With Scarborough beating 12 other entrants to win the European Enterprise Award, Keighley in West Yorkshire getting through to the semi-finals of the UK competition, and Bradford designated the world’s first UNESCO City of Film, Yorkshire is proving to be a surprising place.

And on September 12, the joint West Yorkshire Playhouse-Northern Broadsides’ production of Othello, starring Lenny Henry in his stage debut, transfers to London’s West End for what looks like being a sell-out three month run.

All this will be good news to Welcome to Yorkshire, the former Yorkshire Tourist Board which re-branded itself in early April and transferred its HQ to Leeds.

But especially pleasing to the organisation’s chief executive Gary Verity is the City of Film designation awarded to Bradford, where he used to work in an insurance office.

He said: “From our point of view the City of Film designation is very good news because it gives us something new, fresh and innovative to talk about. When we get journalists here we will make sure that Bradford is included in press trips.

“Our website is being translated into Chinese and Japanese. The Chinese are looking for heritage, anything to do with film, food and drink and spectacular landscape. These are things that float their boat. And the Japanese love anything to do with the Brontes.

“Having World Heritage status for Saltaire and now this is excellent news. How many other cities have two world titles like that? It might add another 150,000 to 200,000 visitors a year to Bradford’s National Media Museum.”

If it does the NMM might have to look at expanding and improving its toilets on the ground floor, and perhaps review the space available for refreshments and meals. Nevertheless, the honour could be a life-line to David Hockney’s home town, generating opportunities for film and television companies as well as hotels, restaurants and other places in the metropolitan district.

Mumbai, Rome, Berlin, Paris, London and Los Angeles are better known internationally for film-making; but none of these cities has a longer association with film making than Bradford, which is probably better known for David Hockney, curry, brass bands, the Brontes and textiles.

Films were made in studios on Manchester Road in the 1890s, and Queen Victoria’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee was filmed by Bradford photographer Richard Appleton, processed on a special train back to Bradford, and then shown on a screen near the Bradford Argus newspaper that night.

Bradford is the city with four Oscars to its name. Locally-born directors James Hill and Tony Richardson won three of them between 1960 and 1963: Hill for his short film Giuseppina, while Richardson got two for his version of Tom Jones. This year Keighley-born screenwriter Simon - ‘The Full Monty’ - Beaufoy won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Slumdog Millionaire, to add to his Bafta and Golden Globe.

Modern Bradford has a history of being film-friendly. Classic British movies such as Room at the Top, Billy Liar, The Railway Children The Dresser, Yanks, A Private Function, Wuthering Heights, Rita, Sue and Bob Too, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and Calendar Girls were shot or partly shot in and around Bradford.

Nigel Rice, senior development officer with Bradford Council and project manager of the City of Film bid, explained why the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation in Paris smiled on Bradford.

“Within UNESCO’s Creative Cities scheme there are seven designations. Glasgow is City of Music, Edinburgh is City of Literature, Berlin is City of Design. The City of Film designation was open and we went for it,” he said.

Bradford’s submission took the form of four booklets totalling 104 illustrated pages. Because UNESCO expects its designated cities to be what may be called socially inclusive, Bradford came up with 38 proposed initiatives over three years, ranging from encouraging employers to set up film clubs to, more challengingly, reducing the incidence of school drop-outs among 14-to-19 year-olds.

Over the next two years UNESCO will check that Bradford is doing what it said it would do.

“UNESCO takes the designation very seriously indeed, perhaps more than people might have expected. If a city fails to live up to the criteria, designation can be withdrawn,” Nigel Rice added.

Film producer Steve Abbott – A Fish Called Wanda, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Erik the Viking – is the Bradford-born chairman of Screen Yorkshire, the Leeds-based organisation tasked with promoting film-making in its various forms throughout the county.

“Other cities could argue that they come close to deserve a designation like ours, but we have the best place for enjoying cinema in all its forms and UNESCO has endorsed that,” he said, referring to the National Media Museum.

The NMM has two screens served by digital projectors plus the giant IMAX screen – the first in Britain back in 1983 when the museum opened as the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. Annually, the place stages four film festivals and has approximately 3,600 screenings of an amazing range of films. No wonder Steve Abbott is proud of it.

But he’s far from complacent. The City of Film designation for him means the hard work starts now.

“What I don’t want is for the people of Bradford to not feel a part of it. I had to go to London and Los Angeles and I was fortunate to enjoy some success. That’s fine for me, but people should not have to go to London.

“Bradford is the Hollywood of Yorkshire. This is a realistic aspiration that will bring enormous economic benefits, and Lord knows we need that,” he added.