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Bradford's City of Culture marks the halfway point of the city's 10-year cultural strategy

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City of Culture: Bradford nears £42m funding target

Corporate sponsorship deal sees amount raised by Bradford City of Culture 2025 reach 90% of predicted costs of year-long programme.

Neil Puffett
3 min read

Fresh funding of £2m from corporate sponsors on the back of £6m from West Yorkshire Combined Authority has increased the amount secured for Bradford City of Culture 2025 to within touching distance of the total estimated cost.

Speaking to Arts Professional, Dan Bates, Executive Director of Bradford Culture Company, said the total raised has now reached £38m – £4.2m away from the estimated £42.4m total cost.

This includes £10m from Bradford Council, £10m from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, £5m from Arts Council England and £4.95m from Heritage Lottery Fund – all announced last year. 

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This has since been topped up with £6m from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and £2.05m from partnerships and corporate sponsorship. 

In total, 89.6% of the £42.4m estimated cost has now been secured, with Bates saying this has allowed them to begin making programming decisions.

'Pleased with progress'

"City of Culture is a time-limited opportunity, so you do have to kind of work at pace but I've been pleased with the progress that we've made to date," Bates said.

"We really wanted to make sure that we could have enough funding to be able to make the best choices in terms of programme. We just needed to remove some of the risks. I don't want to be fundraising during the year of culture. 

"So I think from our point of view, we set our stall out that by the summer of 2024 we wanted to have 90% of our funding in place."

Local authority funding

While Bradford Council has committed £10m to the year of culture, the local authority – like many others – has been struggling to balance the books. 

Last month government agreed to grant Bradford Council £220m of "exceptional financial support" to avoid it effectively going bankrupt.

Bates says he is assured that there is no risk the £10m pledged for City of Culture will not materialise.

"The finances have been cleared and the documentation is all done," he said. 

"The council sees the value of City of Culture in terms of the growth of the city, and they can see that has brought in money from the DCMS, the Arts Council and others."

Lessons learned

Bates adds that the council is committed to the legacy of the programme pointing to its current 10-year cultural strategy called Culture is Our Plan, which covers the 2021 to 2031 period. 

"The City of Culture year is just the halfway point of [the cultural strategy]," he said.

"So there is already a form of legacy plan. There's a lot of lessons learned from Coventry and we are very mindful of those lessons, to make sure that we are working within working within our means

"Our job [now] is focusing on on the delivery really, but there are definitely plans and aspirations about what could continue across the district, and how volunteer programmes will continue to support cultural activities across the district."