Bradford Digital Creatives: Done. And What a Two Years It Was.

The Bradford Digital Creatives programme wrapped in March 2026. Six schools, 102 young people, two years, and a 100% film completion rate across every single session.

I want to mark that properly before we move on.

This started as a three-day pilot with 15 Year 9 students at Appleton Academy in February 2025. We gave them a brief, some iPads, and a structure. By the end of day three they'd written, filmed, edited and screened their own short films — in front of their classmates — and some of them had never picked up a camera before.

The films from that first cohort ended up in a national exhibition at the National Science and Media Museum. Students who arrived unconvinced that they had anything to say left with evidence that they did.

The extended programme took us into Carlton Bolling, Bradford Academy, Laisterdyke Leadership Academy and back to Appleton for a second cohort. Every session the same thing happened — by the screening, the room felt different to how it felt in the morning. That transformation is the whole point.

Along the way the programme got a BCB Radio broadcast, a Living North feature, an Arts Council England blog, and an invitation for me to speak at Belle Vue Girls' Academy awards evening. None of that was the plan. It happened because the work was good and the young people made it that way.

Bradford Digital Creatives was delivered in partnership with the National Science and Media Museum and Born in Bradford, as part of Bradford's UK City of Culture 2025 year. I'm proud of what we made together.

The full programme case study — schools, stats, how the day works — is on the Vital Culture UK site.