October Blog
Kala Sangam’s October Blog
Welcome to the October edition of the Kala Sangam Blog!
Capital Update
There’s been major progress on site at St Peter’s House this month with the new central staircase being installed!
These huge new stairs will lead you through the building, from our new entrance up to where our old reception used to stand on the second floor. As you’re walking up, you’ll also get an incredible view of our neighbours Bradford Cathedral.
Alongside the stairs, our new public lift shaft continues to fly up. Construction has now reached the top of the building, with installation of the lift itself beginning before Christmas.
Combined, these two are going to make navigating our building SO much easier! We can’t wait to see you all using them when we reopen next year.
Read the 2023/24 Annual Review
We are delighted to be able to share our Annual Review for 2023/24.
It was a year of celebration and change for Kala Sangam as we looked back on our 30th year history and embarked on exciting plans for the future. Despite uncertainty over when St Peter’s House would close for redevelopment and the upheaval of moving to our temporary offices, we presented 53 performances (including7 premieres of new work), gave over 140 days of free studio time to artists and hosted dozens of conferences, workshops and events with commercial bookers. More than 3000 people saw our performances and we worked with over 2400 children from schools across the district.
You can read the 2023/24 Annual Review and our previous ones here
Heritage Commissions
As part of the multi-million-pound redevelopment of our arts centre, we have revealed the three commissions we have made for new artwork to hang throughout the redeveloped Bradford Arts Centre.
Commissioned thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, these new works, by some of the most exciting artists in the region, will be inspired by the heritage and history of both Kala Sangam and St Peter’s House. Along with calligrapher Razwan Al-Huq and Sound artists Turbynes, we are partnering with Bradford College to give a first professional commission to one of their final year Art and Design students.
Read more about our commissions announcement here
Schools’ Takeover Summary
This month, we had our 4th annual schools’ takeover. We welcomed 11 primary schools to in a range of arts activities from Disco Freestyle to Rap and over the 3 weeks, 701 Key Stage 2 children attended.
The schools’ takeover gives children the chance to engage with the arts and meet new peers from different schools. As well as using our temporary spaces at Bank House, we also hosted some days at Carlton Bolling Primary. We are very grateful that Carlton Bolling let us use their space and for the support and help of their students from the arts council.
The schools’ takeover was a great success and thanks to all the artists/facilitators who delivered some amazing workshops. But don’t take it from us here’s what some of the teachers had to say :
“Both workshops were brilliant. Our students and teachers learnt lots of new things and enjoyed the whole learning experience, everything was outstanding”
“Absolutely brilliant. Kids all get so much from these days”
“It offers cultural diversity, understanding and great physical exercise. Lots of enjoyment”
“It gets the children outside the classroom and allows their creativity to flow. It explores another outlet for expressing themselves and sparks their interests. Overall, an amazing experience!”
Make sure to watch this space for our schools’ takeover video coming soon!
Past Performance Reviews
Ilkley Literature Festival:
There was a packed out audience at Ilkley Literature Festival for our joint event with Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa. We watched a brilliant performance integrating visual art, dance, poetry and spoken word from Safiya’s highly acclaimed debut poetry collection, Cane Corn & Gully.
“That’s the most emotional I’ve ever felt in a performance”
Audience Feedback
Qawwali
We had a fantastic time last Wednesday at our sold out Qawwali at Pictureville! Qaiser Mahmood Qawall blew the crowd away with their mix of traditional qawwali, gazzals, geets and other party songs which had the audience clapping and singing along all evening!
“The Qawwali event was exceptional. The quality and talent of the performers was amazing. Good acoustics and venue with comfortable seating. Very friendly and welcoming staff, the whole experience was brilliant. The only thing is I wish it was longer!”
Audience Feedback
Upcoming Performance
No Dress Code
Fri 22 Nov | 8.00pm | Studio Theatre at Yorkshire Dance, 3 St Peter’s Square, Leeds LS9 8AH | Pay What You Decide
We are partnering with Yorkshire Dance to support No Dress Code, their informal scratch night.
This is the chance to work new works-in-progress by dance artists and companies. This is a pay-what-you-can event with a suggested donation of £5.00 which goes directly to the artists who perform.
Artists performing include Bradford based Zoe Katsilerou, who will be presenting new work, Voices.
Book tickets here
What Have Our Staff Been Up To
Jez is originally from Derby and last weekend took a trip home to visit his Mum, both pictured here together in the lovely walled gardens of Calke Abbey.
Jess has had a very Arty October! She went to Manchester with her sister to see one of their favourite bands, Haitus Kaiyote. She has had some of her paintings accepted into two galleries in Bradford which will be in group exhibitions from November to January and has had two of her sculpture series accepted into an exhibition at the start of 2025 in Leeds City Centre. As well as this, she has been attending Life Drawing Classes at Keighley Creative and has started working on a new sculpture series which she will be displaying in a joint exhibition in Bradford City Centre during 2025. Finally, her and the team behind Thornton Art Trail have been having meetings to discuss next year’s trail!
Amer has been spending some time focusing on her physical and mental health doing Tai Chi every day. As Mr Myagi said ” Whole life have a balance everything be better”
The biggest thing that happened this month for our Archivist Alex Wilson was officially joining Kala Sangam and starting the archive project. Work and life and fun often interconnect, and so the other big October project in Alex’s life was putting together an audio-visual installation at No Bounds, the international arts and music festival in Sheffield. The exhibition took hours of newly digitised radio recordings from the same weekend in 1984 looped up with the Top40 from that weekend, and various other ephemera and placed them all into a disused office space. A fairly standard weekend for Alex but after the exhibition had finished, the festival continued apace and he tried to go raving with people half his age to 6AM, but didn’t quite manage it.
Arts and Heritage Update
Gemma from South Square
The ESOL group at Lower Grange Community Centre enjoyed two visits to the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, where they explored the museum grounds and collections. The group took part in a workshop creating their own tiny poetry booklets inspired by the small books created by the Bronte children. The group have been joined by filmmaker Rhian Cooke who delivered a photography workshop with the group and who will be developing a short film to accompany the group’s artwork, which will be displayed at South Square Centre later this year.
The Soul Girls enjoyed a poetry workshop from local poet Emma Conally-Barklem and they developed their own poems inspired by their heritage. The group have used these poems as inspiration as they design a ‘Thornton Viaduct’ mural. The girls have been working with artist Rosie McAndrew to draw, paint and craft their mural, which will be displayed as part of their Allerton Art Trail next summer.
Claire from Kala Sangam
This month has been an exciting one for the Kala Sangam Hub with u3a and WomenZone trying artistic styles which they may not otherwise have had the chance to try. WomenZone enjoyed their photography session with professional photographer and filmmaker Nikta Mohammadi, learning about her Iranian Heritage and sharing their own heritages with each other. u3a have enjoyed a clay session with Kala Sangam’s very own Jess Swift and threw themselves into a Rap session with Rap Artist Wilko Wilkes, creating amazing raps which represented themselves or Bradford.
WomenZone were also particularly excited to have a trip to Kala Sangam’s Qawwali event at Pictureville. The ladies had never been to the building before and were excited to enjoy a night out with their friends where they could sing and clap along. The ladies had a fab time, describing the performance as “mindblowing” and one of the best Qawwalis they had ever seen! It was exciting to be able to offer this opportunity through the Arts and Heritage Project, helping to inspire the ladies to aim high with their own outcome and we look forward to doing this for the other groups over the next 6 months! The ladies also continued their musical month with a singing session with Satnam Galsian at WomenZone which they found very soothing and relaxing.
Kathak Classes
Don’t forget that our Kathak Classes are still running weekly at Bank House! You can find out about classes here
Who Has Been Using Our Space
Bradford based Common Wealth have been in Studio 1 for the Research & Development of their 2025 production Right/s.
‘Using the studio has provided a great space to bring together our full creative and tech team to begin mapping out the production and building the narrative, it’s really light, spacious and creative space, perfect for an R&D.
Right/s is an ambitious, large-scale performance: part documentary-theatre, part large-scale immersive event, made by Common Wealth and Commissioned by Bradford 2025 City of Culture. Right/s asks the question – are we all innocent until proven guilty?
At times a club night, a courtroom, a citizen’s assembly – with action happening simultaneously.
Right/s takes us on an immersive journey from club night to courtroom and beyond, with testimony and true-life stories from young people – and a sound-score featuring drill, bassline, grime, afrobeat and house from some of the country’s most exciting artists. This vivid and electrifying world-premiere show will capture and celebrate what it means to be young in the UK today.
Check out more about their project here
