Shabina Aslam leads Bradford 'bussing out' project

The exhibition will shed light on ‘bussing out’ – a Department of Education and Science policy which ran from 1965 to 1976.

Bussing out involved children from ethnic minority backgrounds living in inner-city areas being put on buses and sent to schools in outer-lying, largely white British areas.

It was done in an attempt to improve integration – at a time where the ethnic make-up of cities like Bradford were drastically changing – but some argue that it actually had the opposite effect.

The exhibition is being held at the University’s Theatre in the Mill. Its creator, artist Shabina Aslam, was bussed out herself – along with her brother – when she was seven.

When the siblings arrived at the white-majority suburban school they were sent to, they were put in the special needs department.

Shabina (right) with her brother Labeeb (left) and their cousin Habib Bari as children (Image: Shabina Aslam)

It has been reported that the bussed out children were rarely sent to the main building of the school, and that, therefore, very little integration actually took place.

Shabina – who is of South Asian descent and moved to Bradford from Kenya as a child – has also previously criticised the policy for only having “one-way traffic”, arguing that it was only the children from ethnic minority backgrounds who were bussed out of the areas they lived in.

11 Local Area Authorities (LEAs) across the UK – including Halifax and Huddersfield – agreed that ‘immigrants’ should make up no more than 30 per cent of any one school.

If this figure was surpassed, children were then bussed out, with parents having little say in the matter.

Shabina Aslam (Image: Shabina Aslam)

The University of Bradford said: “As part of the research, Shabina collected 21 oral interviews of people who were dispersed to schools in the outer areas of Bradford.

“In the exhibition, the story unfolds during a bus journey. Visitors will step on to a purpose-built set of the top floor of a 1970s bus and experience bussing through binaural audio production and animation.

The interactive bus (Image: University of Bradford)

“The project skilfully uses new technologies to reconstruct events that happened in the past whilst creating an archive of oral histories for future generations.”

The installation is free and open to the public every Tuesday and Thursday at Gallery II, in the Chesham building at the University of Bradford.

People can also book a free guided tour via Theatre in the Mill's website.