Mind the Gap's latest show Leave the Light on for Me opens in Bradford this weekend

When the moment came the hopes and dreams of thousands soared into the sky on the breath of the cheers shouted out loud and proud from Bradford’s City Park.

Bradford is to be the UK’s City of Culture for 2025.

It was in 2001 that I came home, back to Keighley where I lived as a child and Bradford, where I went to school. Immediately I set about writing about the arts and culture across our district and I was entirely comfortable with allowing a bias to quickly creep into my reporting. Not a bias that would see me referred to any kind of standards board, simply a bias that kicked against the pricks my home city continued to endure.

Everybody knew what Bradford was like. Only, they didn’t. I did, I’m from there. I knew the story was different to what everyone believed, especially when it came to culture.

I wrote about a little theatre company called Slung Low, which began its life in Bradford. I wrote about Asian Theatre School, a company from which emerged Bradfordian Asif Khan, now a playwright and RSC actor. I wrote about Theatre in the Mill, the Bradford company that was making truly avant garde art. I wrote about Madani Younis and his extraordinary work including a particular piece that still stays with me to this day, The Mill: City of Dreams.

So much negative nonsense had been written about Bradford; I knew there was a different, better narrative to tell.

About a decade ago, I started to see the seeds planted in Bradford begin to germinate. Balbir Singh was making work from the city, artist Shanaz Gulzar – a fellow born Keighlian and now the woman who is Chair of Bradford 2025 – was building an impressive reputation, theatre producers Jenny Harris and Al Dix, two people who can make things happen, were, well, making things happen.

It was happening underground, at the edges, away from the shiny spotlights of neighbouring Leeds.

About five years ago, it became obvious that many who had had faith in the city were beginning to be believed and our faith was about to be repaid. Artists started moving to the city in significant numbers. The Brick Box opened, the constantly inspiring team behind Common Wealth theatre company started making waves.

In fact, it was a Common Wealth show I saw in 2014 that made me do a double take and start to recognise that something was actually happening this time, after so many Bradfordian false dawns. No Guts, No Heart, No Glory was a story about young female Muslim boxers from Bradford. I saw the piece in a gym in the city surrounded by an audience I hadn’t seen at the Alhambra or Theatre in the Mill or Bradford Playhouse or any of the usual haunts. A new generation of artists were making work for a new audience.

There have been a thousand little such moments over the past decade that led us to the moment shortly before 7.30pm on Tuesday when the announcement was made: the UK City of Culture for 2025 is…Bradford.

Tears, cheers and looks of disbelief were shared across the district from my kitchen to City Park and beyond.

So this week I bring news of a production from an inspiring company based in the UK City of Culture 2025.

Mind the Gap was founded in 1988 by Tim Wheeler and Susan Burns – two other key figures in the story of Yorkshire culture – to fill a gap for people with learning disabilities in the arts. It moved to Manningham Mill in Bradford in 2008.

Mind The Gap has had an extraordinarily successful story and will undoubtedly play a key part in 2025 and its presence in Bradford for the past decade played a part in the growing cultural confidence of the city.

Tomorrow the company is staging its free-to-watch show Leave The Light on for Me in Bradford’s Lister Park and on Sunday at Keighley’s Cliffe Castle. Director Nickie Miles-Wildin has been working on the show for over a year.

“Learning disabled people are often left out of the conversation when it comes to discussing climate change. This is a show that attempts to address that problem,” says Miles-Wildin.

“A lot of the language around climate change is quite academic, or quite educated, but it’s something that will obviously affect all of us.”

The forty-minute show, Miles-Wildin says, takes inspiration from the world of gaming and has been developed over the past 12 months with people who have learning disabilities.

“We want it to be for everyone and to speak to everyone,” she says. When we talk, on Wednesday, it’s the morning after the night before the big announcement. Miles-Wildin, who lives in Manchester but is a highly regarded director who has worked across the country, recognises the enormity of the moment for Bradford.

“It’s a really exciting city. There is so much going on and the people I have met and worked with here really seem to have that sense of belonging to the city and the city belonging to them. This feels like a brilliant moment to be making work here,” she says.

It is a moment. Two moments I remember from the past decade, already mentioned above, make me think of how we got here. In 2011 Madani Younis was telling us we were in a City of Dreams and in 2014 Common Wealth reminded us with No Guts, No Heart, No Glory, that Bradford is a city with all of that – guts, heart, and finally, now, the glory.