BRADFORD may have been unsuccessful in its bid to host the Great Exhibition of the North, but the city centre will still be hosting a two-day festival as part of the event.

The Bubble Up Festival will feature an urban beach, a water slide down Darley Street and an arts trail that will animate the route of Bradford Beck – which runs under the city centre.

The event will be held on September 8 and 9 and comes after Bradford Council secured more than £175,000 in funding as a spin off from the GEN – which was won by Newcastle and Gateshead.

The festival is a collaboration between the district’s arts organisations and will act as a satellite closing party for the event.

The project brings together all of Bradford District’s Arts Council England-funded National Portfolio Organisations, as well as individual artists, Bradford Council, the National Science and Media Museum and other business partners.

It is being supported by Artichoke; the UK’s most prominent national outdoor arts organisation.

It is being curated and produced by Bradford-based national live arts organisation The Brick Box, and it is hoped the festival will pave the way for future collaborative working between Bradford’s creative organisations.

MORE TOP STORIES

Events at the festival include ‘Phase Change’ – a series of mass dance performances at City Park’s Mirror Pool, Sub-Marine – a joint project with Theatre in the Mill, Freedom Studios, Wur Bradford and Bradford Council which will pilot the permanent transformation of a city centre subway with art and innovative lighting, a live art trail that will animate the route of the Bradford Beck throughout the city centre, a waterslide on Darley Street, The Urban Beach – a temporary beach with free workshops, a series of water-themed public workshops and an evening arts programme that will see three empty buildings on Ivegate brought back to life, and a Bradford Beck-themed photography exhibition in Impressions Gallery, with workshops in the former Forster’s Bistro.

The Friends of Bradford Beck will also unveil the prototype for a new permanent Wishing Well sculpture which will allow people to see the hidden Beck in an underused route in the city.

Eleanor Barrett, Brick Box director, said: “It’s both a manifestation and celebration of the flow of creativity in Bradford with so many people from our local community coming together to doing something new and fun.”

Funding has come from Arts Council England, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Bradford Council, the Friends of Bradford Beck, the National Science and Media Museum and Impressions Gallery.