Bradford Eid Festival
Held at Moor Park, the Bradford Eid Festival is the largest annual event of its kind in the north.
A woman and two young children pose happily alongside four smiling community police officers alongside huge white letters forming the word 'Festival' in Bradford Moor park during the Eid celebrations. One young boy holds a balloon, the other is wearing one of the police officers hats.
Image Credit ©Bradford Eid Festival
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The Eid Festival is a family event organised, set up and delivered from start to finish by volunteers. The aim is quite simple: it’s to bring the community together.
A parade of colourful food stalls at the Eid festival in the park. I the foreground, families sit at picnic tables watching activity of of the shot and enjoying the food and drink
Young children rising in cars on a mini rollercoaster at the fun fair which is part of the Eid Festival
We use the Islamic religious festival of Eid as an excuse, first, because British Muslims need an avenue to celebrate Eid, and second, because it gives us a reason to bring people from other faiths and cultures together to celebrate the Muslim faith and culture.
We’ve been going since 2014, starting off as a small community event and growing naturally over the years. At its peak, we had 30,000 people attend over the weekend. The event is free and we try to get as many people from underprivileged backgrounds as we can to come and enjoy the day. You can bring your family and have ample fun, learning about different cultures and different people. You can bring your own picnic, lay it out on the grass where there’s live entertainment as the kids run around, without it costing a penny. Like all things British, however, it’s weather dependent.
The festival captures the ambition of ‘having fun’. There are activities the entire family can get involved in. We have performances of qawwali and nasheed, the Islamic devotional music. We have a bazaar that consists of over 50 stalls set up by people from Bradford and across the country. There is a food court catering in produce from India and Pakistan, with the exception of burgers. We have chaat, curry, biryani, fast food, chai and falooda stalls. We also have the largest fun fair in the region.
In the next ten years, our ambition is for the festival to continue to grow, to expand the programme and to encourage more people to attend. Instead of being a weekend, the Eid Festival could be a whole week of celebrations.
Mohammed Atique
Organiser