A Fountain, A Festival, A Future

(Originally published for Champion Up North)

In northern England water fountains are synonymous with regeneration.  Where other EU countries used taxation from the late-90s/early-2000s boom to improve infrastructure (build high-speed rail-links, motorways, etc.) the UK chose to build fountains and Ferris wheels. Bradford’s fountains are the largest public fountains in the UK. 

Whilst the fountains are impressive, their story encapsulates the recent history of the city. Where Manchester opened its fountains in 2002, Bradford’s were delayed- opened over a decade later, by which time the bubble of optimism that began the century had all but burst.

I’m in Bradford for a screening of Sally Potter’s Thriller, part of the 20th Anniversary edition of the Bradford International Film Festival. The festival is one of the city’s largest cultural events. Film has played a big part in Bradford’s cultural history, and the National Media Museum is one of the city’s greatest assets. In the years where there seemed to be no regeneration, where the city was perpetually on the cusp of being revitalised but never was, the pulse of the Media Museum beat on.

Pudsey, my hometown, is situated a few miles away from the centre of both Bradford and Leeds. Every time I want to go shopping - for a drink, to visit a museum, a gallery - I’m presented with a choice between two cities an equal distance away. For the previous two years my choice has been the same. Leeds.

Image courtesy of James Longhorn

It has not always been this way. When I was younger Bradford was the city I was taken shopping to - dragged to buy school uniform, pencil cases, rulers, that sort of thing - the train fare was cheaper. Spending time there as I grew up, I’ve adopted the same attitude towards the city as Bradfordians: habitually slagging the place off, but defending it ferociously from anybody I judge as an outsider, the same attitude the bully at school has towards their geeky kid-brother.


But Leeds is my city now. A city with a similar history, a historical as well as geographical closeness to Bradford. Each were industrial powerhouses that got rich off wool; each became a post-industrial bantamweight in search of a new identity. Leeds found its identity as a financial centre: ‘the London of the North’. Bradford is still searching.

There's a public perception of the city as a racially segregated, post-industrial wasteland. Too often public perception is shaped by lazy documentary crews, unashamed misrepresenters - the kind who come on the pretence of exploring ‘racial tensions’, but wind-up creating stories that speak more of their assumptions, than of how the city actually is. The race riots were over ten years ago.  Looking around the film festival crowd, I see no hint of outsider perceived segregations and tensions.

Bradford, largely, has moved on. 

Stop someone in the street and ask what Bradford’s problems are and they’ll have an answer. They’ll blame the administrators. They’ll speak with the passion of someone whose government has failed them time and time and time again: too many projects started and not finished, too many consultants’ pockets lined with taxpayers’ money, no solution ever found. Only in a city where government has been so ineffective would George Galloway’s brand of anti-establishment macho-socialism present itself as a credible political alternative to the current status quo. Whatever you might have to say about George (and there’s a lot to say) he’s a doer.

After the screening has finished I walk back toward the rail station, I see ‘the hole’- a construction site now 10 years-old. They’ve begun building a Westfield. Construction was supposed to begin in 2005, but developers and the council ummed-and-arred. For a while it was developed into an urban garden. Now it’s to become a shopping centre, due to be completed in 2015.  It desperately needs to be built. The hole has become a running joke, only for the last nine years, nobody has laughed. Instead they’ve plodded past it and begrudgingly accepted its existence, because the problem was outside of their hands.

Image courtesy of James Longhorn

While it’s easy to hate on seeing the construction of shopping centre as closely linked to progress, to not do so is to underestimate the effect of buzz. That palpable feeling that things are on the up. Leeds had that feeling last year when the Trinity Centre was opened. It might have just been the same old shops with a new gloss, but there was something more than that - a sense that things were moving forward.

If there is one thing Bradford lacks compared to Leeds, it’s this sense of optimism, the sense of progress. Leeds has its building sites, its holes, the skyscraper that never was, but they’re not dwelt on because there always seems to be something else to look forward to. This is what an effective Council is all about; attracting investment and pumping public money into projects, retaining vibrancy and in turn reaping economic rewards. Consultation giving way to action.

Yet there is a hint of a resurgence in the city. With rent prices in the centre lower than it’s neighbouring city and a community based around The New Bradford Playhouse and Impressions Gallery, Bradford has begun to attract emerging artists and musicians to the city. 

You notice them amongst the crowd at the festival, and realise It is not just those that have lived in the city, but those come from outside who now call the city their home that believe in Bradford. 

This community is still young but it’s growing. With it you see a hint of an optimism similar to what you see in Leeds. As always you feel that if only Bradford's Council could make the right decisions, if only this sense of optimism could be magnified, then the city might prosper. Bradford has it’s water fountain, now it looks to establish its own identity.