Manifest!
In spring 2021, The Brick Box launched Manifest! to celebrate 10 years of our work creatively transforming places. This was a collective, creative dream for the future of our city. Bradford is a city of imaginative people who can see beyond the empty shops and unloved buildings and towards a collaborative artistic dawn. We invited people to bring their imagination to Bradford by conjuring up new creative ways of seeing the buildings in our cities.
We teamed up with photographer Tim Smith to capture some of the places in Bradford that we thought could do with a bit of a creativity thrown at them. We invited people to download a picture from our collection, and to artistically and fantastically do it up. From a fairy-tale story at Comercial Bank to another galaxy behind an old restaurant’s doors, even water-slides at Barkerend Mill; nothing was off the table. We really believe that together we can make amazing things happen and now we promise to make one of these wild worlds come true.
To launch the project we asked artists to get our creativity going. Joanna Klu, Nancy Haslam-Chance and Sharena Lee Satti all chose a building to reimagine.
We invited people to share their visions with us on instagram, twitter, or facebook with the hashtag #ManifestBradford.
MANIFEST! is supported by Bradford BID.
-
- Joanna Klu: “I chose this building to work with because I felt that it has a lot of character. I love the architecture of old Victorian buildings. These types of buildings usually have a lot of unique spaces and hideouts. I imagine these buildings as castles and royal habitats and that Bradford is a beautiful fairytale. The inspiration for my work is from the story of Rapunzel. In the lofts and attics of these towering city castles we must have some hidden treasures to explore!”
-
- Nancy Haslam-Chance – “In my drawings slides wrap around tall chimneys from the clouds to the ground and in and out of windows. Symbols of dark and decay are transformed into playgrounds. Useless spaces and derelict buildings become inhabited ruins and places of possibility. These are things which excited me when I was a child, and I enjoy blurring the line between what could be real and what is purely fantasy.”
-
- Sharena Lee Satti – I was just drawn to this building. Its free standing in its own space. Its a beautiful building and just really called out to me.
-
- Sharena Lee Satti – I was just drawn to this building. Its free standing in its own space. Its a beautiful building and just really called out to me.
-
- Sharena Lee Satti – I was just drawn to this building. Its free standing in its own space. Its a beautiful building and just really called out to me.
-
- Sharena Lee Satti – I was just drawn to this building. Its free standing in its own space. Its a beautiful building and just really called out to me.
-
- Sharena Lee Satti – I was just drawn to this building. Its free standing in its own space. Its a beautiful building and just really called out to me.
Downloadable images of Bradford we offered to encourage peope to get started:
