Beyond the headline: introducing the Bradford StoryHub
The Bureau has a proud history of innovation, ambition and going beyond the headline. We like to do things differently – and that includes our approach to storytelling. You may have heard or read about our groundbreaking project The People’s Newsroom. It was an initiative launched in 2021 by Megan Lucero and its aim was to build community power through journalism.
Four years on, The Bureau remains as committed as ever to collaborative community-led storytelling. There has never been a greater need to support the growth of an industry that should belong to, and represent, of all of us.
That’s why I am so proud to announce the launch of a new year-long storytelling pilot in the city of Bradford, a partnership with Bradford Community Broadcasting (BCB). What better way to celebrate and support Bradford City of Culture 2025.
“As a community radio station, for many years BCB has been supporting local people to tell their own stories in their own way,” said BCB director Mary Dowson. “Working in partnership with the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, we will be able to develop this work further, ensuring that more grassroots stories from Bradford’s diverse communities are heard in the media.”
Our pilot follows scoping work we carried out in the city to understand how Bradfordians felt about media coverage, the importance of their own identities and their desire to be able to shape the narrative. Our scoping confirmed a clear need to support communities to tell their own stories, and to build trust in the media. These findings directly informed the design and focus of our pilot.
We are hiring a community organiser who will be based at BCB and will offer a programme of workshops, plus listening and story idea sessions. These will combine training and education with a focus on helping Bradfordians develop a sense of self and voice as well as storytelling skills. We’ll also aim to run masterclasses around how to spot mis- and disinformation. And we want to develop workshops around accountability, public decision-making and civic engagement. In essence, we want participants to learn about their rights and how to advocate for themselves and their communities.
In this era of fractured and polarised debate, our aims include building media trust, and for our newsroom to develop deeper local relationships with diverse communities.
Community journalism matters.
The StoryHub is being funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, whose head of news Julie Hulme said: “During his life, Joseph Rowntree went out of his way to support local journalism, understanding that people needed to hear about what mattered to them in the place where they lived. In the year we mark the centenary of his death, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation is excited to support this new initiative of community storytelling in Bradford, which we hope will bring new voices, and new stories to the national discourse.”
