London 2012 legacy funder, Spirit of 2012 has today announced the award of a quarter of a million pounds to Bradford Council to develop volunteering in the area, delivering plans set out in the successful UK City of Culture 2025 bid for the district.
Bradford Cultural Volunteering Programme will lay the groundwork for the volunteer programme for UK City of Culture 2025, recruiting 1,750 volunteers on the run up and creating pathways into cultural volunteering. The project is managed by Bradford Council in collaboration with Community Action Bradford & District and Bradford Culture Company – the organisation that will deliver the district’s UK City of Culture 2025 programme.
The Bradford district, which won the UK City of Culture 2025 designation in May, is one of four locations which have been awarded a grant from the Volunteering Cities fund. The other three locations are Conwy, Great Yarmouth and East Suffolk, and Medway.
Building on the success of legacy volunteering programmes such as HEY! Volunteering from Hull UK City of Culture 2017, Spirit of 2012 created the Volunteering Cities Fund to enable more UK cities to reap the benefits of events-driven volunteering, irrespective of whether they’ve won the designation. The London 2012 legacy funder invited the 20 locations that submitted an expression of interest to become UK City of Culture 2025 to apply for a share of the fund earlier this year.
The funding will be used in the Bradford district to:
- strengthen the existing volunteering infrastructure, with a clear plan for how this will be delivered over the long term;
- identify and engage a cohort of new volunteers who stand to benefit from volunteering with the project, and measure its impact on them;
- generate insights into a number of key areas, including the rural volunteering infrastructure, how to recruit and retain people who are least likely to volunteer, and how an inclusive and diverse volunteering offer can deliver community wellbeing and culture-led regeneration strategies.
The Bradford district will receive £200,000, with additional funding of £50,000 to cover costs that reduce barriers for people taking part, such as access costs. The project is expected to provide training for a cohort of volunteers for events running throughout Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture.
As well as boosting volunteering in the area, Bradford Cultural Volunteering Programme will help Spirit of 2012 and other funders and commissioners of events to understand how the momentum of the bid process can be a platform to designing sustainable volunteer programmes, and a catalyst for social connectedness and partnership working. An evaluation of the Volunteering Cities programme will be carried out by Neighbourly Lab.
Bradford Council leader Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, said: “This funding will allow us to create new opportunities for great volunteers within the cultural sector and strengthen our existing volunteering links with communities. We know that winning the title UK City of Culture 2025 brings with it so many opportunities to the district and this is just one of them. The programme will be able to engage with people who may have never volunteered before, providing them with vital experience and skills and help to support the running of the events planned for Bradford’s UK City of Culture in 2025.
“We know from the last few years how our district, local communities and individuals’ daily lives are enriched by the support, help and guidance provided by a large number of willing volunteers and this funding will allow more people, old and new, to get involved in something that will be incredibly exciting for our district over the coming years.”
Soo Nevison, Community Action Bradford and District, said: “Community Action Bradford & District are excited to be a key partner in this programme. We will be working closely with our cultural partners and local community groups to develop an exciting offer around volunteering with a focus on engaging younger people and making volunteering accessible for all. This opportunity will enable us to be in a great position when the UK City of Culture begins in earnest in 2025.”
Shanaz Gulzar, Creative Director of Bradford 2025 said: “Our winning campaign for UK City of Culture 2025 elevated Bradford’s ambitions on every level – and this includes building and delivering a volunteering programme which connects the brilliantly civic-minded community, especially our wealth of young talent, we have here across the district. Bradford’s people and their passion for this place was at the very heart of our winning bid, but the process of bidding also highlighted that we need to do more work to create a pool of multi-skilled volunteers for city-wide volunteering at scale; people who can meet thousands of visitors at a train station one day, then manage an information booth or cultural event the next.
“I still remember the incredible impact the Game Makers had on London 2012 and the joy and pride of the volunteers during Hull’s UK City of Culture year in 2017 – and many of those volunteers remain engaged and active members of their cultural communities to this day. Through Bradford’s UK City of Culture programme, we want to create opportunities for more than 3,700 dedicated Bradford 2025 volunteers who will not only be incredible hosts for our City of Culture year – but who will have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to discover new opportunities and learn new skills that they can use in 2025 and beyond.”
Ruth Hollis, CEO, Spirit of 2012 said: “I’m delighted to announce the grant for the Bradford Cultural Volunteering Programme and congratulate everyone involved in the application. We’ve known for some time now how volunteering delivers benefits for people, communities and places, benefits which have really come to the fore over the last two years of pandemic and lockdown.
“Big events like the UK City of Culture and the Commonwealth Games have created incredible volunteering legacies for their host cities, but these big-ticket opportunities are few and far between. An incredible amount of work, energy and passion goes into preparing City of Culture bids, and whether successful or not, they have the potential to grow and evolve, and give ‘cities’ the opportunity to build on existing provision to create a sustainable local volunteering programme.”
