children and young people.

Working in partnership with BLF, during the threeweek rehearsal period director Iqbal Khan and writer Asif Khan delivered workshops in three primary schools and two secondary schools, reaching a total of 180 children.

Working with the Through Care After Care Service, as part of a wider package of talent and skills development activity curated by BLF for this cohort, the NYT also gave four looked-after young people the opportunity to observe the diverse young cast, director and production team during rehearsals, giving the young people an opportunity to gain a better understanding of potential careers in theatre and related fields.

More granular work of this kind has the potential to inspire lasting change in the lives of young people, for whom access to careers in the arts and culture is significantly lower than the rest of the population.

Now that a level of engagement and buy-in from these young people has been established, BLF will continue to offer opportunities of this nature, to build a raft of experience and exposure that we hope will lead to a life-long love of – and perhaps even practice in – the arts and culture.

"The children LOVED this experience. It was totally unlike anything they had done before and they engaged fantastically with it. It really allowed each child to shine and there was so much space and opportunity for each child to ‘be’ something. We loved it."

Teacher/participant, NYT Schools Session

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FACTS & FIGURES: FESTIVAL IMPACT

312 Public Events

120 Education Programme Events 518 Speakers 39% BAME 968 Days of Work For Practitioners & Artists 18

460 Bradford Hotel Nights Booked 37 Jobs Created 1,747 Hours Worked, With a Value of £21,377 176 Volunteers 1,857 Hours Worked

Volunteers 46% Aged 16 - 19 55% BAME 19

TALENT & SECTOR DEVELOPMENT

Sector Initiatives The second annual BLF Creative Sector Industry Day and the inaugural Northern Lights conference - a crossborder initiative delivered in partnership with Edinburgh International Book Festival - drew delegates and speakers from Bradford and across the country, to share best practice, develop skills, and build relationships with peers.

Open to practitioners delivering work in any artform and at all scales locally, regionally and nationally, the Creative Sector Industry Day offered delegates a range of panel discussions and workshops on themes such as postcolonialism and the creative sector, unconscious bias, the circular economy, marketing (delivered by M&C Saatchi), and diversity.

The programme was carefully curated to ensure a balance of local and national voices, championing best practice wherever it is found across the country, and offering delegates external to Bradford the opportunity to take home learnings from colleagues working in one of the most challenging urban environments in the country for creative sector organisations (low levels of engagement, low levels of disposable income, historically low levels of funding).

The Northern Lights project, which concludes at Edinburgh International Book Festival at the end of August 2019, brought independent regional publishers and publishing professionals from both sides of the border together for a day of panels, workshops and roundtables on topics including how smaller publishing houses can manage runaway success with less resources, building effective marketing campaigns, and how the hypothetical relocation of major publishing houses from outside London might impact the future of regional publishing.

The project has been supported by the Bookseller, Creative Scotland and Arts Council England, and represents the first cross-border initiative of its kind, with the potential for significant future development.

“What the festival offers Bradford is a rich, diverse and innovative experience - one that’s seldom easy to find and access. I look forward to more of the same next year.”

Anthony Anaxagorou, writer

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New & Emerging Artists Across the festival, we launched or featured the first books of 21 artists, including Bradfordian Sairish Hussain, whose debut novel The Family Tree will be published by HarperCollins this autumn, following a chance meeting between the author and publisher Lisa Milton at BLF 2017.

We also delivered performance R&D opportunities or debuts for six new and developing theatrical works.

In the autumn of 2018, the BLF Northern Noir Crime Writing Competition unearthed an exciting cohort of new crime-writing talents. With 10 competition winners offered a spot on a coveted Arvon Lumb Bank writing course, three of the writers’ manuscripts have so far gained traction with publishers.

The annual Art of Writing and Politics of Publishing strand was once again popular with new and developing writers. Workshops such as ‘How to Write Effective Dialogue’ and ‘Meet the Literary Agent’ were sell-out events, while across the strand artists were able to connect with publishers, agents, more established peers, professional translators, and dramaturgs, whose participation in panels, workshops and lectures brought best practice and fresh insights from across the country to Bradford.

A number of poets (Thea Ayres, Pat Bell, Marva Bell) at the beginning of their careers were offered development opportunities through inclusion in a series of pre-festival spoken-word events delivered to tie with Bradford Pride, BIASAN (Bradford Immigration and Asylum Seekers Support and Advice Network) and Windrush Generations Carnival.

For emerging poets, such as Charly Cox, Nadine Aisha Jassat and Rosie Fleeshman, inclusion in multi-line-up events such as 'Poetry with a Punch' and 'Lyrical Mehfil' offered unique opportunities to share a platform with internationally recognised headliners.

"I love it so much. Highlight of my year. Always wind up making both new friends and professional contacts. Plus, so many books. Well organised, fascinating, and so much fun."

Speaker, BLF 2019

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Future Talent The Bradford district is home to the youngest population of any city in Europe; 30% of our young people are under 20. Engagement with the arts and culture through BLF offers young people a unique opportunity to explore careers in the creative sector, develop skills, build networks, and expand their horizons – both in terms of their career and worldview.

This year the new B-Lit programme offered a range of development opportunities for the practitioners and artists of the future through free ticket offers, YA-focussed programme content, and a series of skills-building initiatives.

The B-Lit 'Takeover Challenge' developed the research, presentation, curatorial and production skills of A-Level students, who first pitched programme ideas to the festival team, and then curated and delivered their events in the public festival programme. Four young people benefited from work-shadowing opportunities and backstage skills-building with the National Youth Theatre production team, and for the first time BLF accepted an A-Level student for work experience with our in-house production team.

Exploring their potential as artists at a spoken-word open mic night, three young women read their work in public for the very first time. Incredibly, a mother and her teenage son attending the event "just to listen" were so inspired that they wrote poems of their own during the event break, and thanks to the supportive, uplifting atmosphere, felt able to perform their work in the second half, to rapturous reception!

“I wanted to thank you very much for the shadowing I was allowed to do during the festival. I felt so included and welcomed, and I 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 it in the future.”

Rory, BLF volunteer & shadowing stage manager

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WHY EARLY YEARS MATTERS AT BLF

For the second year, BLF 2019 delivered a dedicated, free Early Years programme for 0-3-year-olds and their caregivers in Venue 1 - our pop-up family venue catering to the needs of families with young children, with everything from child-sized furniture to a dedicated baby changing section and buggy park, to an event schedule designed to work around school drop-off and pick-up times for older siblings.

Ensuring families with very young children feel welcome at BLF is not just about engaging the family for one festival; extending a warm welcome to our smallest guests is vital work to develop the audiences (and potential artists and practitioners!) of the future, embedding the arts and culture in children’s lives from the earliest possible point.

A ‘whole family’ approach to the arts and culture promotes the essential influence that early-years learning has on later life and attainment, and capitalises on the role caregivers play in the neurological development of young children.

Activities such as baby raves, baby yoga, baby sign, baby music and baby massage support parents to set down the fundamental building blocks of literacy, oracy, and communication through eye contact, movement, and touch. Storytelling sessions and mark-making - more explicitly ‘literacy-building’ activities - support the neurological development of under-3s in areas such as fine motor skills, hand-eye co-ordination, and language acquisition.

At BLF we ascribe to the view that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are critical to their later-life outcomes; as such, we consider our Early Years activity to be among the most important we curate, and we look forward to further developing this offer over the coming months and years.

"My friend and I really enjoyed the Baby Rave event. As sufferers of anxiety, we both left the event feeling happy and like we would attend more events like that with our children. Our children also really enjoyed the experience."

Visitor, BLF 2019

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THE BLF EDUCATION PROGRAMME

"We all had a fab day at the event. The team were amazing, so helpful and brilliant at entertaining the children. The authors were really good and we think the children got a lot out of it. We would definitely come again next year. Thankyou so much for organising a free event."

Teacher, BLF Education Programme 2019

With over 18,000 student and 2,000 educator attendances, from 76 schools across the district, this year’s Education Programme enhanced schools’ literacy offers, introducing children and young people to festival’s public family and CYP content, and reinforced in-school learning with crosscurricular content.

Speakers including George the Poet, Jean Menzies, Terry Deary of Horrible Histories, Karl Nova, Polar Bear (Steven Camden), Testament (Andy Brookes), and Ruth Amos and Emma Grange of Marvel Fearless and Fantastic! delivered workshops, performances, lectures, panel discussions, and interactive sessions to auditoriums packed with children and young people, at the University of Bradford and St George’s Hall – a total of 83 sessions across six days.

The Education Programme also delivered 54 sessions in schools across the district in the weeks preceding and during the festival. Schools visits were undertaken by speakers including The Hate U Give author Angie Thomas for World Book Day and Conrad Burdekin, who delivered writing workshops as part of National Writing Day, while comic book artist Deena Mohamed, local author Liz Mistry, NYT director Iqbal Khan, CERN physicist Akram Khan, poet Anthony Anaxagorou, and children’s author Onjali Rauf all went into schools to deliver workshops and talks to inspire and expand the horizons of our young people.

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Once again the festival’s focus was on delivering work in and with schools, serving the city’s most disadvantaged and diverse communities. In addition to Education Programme events, we worked with schools to offer enrichment activities such as the Hay/BLF Schools Exchange, now in its second year, giving children from the rural Welsh borders and Bradford the opportunity to visit both Hay and Bradford Literature Festivals.

We also began to develop a network of festival ambassadors and champions from amongst our most engaged Education Programme participants, both students and staff.

The BLF Education Programme will undergo a makeover ahead of the 2020 festival, in response to feedback and a process of internal review over the previous 12 months.

We’re committed to ensuring that the programme is free for Bradford schools, but recognise that transport costs and staff resource also represent a significant barrier to participation at a time when schools budgets are stretched.

That’s why next year we’ll be taking two of our six Primary Schools Days into schools that would not otherwise be able to take part in BLF. Watch this space for more changes, to ensure that we’re reaching – and inspiring – more children than ever in 2020.

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COMMUNITY & GRASSROOTS PARTNERSHIPS Working in partnership with local cultural, community and grassroots organisations allows BLF and our partners to develop audiences and furthers the reputation of Bradford as a place of cohesive cultural re-invigoration. The work we undertake in communities has this year been an area of significant growth, thanks to the generous support of our funders, including BSBT and Bradford Opportunity Area.

We delivered 28 events in partnership with local cultural and grassroots organisations in the year 2018-2019, including:

Bradford Bubble Up

Eid Celebrations

In September 2018, BLF worked with Ilkley Literature Festival to curate 'Flowetry' – a night of music and poetry, as part of Bradford Bubble Up, featuring Anthony Joseph, Malika Booker and friends.

BLF provided two storytelling sessions at an Eid party for looked-after children, hosted by the Through Care After Care Service. Around 50 children and their caregivers took part in storytelling sessions with master storyteller Noel Watkins.

Community Iftars Throughout May and June 2019, BLF delivered a series of six community iftars for South Asian women and children at community centres and mosques across Bradford, building engagement ahead of the public festival. Speakers delivered inspirational talks on the importance of education, literacy and community participation, while craft workshops and storytelling took place for younger attendees.

Of the 444 attendees to the community sessions, 69% went on to attend BLF public programme events – most attending BLF for the first time.

Kala Sangam Pick and Mix In December 2018, BLF contributed a performance to Kala Sangam’s ‘Pick and Mix’ showcase of local arts and culture organisations. Local beatboxer and playwright Testament, supported by jazz band Purple Lychee Collective, packed monologue, poetry, rap and beatboxing into an electrifying 20-minute set.

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Poetry & Open Mic In June 2019, a series of poetry nights, funded by West Yorkshire Combined Authority, were delivered in partnership with celebratory local events throughout June, including Bradford Pride, the Generation Windrush Roots and Culture Festival, and Refugee Week.

The events offered a platform to diverse new and emerging poets from across the region, enriched the offer of our partner organisations, and developed audiences for the BLF public festival programme.

BLF 2019 During the festival run, we were delighted to offer support and platform to local women’s centre Womenzone for their theatre piece Shaadi Masala, produced in association with Chol Theatre, exploring themes of arranged marriage, based on the experiences of local South Asian women.

Beatboxer and playwright Testament performed at an intimate, stripped-back version of his play Woke at Centrepoint Homeless Centre for a small group of young people, two of whom were so inspired by their time with the artist that they also attended 'Poetry With a Punch' the next evening.

Ahead of his sold-out public ‘In Conversation’ event, a private event was arranged with Lemn Sissay for looked-after children and their caregivers, in partnership with the Bradford Through Care After Care Service and Leeds care leavers.

Lemn delivered a 30-minute biographical talk for the group, after which they were given free tickets to his public event. Ensuring that looked-after children and care leavers can see their experiences represented, and are aware of pathways into careers in the arts and culture, has been an area of particular focus for BLF this year and will continue to be so moving forward.

“Lemn spoke a lot about how you are not hugged in care and how sometimes we all need a hug to reassure us that it’s all ok. They really picked up on that and all really identified with the feeling of not knowing how to show physical affection. It was a really beautiful conversation - sad but beautiful.”

Personal advisor, Bradford Through Care After Care Service

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WITH THANKS TO ...

Bradford Literature Festival would not be possible with the support of our sponsors and funders.

Our Sponsors

Our Funders

Special thanks are of course due to our title sponsor, Provident Financial Group, who have supported Bradford Literature Festival for four years; a mark of the company’s continued belief in the future of our city.

Our key partners, the University of Bradford and Bradford Council, whose unwavering support and faith in our endeavours over the past five years have been crucial to our development and growth, both within the context of Bradford and beyond. We thank you.

We thank Arts Council England, our major funder, whose support for the festival, both financial and advisory, continues to spur us on to ever-greater ambitions and achievements.

The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, who have enabled the development and delivery of our YA programme, B-Lit, which we look forward to building over the remaining course of this funding, and beyond.

We thank Bradford Opportunity Area and the Pears Foundation, for their generous support across the festival – your contribution has enabled the delivery of a festival that reached more disadvantaged children, young people and families than ever before. Thank you.

We must also thank the Building Stronger Britain Together fund, WYCA, the Peter Sowerby Foundation, Amal, the Emerald Foundation, and the NHS, whose support has variously facilitated the delivery of discrete elements of the Bradford Literature Festival programme – and without whom we would not be able to deliver work of such scope or scale.

We must also thank LCF Law, Mayfair Group Investments, and Yorkshire Building Society for their support in the delivery of the 2019 festival.

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Our Partners

Partnership working is critical to the success of Bradford Literature Festival – from venue support, to creative partnerships, to our media partners who work incredibly hard to ensure as many people as possible hear about the festival, both before and during the festival run.

This year, we welcomed new partners, and renewed our relationships with others – we look forward to working with each of them again in the future.

Thanks go to our media partner, Nova Studios, and our hotel partner, the Midland Hotel. Special thanks to our book partner, Waterstones, whose team work tirelessly, diligently, and patiently to ensure that our audiences can get their hands on the books they want, and that authors can put pen to title page at hundreds of sales and signings across the festival.

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BOARD MEMBERS & TEAM Board - 2019 Festival Cycle  Bishop Nick Baines (interim chair) Lisa Milton Mark Garratt Kersten England Simon Stell Stuart Sinclair Richard King Sir Richard Lambert Mohamed Amersi

Year Round Core Team

Seasonal Festival Team

Syima Aslam CEO & Artistic Director

Rhys Chamberlain Box Office Manager

Kelly Holt Creative Producer

Symon Culpan Technical Manager

Georgina Lennon Production & Marketing Manager

Greg Walker Deputy Production Manager

Lottie Wallis Education Programme Manager

Sam Greenwood Deputy Technical Manager

Charlotte Broderick Public Programme Manager

Matthew Chambers Volunteer Co-ordinator

Anisha Dayalji Marketing Executive

Alice Holt Festival Assistant

Tayyab Amin Programme & Production Executive

Counsultants

Habiba Desai Festival Assistant

 Aaqil Ahmed Farkhanda Faraz Bill Lawrence

Special Thanks To ...

BLF would not be possible without our stage managers, venue managers, technicians, box office team, drivers and incredible volunteers, who work tirelessly to ensure audiences and artists have the best possible BLF experience.

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2020 PLEDGES Following our annual review of audience, peer and artist festival feedback and analysis of team learnings from the 2019 festival, Bradford Literature Festival makes five pledges for the 2020 festival:

Accessibility To trial Pay As You Feel in place of standard ticketing, across a representative proportion of festival content.

Festival Reach To deliver more year-round work in schools and communities than ever before, as we continue our mission to engage and inspire communities who stand to benefit most from access to the arts and culture.

Education To redesign the delivery of the Education Programme, and work more closely with schools to remove barriers to attendance, such as transport and scheduling.

Development To increase audiences, with a particular focus on growing national and international visitor numbers.

Environment To significantly reduce the use of single-use plastic water bottles across the festival.

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For information about Bradford Literature Festival’s year-round activities, and for programme information, visit www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk For 2019 festival highlights, and to keep up with 2020 festival news, follow us on social media:

@BradfordLitFest #BradfordLitFest

Supporting Bradford Literature Festival

If you would like to discuss sponsoring the festival, please contact

The Festival Director Room BO21, Chesham Building, University of Bradford Richmond Road, Bradford, BD7 1DP +44 (0)1274 238374 marketing@bradfordlitfest.co.uk

26th J u n e - 5 t h J uly 2020

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