Intercultured Festival in Bradford

Since it began five years ago, Counterpoints has been a partner with the Intercultured Festival in Bradford. With the 2025 festival starting on 22 October, the founder and director, Mussarat Rahman, reflects on the story so far.

How and why did the Intercultured Festival in Bradford begin?

In 2020 I was exploring the idea of a festival when I spotted an R&D grant opportunity from Bradford Producing Hub.
Having worked in Bradford for almost 20 years, I felt there was no space given to marginalised communities, refugees or asylum seekers to be seen as people with skills or knowledge. I decided to change that and the Intercultured Festival was born.
Afterwards, I felt we’d helped invisible communities become visible.

What have been the highlights so far – and how has the festival evolved and grown?

The festival is still a grassroots event focusing on community.
We’ve put our events in undervalued community places and made them be seen as valuable hubs for cultural activity. There have been so many artist highlights, from Nabeela Ahmed’s Pahari poetry to local refugee cooks in our World Foods Programme. My personal highlight is the joy the festival brings to marginalised communities. It’s the light in people’s eyes when I mention key events like the Commoners Ball or family fun days.

We have reached more than 100,000 people through physical and online events. That includes people in Pakistan, India, Palestine and Europe. 
I’m also an artist, so the festival is a great opportunity to combine my skills to bring people together.
It has grown to give people the chance to experience different cultures, the beauty of languages, and delicious cultural foods. I’ve also made friends for life!. 
I love my work, community and that’s all the passion I need to keep going.

Have there been any challenges along the way?

Many – from an artist not turning up to a ceiling collapsing in one of the venues! But we are still here and we hope we always will be.

Why does the festival matter – especially with the current anti-immigration rhetoric in the UK?

Intercultured Festival has a core theme which includes platforming and providing a voice for culturally excluded communities or individuals.
Refugees and asylum seekers are incredibly talented but still are seen as a drain on society and used to place blame when the government is failing at something. 
We treat our artists as human beings. We have continuous relationships with them.

The festival is important but it is also important to remember we were all immigrants once. 
Britain has been built on the back of migration for centuries.
People should look to their neighbors to experience the rich cultural elements they bring to the UK, including a sense of community, beautiful clothing, music and dance.

What are your hopes for the festival in the future?

To keep going. We’d also like to add more new events – like this year’s Art Slam and Mapping Your Family Tree workshop. This year we’ve had more of a year-round programme. 
In the future, we’d love to expand into schools and community centres with workshops on refugee issues plus multimedia ones combining arts and languages. Right now we are working on the 2025 festival which starts on October 22, and some new things to be revealed in 2026.

See the full Intercultured Festival 2025 programme