Bradford does Yorkshire proud as UK City of Culture title won - The Yorkshire Post says

Celebrations in Bradford are not likely to quieten yet as it heads into the Bank Holiday weekend safe in the knowledge that it will rightfully be the UK City of Culture 2025.

The announcement on Tuesday evening, which crowned the metropolis and its wider district, means that the title comes back to Yorkshire for the second time in less than decade after Hull’s transformative tenure in 2017.

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Bradford City of Culture 2025: The best pictures from the celebrations

Bradford so deserves this accolade, after the bid team’s relentlessly passionate promotion of the city in its pursuit of the title.

Sir Phil Redmond, Shanaz Gulzar (chair of the culture bird) and Lord Parkinson pictured in City Park, Bradford. Picture: Simon Hulme.Sir Phil Redmond, Shanaz Gulzar (chair of the culture bird) and Lord Parkinson pictured in City Park, Bradford. Picture: Simon Hulme.
Sir Phil Redmond, Shanaz Gulzar (chair of the culture bird) and Lord Parkinson pictured in City Park, Bradford. Picture: Simon Hulme.
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The team, chaired by chaired by presenter and artist Shanaz Gulzar, shrewdly placed young people – about a quarter of the city’s population are under 18 – at the heart of the campaign and those emerging generations can now enjoy their formative years in a place basking in its renewed self-confidence.

This newspaper and civic leaders have long maintained that this is an opportunity not just for Bradford but for Yorkshire and the North beyond. Greater investment, greater opportunity and a greater number of jobs should be a major benefit.

The West Yorkshire city itself is absolutely the focus right now, however.

Leading lights of the Bradford district’s fine cultural heritage are easy enough to list: The Brontë sisters, David Hockney, JB Priestley and Gulzar herself.

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However, it is the new creative people such as poet Kirsty Taylor and Munaza Kulsoom, founder of the self-publishing organisation Bradical Press, who are set to gain so much from this national prize.

Once one of the richest cities in the world, led by industrial innovators like Samuel Lister and Titus Salt, Bradford has experienced painful events and unfair criticism in more recent decades.

It now has the title and the investment coming to show its true identity.

Congratulations Bradford – we know you will do Yorkshire proud.