Magician Steven Frayne, also known as Dynamo, performed an open-air spectacle to mark Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture. The event, titled Rise, involved Frayne, a 10-year-old rapper, a dozen aerial dancers, poets, musicians, and dancers. Frayne started his career in City Park, where the opening ceremony was held, performing street magic. He told the audience that Bradford was “going to make its mark on the world” in 2025. The show will be staged again on Saturday.
Organisers reported that about 10,000 people watched the show amid the sub-zero temperatures of -3C (26.6F) at the opening ceremony, held on Friday. Bradford, the fourth UK City of Culture, won £15m government funding for the year. The scheme aims to increase visitor numbers, economies, and reputations of the chosen city.
The Rise event opened with a cast of 200, and two stages with scaffold towers formed stacks of boxes containing the performers projecting slogans and visuals of the city and its people onto the front. The theme of the event was warts-and-all pride, diversity, unity, and overcoming adversity. Projections were used to transform the towers into Frayne’s childhood home, with a young actor playing Frayne as a boy before the real magician asked the crowd to participate in a series of his magic tricks.
Bradford 2025 creative director Shanaz Gulzar said the event would help bring in more investment, giving pride to Bradfordians and demonstrating a new side of the city. Other highlights of the year include exhibitions on the work of artist David Hockney, a national drawing project inspired by Bradford-born artist David Hockney, and an exhibition about the parallels between boxing and calligraphy. Despite some successes during their tenures, there have been mixed outcomes and mixed feelings about the lasting impact of the previous Cities of Culture
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