Get ready to pull up, unload and be transported into a world of creativity - welcome to Loading Bay!
This amazing new pop-up art space, an artistic cargo hub, providing much needed performance, rehearsal and exhibition space, has been created as part of Bradford City Of Culture 2025.
And ahead of it opening this week we got a sneak peek look inside, writes Graham Walker.
WHAT’S ON: For Loading Bay’s full 2025 line-up of events and tickets visit https://bradford2025.co.uk/programme/loading-bay/
Loading Bay has taken over an empty Marks and Spencer storage depot on Duke Street to bring a Bradford 2025 buzz to the heart of the city, to boosting the cultural offering in Yorkshire and beyond.
Featuring two performance areas and a gallery spread across three atmospheric floors, it will host music concerts and exhibitions to immersive theatre and even live video games.
It plans to live up to its name as an arts warehouse, loading up the city’s cultural momentum with creativity by the pallet-load to deliver an unforgettable year.
The temporary venue is being programmed and operated by Bradford 2025 until December, but there is already a desire for the new space to become a permanent legacy.
Shanaz Gulzar, Bradford City of Culture Creative director explained the venue is running through to the end of this year. But she said: We'd love to see it have a life beyond 2025.
"For us, it's about responding to our need this year, we also recognise the need that this responds to for Bradford's creative and cultural sector, also nationally, for shows to come to tour to Bradford who couldn't come if this venue didn't exist."
This amazing new pop-up art space, an artistic cargo hub, providing much needed performance, rehearsal and exhibition space, has been created as part of Bradford City Of Culture 2025.
And ahead of it opening this week we got a sneak peek look inside, writes Graham Walker.
WHAT’S ON: For Loading Bay’s full 2025 line-up of events and tickets visit https://bradford2025.co.uk/programme/loading-bay/
Loading Bay has taken over an empty Marks and Spencer storage depot on Duke Street to bring a Bradford 2025 buzz to the heart of the city, to boosting the cultural offering in Yorkshire and beyond.
Featuring two performance areas and a gallery spread across three atmospheric floors, it will host music concerts and exhibitions to immersive theatre and even live video games.
It plans to live up to its name as an arts warehouse, loading up the city’s cultural momentum with creativity by the pallet-load to deliver an unforgettable year.
The temporary venue is being programmed and operated by Bradford 2025 until December, but there is already a desire for the new space to become a permanent legacy.
Shanaz Gulzar, Bradford City of Culture Creative director explained the venue is running through to the end of this year. But she said: We'd love to see it have a life beyond 2025.
"For us, it's about responding to our need this year, we also recognise the need that this responds to for Bradford's creative and cultural sector, also nationally, for shows to come to tour to Bradford who couldn't come if this venue didn't exist."
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FunTranscript
00:00So I'm speaking to you from Loading Bay. It's a brand new venue, art space for theatre, gigs, music, visual art, immersive work.
00:10You name it, this space can actually probably hold it.
00:13It's on three levels and we realised when we were developing the programme that we needed a space that could answer to our programme needs,
00:20but also could become something that would grow the culture and creative sector here in Bradford,
00:25but also become an offer for national theatre, gigs and shows to come to Bradford that haven't had an opportunity to come here before.
00:32We'd love to see this to have a life beyond 2025. For us it's about responding to our need this year,
00:39but we also recognise the need that this responds to for Bradford's creative and cultural sector,
00:45and also nationally for shows to come to tour to Bradford who couldn't come if this venue didn't exist.
00:51We've got projects like Public Interest, which Commonwealth, that will be going live in May.
00:58We've got Frontline by Victor Wederburn, which is a photography show, which is going to go on the first floor.
01:03And Tim Smith has gathered this beautiful, brilliant exhibition about Polish-Ukrainian communities, both here but in Poland and Ukraine as well.
01:11We've got Fantastic Helmet by Dvar Dalipur Theatre Company that's coming here.
01:16Wet Messes show Testo is coming here to Bradford and it's touring from a really successful run at Battersea Arts Centre.
01:23And that's just the flavour of projects that are going to be here.
01:28This venue is running through to the end of this year.
01:32There's so much to come from the rest of the year. I think it feels very much like it's living up to expectation.
01:39It's doing so much more than we could have hoped for, even at this stage.
01:43Our shows are selling out, which is absolutely fantastic.
01:46We've had to put a couple more shows on for events that sold out within minutes.
01:50Wrong Trousers sold out, I think the first one sold out in two days.
01:54The second show sold out within an hour.
01:57So it shows that we have developed a real fan base.
02:00People are interested, people want to be a part of the programme, they want to be a part of the work.
02:06We've just done a call out for Railway Children to have a young people's cast of 15 people.
02:12We've had over 500 people apply.
02:16That in itself just shows from being audiences, participants, engaging with the work.
02:22People are actually wanting to be a part of it.
02:25What this year is doing for Bradford already is raising our aspirations,
02:30helping us as Bradfordians fall back in love with ourselves.
02:33Nationally, it's reframing our story,
02:36demonstrating who we are as a contemporary, modern, young, diverse city of the UK.
02:45So here I am in Bradford's new venue, the Loading Bay, and it is quite an extraordinary space.
02:51I'm in the basement, which is going to be transformed in loads of different ways throughout this year.
02:57It's really important for Bradford to have a space like Loading Bay,
03:00because we've just never had anything of this scale in the centre of town, which is kind of like multi-purpose.
03:06So the room we're in now is like a big basement space, and it can be transformed into lots of different ways.
03:12So Commonwealth are presenting Public Interest, which is a big political theatre piece.
03:17It's about young people's experience of the justice system, and particularly joint enterprise.
03:24The piece itself will have lots of young people from Bradford performing in it.
03:30It's going to have music and be performed by rappers and DJs,
03:34so it's really looking at how young people tell their own story.
03:37We're saying it's part music video, part political theatre, and it's here in May 2025.
03:44So Public Interest is an immersive theatre show, so the audience will be on their feet, action will happen around them,
03:51and the audience will kind of move around the spaces, so we've got a lot of projection, a lot of video, a lot of music.
03:58So it really is an interactive, immersive piece.
04:01I think without the support of Bradford 2025, we wouldn't have ever been able to make anything as ambitious,
04:06and for me it's really important that the young people who are in the show get to be part of something that's very elevated,
04:13and that they see the scale and the ambition of a piece, and also they're all getting paid,
04:20so it allows them to see themselves as professionals, and that the creative sector is a world that they can enter into.
04:27And I don't think that would have been possible without Bradford 2025.
04:30I really hope that the legacy of this building is that we can keep it and keep using it, because it is absolutely extraordinary.
04:36It's got four floors, it's all multi-purpose, and we need something like this in Bradford in the city centre,
04:42because we don't really have anything which is this flexible and allows for such creative ambition.
04:47So I think for Bradford artists, but also for artists visiting Bradford, it's really important,
04:52because we don't have anywhere else to go like this.
04:56Well, I've just visited Loading Bay, the new city centre venue for Bradford 2025,
05:03and when I came here six months ago, it was just this semi-derelict building,
05:09and it's just wonderful to see it transformed into an art centre,
05:15with exhibition space, performance space, event space, amazing.
05:20And this is the kind of place that Bradford city centre has been crying out for, for years.
05:27And yes, you will travel to see something, but if it's right there in the city centre,
05:32it's such a bonus in terms of getting people along.
05:36The exhibition that I'm involved in helping produce here is called Tutytam,
05:44which is Polish and Ukrainian for here and there.
05:47And basically, they're collections of photographs from both Bradford and from different parts of the world
05:54that explain how and why Polish and Ukrainian people have come to settle in this city of ours for the last 80 years.
06:03Well, 40 years ago, when I arrived in Bradford, I spent time at the Ukrainian club on Legrand Lane,
06:09I went to the Polish club on Edmund Street, and I'm still going back,
06:14because those communities have been here for 80 years, and they've got extraordinary stories to tell.
06:22The Poles have been joined by all those Polish people who came over after 2004,
06:28when Poland became part of the European Union.
06:31And obviously, a lot of Ukrainians have arrived recently, fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.
06:37And I think those communities are communities that not many people know those extraordinary stories.
06:44So, I think if people do come along, they'll see some great photographs,
06:50but they'll also find out stuff about our city that they never knew before.