Volunteering
Cultural Connections – Volunteering Cities
England Great Yarmouth
Volunteering Cities
Bradford Cultural Volunteering Programme
Establishing a volunteer programme for the UK City of Culture 2025.
The project in numbers
£250,000
Total Spirit grant
Sep 2022 – March 2025
Project duration
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council
Grantee organisation
Bradford Cultural Volunteering Programme will lay the groundwork for the volunteer programme for the UK City of Culture 2025, recruiting 1,750 volunteers on the run up to the festival and creating pathways into cultural volunteering. The project is managed by City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council in collaboration with Community Action Bradford & District and Bradford Culture Company.
Awarded the designation of UK City of Culture 2025, the City of Bradford is one of four locations which have been awarded a grant from the Volunteering Cities fund.
Project aims
- Increased confidence, fulfilment, connection, new skills and pride in place for volunteers.
- Through new and innovative approaches to making volunteering more accessible, volunteers will better reflect the district demographic.
- Cultural volunteering infrastructure and partnership will be strengthened with better coordination and clear pathways.
- Learning from the project including ways of increasing access to volunteering, and the development of a robust, sustained volunteering culture in Bradford, using the opportunity presented by Bradford’s CIty of Culture 2025 runway period and programme.
- 1,780 volunteers new will support the City of Culture runway programme through volunteering at events and community arts projects, augmenting our existing volunteer numbers, and providing a highly skilled ‘workforce’ for 2025 of 3,700 volunteers.
Check back soon for learning, evaluation reports and toolkits.