Make Yourself at Home is a landmark exhibition for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, weaving together newly commissioned photography and rich archival material to present a vibrant portrait of life in Bradford.

At its centre are five new photography commissions offering a contemporary portrait of the district. Starting with the idea of ‘family,’ each photographer set out to discover markets alive with conversation, homes full of stories, and communities rooted in shared experience.

Laura Mate’s series A Fair Trade captures the vibrancy of local markets. Tori Ferenc’s Sěmьja draws on her Polish heritage, visiting Eastern European social clubs still alive with music, laughter, and memory. In From Hope, From Bradford, Anselm Ebulue meets people in chance encounters, photographing them against the district’s diverse and iconic backdrops. Nathan McGill’s Home Grown celebrates green spaces where asylum seekers and refugees plant, grow, and connect. While, Karol Wyszynski’s Under One Roof introduces eight families, revealing how individuals share space and shape each other’s lives.

Accompanying the newly made photographs is Bradford Family Album, a community-sourced archive of family photographs built through months of dedicated community outreach. From wide-lapelled 1970s wedding celebrations to garage-smoked Latvian meats, the photographs capture personal milestones, cultural traditions, and everyday moments of connection. Each image contributes to a living archive, a collective record of how people have preserved heritage, and adapted and shaped customs.

These two strands come together to reveal how personal histories inform our present and shape our sense of belonging. Make Yourself at Home is a celebration of lives and legacies, it stands as a testament to the power of Bradford’s people to shape identity, preserve culture, and create a home.

The exhibition is the culmination of 18 months of collaboration, mentorship, research, and community engagement by New Focus: Bradford Young Curators. Working in close partnership with the team at Impressions, the Young Curators have crafted an exhibition that reconciles personal experience with collective memory and celebrates identity, belonging, and what it means to call a place home.

Curated and produced by Impressions Gallery and New Focus: Bradford Young Curators. Commissioned by Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.

Image top: Stand and Be Counted Theatre Group, Bowling Park © Nathan McGill.