Bradford Literature Festival CEO says no topic is off limits
Multi-culturalism, the Israel-Palestine conflict and freedom of expression are among the topics due to be discussed at this year's Bradford Literature Festival.Starting on 27 June, the annual event will be held in venues across the city, and feature panel discussions, lectures and workshops over 10 days.Among the guests due to appear at the event are poet John Cooper Clarke, broadcaster Mishal Husain and actor Larry Lamb.Festival co-founder Syima Aslam said: "We are rooted in books, but I always say there is nothing in the world that there isn't a book about so there is nothing that we can't talk about."
Ms Aslam, who grew up in Bradford, launched the festival in 2014 with a view to making literature accessible to the city's diverse population.She said she wanted to overcome the financial barriers for people in Bradford, as well as other cities in the UK, which stopped many from enjoying cultural events."We have to recognise that those barriers are real, with the cost of living and all of those things," Ms Aslam said."One of the tests that I've always applied to the festival is if you're a single mum with four kids to feed, are you going to feed them or are they going to come to the festival?"So, we've done a lot of work in that area to ensure that's not the case."
Bradford Literature Festival is a Community Interest Company, which means it exists to benefit the community rather than private shareholders.Ms Aslam said: "Having a festival that is openly accessible to everyone, that everyone feels they can take part in and there are no financial barriers is really, really important."I don't think we can talk about wanting everyone to engage in culture and not think about the barriers that actually mean they may not be able to."So, for us it's a founding principle and it's one of the foundations that we are built on."The full programme is due to be published on the Bradford Literature Festival in the coming weeks.
Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Illegal work arrests double in year as police target 'unscrupulous' employers
Arrests for illegal work have doubled in a year as police focus on "unscrupulous" employers who exploit undocumented migrants, the government officers arrested more than 6,400 people in the past year in raids at businesses across the UK, data released by the Home Office shows. It said the figure is 51% higher than the previous year. It did not provide numbers as to how many arrests led to charges, convictions or said immigration enforcement officials had "intensified" their work to "tackle those abusing the UK immigration system and exploiting vulnerable people". Officers had visited more than 9,000 businesses - among them restaurants, nail bars and construction sites - to check paperwork and working businesses had often subjected migrants to "squalid conditions and illegal working hours" as well as below-minimum Home Office said there were a range of industries exploiting migrant one case in Surrey, officers arrested nine people at a caravan park who had been working as delivery one one major operation in March, officers arrested 36 people at a building site in Belfast's Titanic Quarter. Some had breached visa conditions while others didn't have working Enforcement director Eddy Montgomery said there were many cases where people travelling to the UK were "sold a lie by smuggling gangs that they will be able to live and work freely in the UK."In reality, they often end up facing squalid living conditions, minimal pay and inhumane working hours," he Angela Eagle, the minister for border security and asylum, said the government would "continue to root out unscrupulous employers and disrupt illegal workers who undermine our border security".The government said it had also returned nearly 30,000 people over the past year who did not have the right to be in the has said it is cracking down on illegal migration, setting out its plans in a White Paper to tighten work visas and those overstaying. It scrapped a special visa for care workers introduced during the pandemic, noting that this had been a pathway exploited by was mixed reaction to the plans, with some business sectors decrying the restrictions on work visas, while some Conservative opponents said the reforms didn't go far enough to stop illegal most recent data shows that approximately 44,000 people have entered the UK illegally in the year to March 2025, more than 80% through small boat journeys.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Dragonfly review – haunting, genre-defying drama of lonely city living
Twenty years ago, Paul Andrew Williams announced himself as a smart new British talent with his ferocious gangland picture London to Brighton, and his creativity has continued in film and TV ever since. His new film is a haunted, social-realist drama with elements of Mike Leigh but also moments of thriller and even horror. Williams isn't shy of stabbing us with an old-fashioned jump scare towards the end, which in fact challenges the audiences with its refusal of categorisation. There are two superb lead performances from Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn and an outstanding supporting turn from Jason Watkins. Dragonfly is about loneliness and alienation and about the eternal mystery of other people, the fear of intimacy and the unknowable existence of urban neighbours. Elsie, played by Blethyn, is an older woman who is quite capable of independent living in her bungalow, but a recent fall and an injured wrist has meant that her middle-aged son (Watkins), all too obviously to compensate for not visiting that often, has paid for daily visits from a private agency nurses. They are overworked and not doing an especially good job. Really, she doesn't need these nurses and by enduring them, Elsie is shouldering the burden of her son's guilt. Meanwhile nextdoor neighbour Colleen, played by Riseborough, is a continuingly strange presence. She is a melancholy, withdrawn figure, evidently on benefits and living with her huge American bull terrier, uncompromisingly named Sabre. Williams shows us that she is effectively living in a kind of platonic relationship, or mariage blanc, with this dog; the film periodically gives us startling shots of Sabre's colossal body in a kind of domestic nakedness sprawled on Colleen's bed. In a manner that may be insidious or predatory or just friendly and compassionate, Colleen befriends Elsie; the latter overcomes her initial nervousness of Sabre and she appreciates Colleen's forthright offer of help. Colleen goes down to the shops to get groceries for Elsie and after a few such trips they agree that what would be easiest would be if Colleen simply gets Elsie's debit card and Elsie gives her the pin number. Of course, the film allows us to suspect the worst and then suspect the worst of ourselves for suspecting it. Colleen seems to be unhappy and damaged but well-meaning, especially when she (for a laugh) buys them both a two-way radio so they can easily keep in contact – but then uses this radio to talk to Elsie late at night and semi-intentionally to allow bewildered Elsie to hear what's happening in Colleen's house. It is a riveting dual portrait of two gloomy people who really have, in a strange and dysfunctional way, found a new way of interacting and – importantly – this is a triangular relationship: Elsie, Colleen and the vast Sabre. But with a terrible inevitability, Elsie's uptight busybody son John (Watkins) arrives and there are awful consequences to a conversation he has with Colleen which Williams only shows us in long shot, withholding the truth about what he's saying. It's a stark, fierce, wonderfully acted film. Dragonfly screened at the Tribeca film festival.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Trans lobby groups 'lied for years' that anyone self identifying as a different gender could access women's' toilets, equality chief says
Transgender people were misled about their rights to female only spaces by lobby groups, according to a senior member of an equality watchdog has said. In April a Supreme Court ruling confirmed the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act 'refer to a biological woman and biological sex'. Akua Reindorf, a barrister who is one of eight commissioners at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said trans people had been deceived about their rights were. Speaking in a personal capacity during a debate about the recent ruling, she said there must be a 'period of correction' to acknowledge women's right to women-only spaces. The decision made it legal for trans people to be banned from women-only sports teams, and from using bathrooms and changing rooms for the gender they lived as. These terms were later supported by interim non-statutory advice given by the EHRC last April. When an audience member at the debate raised fears about the recent Supreme Court ruling and how it could strip away trans peoples rights, barrister and panellist, Naomi Cunningham said: 'It can't be helped, I'm afraid.' In agreement with her fellow panellist, Ms Reindorf said she believed trans lobbyists were at faults for the misunderstanding. 'Unfortunately, young people and trans people have been lied to over many years about what their rights are,' she said. 'It's like Naomi said – I just can't say it in a more diplomatic way than that. They have been lied to, and there has to be a period of correction, because other people have rights' She claimed it boiled down to the law prior to the Supreme Court ruling being misunderstood due to groups contending trans people who self-identified should be treated as their preferred gender. However, this was only the case for the those who had obtained a gender recognition certificate (GRC). The barrister said the amalgamation of different rights made the Equality Act nonviable from a personal capacity. 'The catalyst for many to catch up, belatedly, with the fact that the law never permitted self-ID in the first place,' she said. As such, the feeling of a loss of right of trans people was due to an overwhelming product of 'misinformation' perpetrated by 'lobby group and activists'. Author JK Rowling backed the barrister's recent comments, saying lobby groups lied 'about what the law said'.' However, the head of gender justice at Amnesty International UK, Chiara Capraro, hit back Ms Reindorf's comments. She said: 'The EHRC has the duty to uphold the rights of everyone, including all with protected characteristics. We are concerned that it is failing to do so and is unhelpfully pitting the rights of women and trans people against each other.' A spokesman for the EHRC told The Guardian: 'Akua Reindorf KC spoke at this event in a personal capacity. This was made clear at the event and in the video recording published online. 'As Britain's equality regulator, the Equality and Human Rights Commission upholds and enforces the Equality Act 2010 to ensure everyone is treated fairly, consistent with the Act. 'Our board come from all walks of life and bring with them a breadth of skills and experience. This helps us take impartial decisions, which are always based on evidence and the law.'
