Let’s hear it for the Bradford Festival. The weather might not be what we’d hope for on this Bank Holiday weekend, but we can at least look forward to June when the three-day family fun event takes over various locations around Bradford city centre.

One thing some factions of the district are sometimes a little too good at in Bradford is doing our own place down.

And it doesn’t help when there are surveys which come out and make rather unscientific claims that Bradford is, for example, one of the “unhappiest” places in the UK.

Bradford has a lot going for it, and the Bradford Festival is a chance for local people to celebrate with a wide variety of events running the gamut from music to art, street theatre to comedy.

To counteract the naysayers and doom-mongers who are only happy when it rains there are those ambitious, optimistic few who try to make life better by organising events such as this.

We can all do our bit to make Bradford a brighter place and raise our collective spirits by supporting events such as the Bradford Festival. The more well-attended this event is, the more chance that it will grow and become bigger and better every year.

And as the majority of events are both free and taking place in the city centre, culminating in lots of colour, music and dance on Saturday June 15, there’s very little excuse not to go along and have some fun.

After all, we’ve got nothing to lose but everything to gain by letting our hair down and enjoying ourselves.