In September 2025 the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival, the UK’s biggest festival of spoken word and poetry, came to Bradford as part of the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture celebrations. Word Up North were delighted to be the chosen delivery partners, bringing this exciting festival to the city and delivering a year-long programme of engagement projects to encourage Bradfordians to enjoy, create and engage with poetry.
One of these projects was the BBC Radio Club, a project that runs annually alongside the festival. The project offers a chance for secondary school pupils to work with professional poets and BBC producers so they can be inspired to create their own original poetry and learn more about what a role in media and radio production might look like.
We worked with with Year 7 and 8 pupils from three schools in Keighley, Beckfoot Oakbank, Carlton Keighley and Holy Family Catholic School who each got the chance to work with a professional poet/spoken word artist as well as getting the opportunity to record their poems professionally with BBC radio producers and visit the Look North Studios in Leeds to learn more about careers in media.
The theme we explored was identity, a rich, complicated theme that has generated some amazing, thoughtful and personal responses. The young people recorded their poems and some students performed them live at an event in the festival at St George’s Hall on the 19th September 2025, hosted by the professional poets, Testament, Wilko Wilkes and Saju Ahmed.
Below are the recordings they made – listen as Keighley young people tell their truth, share their world and their voices. We hope you enjoy them.
My Dreams
In The Mirror
My Roots
The Journey Through Life (Group Poem created by Carlton Keighley)