Provident has been proud to sponsor Bradford Literature Festival for the past five years.
In this time we’re delighted to have seen the festival’s popularity grow rapidly and gain a national profile for the city. It’s wonderful to see Bradford transformed for the festival with exciting events and inspiring speakers engaging the imagination of adults and children alike. The fact that the festival is free for the less well-off enabling access by people from all socio-economic backgrounds to enjoy the rich programme of events, makes it a stand out cultural event in the UK.
It’s over 140 years since Provident Financial was founded in Bradford, in which time the city has transformed. It’s now an incredibly multicultural city with a strong industrial and cultural heritage giving it the credentials to become a City of Culture. But the city is not without its challenges. It’s below the national average for primary education reading skills, lagging behind Leeds and other northern cities in school league tables. As one of Bradford’s largest employers, we want to inspire young people from deprived areas to raise their aspirations and realise their potential. We want them to leave school with the skills they need whilst ensuring a talent pipeline with the skills we need to drive our business and the local economy forward. And so our partnership with Bradford Literature Festival contributes to Provident’s strategy of addressing barriers to social inclusion.
Through our involvement in the festival, we commission annual Social Return on Investment (SROI) evaluations festival to measure the value the festival creates for the city. This outcomes-based measurement tool helps understand and quantify the social, environmental and economic value created relative to resources invested. The main areas of assessment are: inclusion and diversity; literacy and engagement; perception of Bradford; and contribution to the tourism economy.
The SROI analyses we’ve commissioned to date play an important role in helping the festival’s organisers ensure that the activities delivered have greater impact. Key findings from the analyses we’ve undertaken to date are 1) the festival has a positive impact on attendees and is valued; 2) audience figures have grown significantly; 3) the audience is young, ethnically diverse and from a range of income levels; 4) the majority of attendees have been children; and 5) the festival has attracted more people in the subgroup Asian Heritage than would be expected given the profile of the regional population.
We are therefore pleased to support this fantastic festival again in 2020 and look forward to another veritable feast of cultural inspiration for our city.
For general enquiries, please telephone 01274 351135
