Huge mural celebrating city's car culture unveiled

Artist Mohammed Ali Aerosol spent a year creating the huge mural

A 32 ft (9.7m) tall mural celebrating young people, their dreams and their passion for cars has been installed in Bradford.

The artwork, thought to be the largest piece of outdoor art in the city, is by street artist Mohammed Ali, also known as Ali Aerosol.

The mural required a crane to lift it into position on the side of the Connaught Rooms building in the Manningham Lane area of the city.

Mr Ali was invited by Bradford community arts organisation The Leap to paint the mural as part of its Fuelling Futures campaign in partnership with Mission 44, which is Sir Lewis Hamilton's charity.

The mural, which took a year to create, depicts a young woman reading while she leans against a car, and with a cityscape reflected in her car’s wing mirror.

Mr Ali said it was all about empowering and inspiring young people to dream big and street art was "an amazing way of letting art spill out into the streets and reach people that it wouldn’t reach in a fancy gallery".

He said it was a work on a "big and bold scale" and you could not miss it.

Mr Ali said the design was inspired by Bradford and its young people and is stylistically influenced by the film Blade Runner among others

The "big and bold" scale of the work is evident when seen as part of the wider street

The work will also help promote the Fuelling Futures campaign, which aims to use young people in Bradford's passion for cars to boost their skills and improve educational outcomes.

The Leap's Sabir Musaji said: "A piece of art like this can really make a difference and that's what we're about.

"When people give directions, people are going to be referring to this as a landmark like ‘take a left at the mural', we've created history today and we've been very lucky to work with some amazing partners including Mohammed Ali.”

The mural took a team of three people three days to install in its component parts.

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