Bradford Literature Festival
The University of Bradford has been working in partnership with Bradford Literature Festival (BLF) since it was founded in 2014.
Created by University Honorary Graduate, Syima Aslam, Bradford Literature Festival is one of the largest literature festivals in the UK, and Europe’s most eclectic and diverse literature festival.
The festival shares our values, priding itself on being welcoming and inclusive for all, led by a vision of creating a fairer society and changing lives through world-class culture and literature. They achieve this by ensuring the programme includes diverse and often underrepresented narratives and that their events are accessible to all through the pioneering ‘Ethical Ticketing’ programme.
How we work together
The University campus hosts the Bradford Literature Festival’s offices and team on campus.
The University also supports the festival by offering use of our event spaces to host many of their key events which welcome inspirational figures from the worlds of literature, poetry, politics, science, history, film and TV. In previous years, the festival has featured the likes of University alumnus and author of the BBC’s hit Virdee series AA Dhand, Bradford-based doctor, TV personality and University Honorary Graduate Dr Amir Khan, and our very own Chancellor, Anita Rani.
In return, Bradford Literature supports the University by helping to raise our profile locally and nationally, welcoming new and diverse audiences onto campus, and offering invaluable opportunities for our staff members and students to be involved with the festival.
The University of Bradford has supported BLF since its inception. This partnership has been pivotal in BLF becoming a cornerstone of the nation’s cultural landscape, attracting over 700,000 visitors from across the globe and hosting thousands of artists from dozens of countries. This international engagement has reinforced Bradford's profile as a city of culture, an epicentre for education and intellectual exchange.
Syima Aslam, Founder, CEO and Artistic Director of BLF
Enhancing the student experience
We want to give our students opportunities to experience different cultural activities, helping to enhance their student experience and inform their future career choices. To help us do this Bradford Literature Festival:
- Set our students industry-led projects by delivering a guest lecture about the organisation and a related assignment, including in marketing and corporate brand management. These assignments give our students experience of working on a real-life project for a Bradford based organisation, with the top-graded students invited to present their assignments to the festival team to receive feedback.
- Increasing accessibility to the festival’s diverse and culturally rich programme of events by offering free or discounted tickets to our students, breaking down barriers to accessing arts and culture.
- Helping our students to gain valuable work experience by providing various volunteering opportunities to develop their employability skills.
- Giving our students the opportunity to join a panel of expert guests and recent graduates in the Doha Debates town hall events. This lively and topical event series gives our students a platform to voice their opinions on important conversations in front a global audience.
Raising aspirations of young people in the City
As a University we are committed to improving social mobility. This includes engaging young people through different activities that help to raise their future aspirations and supporting them to access further and higher education.
To help us achieve this Bradford Literature Festival host their Primary Education Programme on-campus giving thousands of children from our district and beyond, who might not have visited a university before, the opportunity to spend the day here learning and experiencing the atmosphere of being on campus.
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Co-creating research with communities
We are a leading institution for research and innovation, and Bradford Literature Festival helps us to highlight our research by:
- Featuring our academics, and their research, in the festival programme, including Professor Hassan Ugail: AI Fighting Crime, Professor Chris Gaffney: The Bradford Exhibition of 1904, Professor Paul Rogers: The Insecurity Trap, and Professor John Russell: Russia 100: From Stalin to Putin.
- Becoming the host venue for the festival’s Creative Economic Conference (CEC) which gathers influential minds from the realms of business, politics, and the creative industries. In 2024, this included a topical conversation on ‘The Future of AI in the Creative Industries’ with University expert, Professor Hassan Ugail.
- Collaborating on University events, initiatives and campaigns that highlight our research by sharing promotional materials with their own audiences.
The University of Bradford is proud to be a long-standing supporter of Bradford Literature Festival which continues to go from strength-to-strength. The festival is a beacon of inclusivity, creativity, and cultural enrichment, offering our diverse community's meaningful opportunities to engage with the arts and experience our campus through a different lens.
Eleanor Clyde-Evans, Associate Director, Engagement, Philanthropy &Communication