Thousands of people turned out to watch an open-air spectacle starring magician Steven Frayne, formerly known as Dynamo, a 10-year-old rapper and a dozen aerial dancers to launch Bradford's year as UK City of Culture.
Frayne told the audience he started his career performing street magic in City Park, where the opening ceremony was held, and that his home city was set to make its mark on the world in 2025. Organisers said about 10,000 people turned out to watch the show, which took place in temperatures of -3C (26.6F).
Bradford is the fourth UK City of Culture, a title that is awarded every four years, and the city's year has received £15m government funding. Other events will include the Turner Prize, a national drawing project inspired by Bradford-born artist David Hockney, and an exhibition about the parallels between boxing and calligraphy.
Frayne (pic) said: "To be in a place where there's a massive stage put right in the centre for people to come and share in some amazement, that's a dream come true, it genuinely is.
"I'm super proud to be from Bradford. It wasn't necessarily the easiest place to grow up... so to be a small, tiny part of this celebration, it's just incredible."
The opening show, titled Rise, involved a cast of 200 including 10-year-old rapper Cruzy T plus poets, musicians and dancers alongside Frayne, with a theme of warts-and-all pride, unity, diversity and overcoming adversity. On the two stages, scaffold towers formed stacks of boxes containing the performers, as slogans and visuals of the city and its people were projected onto the front.
Projections were also used to transform the towers into Frayne's childhood home, with a young actor playing Frayne as a boy before the real magician enlisted the crowd to take part in a series of tricks. The show will be staged again today.
Bradford 2025 creative director Shanaz Gulzar said the opening event was intended to show that Bradford and the UK were hugely diverse, representative, resilient and strong, and capable of doing magical, impossible things.
"We are more than one flashpoint, we are more than one moment in time, we are more than our challenges - we are also our opportunities," she said.
Gulzar said being City of Culture had attracted funding to allow the National Science and Media Museum to have a £6m refurbishment. It reopened this week after 18 months and is staging an exhibition of a selection of Hockney's video and photography works.
Meanwhile, the Hockney-inspired drawing project will run throughout the year. Other highlights will include a tribute to Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, a season of films by working-class northern women, the installation of a new 15m (50ft) sculpture in the city centre, and an exhibition of striking surrealist photos by Ethiopian photographer Aida Muluneh.
That exhibition will then tour to Cardiff, Belfast and Glasgow, the first time a City of Culture event has travelled to all four nations of the UK. Gulzar said winning the City of Culture title had also been instrumental in attracting a new Brit School, which has trained stars including Adele and Tom Holland. It is expected to open in 2027.
