Bradford Arts Centre
We helped Kala Sangam become Bradford Arts Centre, through research, engagement and a brand identity shaped by hundreds of people across the district.
Project Details
Client: Bradford Arts Centre (formerly Kala Sangam)
Sector: Arts & Culture
Services: Branding, Environmental Design, Strategy & Research, Web Care, Web Design, Web Development
Year: 2022 - ongoing
Kala Sangam had been at the heart of Bradford’s South Asian arts community for thirty years. Renaming and rebranding it was one of the most sensitive and complex briefs we have ever taken on. The result was Bradford Arts Centre, which opened in October 2025 to coincide with Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture.
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Community participants involved in the consultation process
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Months of research and engagement before a mark was made
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Capital refurbishment supported by DCMS, National Lottery Heritage Fund and Bradford Council
Getting it wrong would have caused real harm
Kala Sangam was founded in 1993 and had been a cornerstone of Bradford’s South Asian arts community for three decades. When the organisation decided to explore a name change ahead of a £7.9 million building refurbishment and Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture, they needed an agency that understood the weight of what they were asking.
We were appointed in August 2022. The brief was not to design a new brand. It was to find out whether a name change was even the right thing to do, and if so, what that name should be. And only then to design the identity that would carry it.
We designed and delivered an engagement programme that ran for over 12 months, involving hundreds of people across Bradford and beyond. Focus groups with classical Indian dance artists from across the UK. Sessions with mother and toddler groups at local community centres. A public questionnaire gathering responses from participants across West Yorkshire. Conversations with communities who had deep emotional investment in the Kala Sangam name and communities who had felt excluded by it.
The consultation revealed a nuanced picture. The word “Kala” was problematic for many communities, including those of South Asian heritage. The word “Sangam” was held with genuine affection, particularly by those with a long connection to the organisation. That understanding shaped everything that followed, including the decision to name a new space within the building the Sangam Lounge, preserving that connection while enabling the broader identity to change.
An extensive consultation involving hundreds of people demonstrated consistent support for change.”
A brand built to include everyone
Bradford Arts Centre needed to feel simple, accessible and genuinely welcoming to the full breadth of Bradford’s communities, while honouring the organisation’s South Asian heritage and thirty-year history. Those were not competing requirements. They were the brief.
We designed a brand identity that is bold, warm and distinctively Bradford. One that works across the full range of contexts the organisation operates in, from intimate studio performances to major cultural events, from community workshops to national press coverage. The identity launched in January 2025 and the building opened to the public in October 2025.
The brand was accompanied by a fully accessible colour system meeting WCAG 2.1 AA standards, and a flexible design system built to give the Bradford Arts Centre team genuine ownership of their identity and the confidence to apply it consistently without needing to come back to us for every new piece of work. We also designed and built their website, integrating Ticketsolve for events listings and ticketing, giving the organisation a digital presence that matched the ambition of the new brand from day one.
Alongside the brand, we designed the wayfinding and signage system for the refurbished building, a Grade II-listed former post office in Little Germany, extending the visual identity into the physical environment across every touchpoint, from exterior signage through to internal wayfinding, room identification and the new Sangam Lounge.
Web header
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