Bradford Forwards and Backwards (2024)

An immersive portrait of post-industrial change in the north of England.

As industrial unrest swept Britain in the early 1980s, a state-funded oral history group set out to record life and work in the wool textile capital of Bradford. The materials they left behind — photographic negatives, reel-to-reel tapes and a mass of archival papers — form the basis of this immersive road movie through the present-day city. Playing out as a series of encounters with sensory fragments of social history, BRADFORD FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS explores a strange threshold in industrial time, and stands as a singular meditation on post-industrial experience.

Produced with the kind support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Towards a National Collection, the Science Museum Group, the Congruence Engine research project and Bradford Museums & Galleries.