Skip to content

Snapshots of Polish and Ukrainian life in Bradford

Charles Heslett
BBC News, Yorkshire•@CharlesHeslett
Reporting fromBradford
Tim Smith A black and white photograph of an old man with a white moustache rearranging his Trilby hat Tim Smith
A member of Bradford's Polish community celebrating the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi outside the Polish Parish Church of Our Lady Of Czestochowa in 1987

Photographs which chart the lives of Bradford's Polish and Ukrainian communities feature in a new exhibition in the city.

Tu i Tam/Tyt i Tam translates respectively as "Here and There" in Polish and Ukrainian and the images are on display in the Loading Bay arts space from 3-27 July.

The exhibition documents Polish and Ukrainian migration over the decades with particular focus on those who settled in the Bradford district.

Local photographer Tim Smith and Polish curator Marta Szymańska were commissioned to create the show by the Bradford 2025 City of Culture team.

A woman with long hair and glasses standing next to a man with glasses who is wearing a blue shirt with a white flower pattern on it.
Curator Marta Szymańska and photographer Tim Smith worked together to create the exhibition

Mr Smith said: "There were big Ukrainian communities, big Polish communities that came over to Britain in the aftermath of World War Two.

"And a lot of them came to Bradford because Bradford needed people to work in the textile mills.

"I started photographing Poles and Ukrainians in Bradford some 40 years ago, so there's a lot of that black and white photography featured.

"But also there's an amazing collection of pictures here from about eight or nine different photographers; British photographers, Poles, Ukrainians.

"I think our work spans about the last 40 or 50 years."

The exhibition ends with images of those who have fled the war in Ukraine during the past three years.

Tim Smith A black and white photograph of two women dressed in black headscarves and sackcloth robes with white numbers stencilled on then as two men dressed as guards look on. Tim Smith
Members of Bradford's Ukrainian community, dressed as prisoners in the gulag and their Soviet guard, hold a Christmas vigil for those jailed in the Soviet Union for practising their faith in 1986

Marta Szymańska is curator of the Łódź Fotofestiwal in Poland, where the Polish part of the exhibition was previewed before coming to Bradford.

She said: "We have been working on the exhibition for two years.

"All of these stories are close to me.

"Even though my family doesn't have the migration history, we have the experience of the war, of course, of displacement and changing homes.

"This is something that I have to say is a very, very common experience for everyone living in central or eastern Europe."

Tim Smith A black and white photograph of people marching past a church with one man's head and shoulders obscured by a religious banner he is holding. Tim Smith
Bradford's Polish community celebrating the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi outside the Polish Parish Church of Our Lady Of Czestochowa in the city in 1987

More than 150,000 Poles and 35,000 Ukrainians were resettled in the UK after 1945.

Many ended up working in West Yorkshire's woollen industry, which was short of labour.

These large communities were eventually joined by recent economic migrants after Poland joined the EU, and refugees from the war in Ukraine.

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

More on this story