Large-scale letterpress printer gives voice to Bradford

The large letters were created on the press with a combination of blocks designed in-house

The amplified thoughts of the people of Bradford appeared on large-scale posters around the city earlier this year - and the printing press they were made on continues to give communities a voice.

Slogans including 'People Make Bradford' and 'Home, Safety, Freedom' were displayed on a wall of yellow scaffold in May - around the time the city won the bid for UK Capital of Culture 2025.

The posters were printed in nearby Shipley on The People Powered Press, so-called because it takes two people to pull its heavy roller over the steel-cut type and paper.

The largest letterpress printing press of its kind - certified by the Guinness Book of Records - it measures 4.5 ft (1.36 sq m) and prints on sheets of paper 5ft x 3.2ft (1.5m x 1m).

It was the brainchild of Oli Bentley from Split Design, who created it to make large-scale typographic posters for his 2018 project These Northern Types.

The machine was custom-made by Batley engineering company JKN Oil Tools, who took Split's brief and ran with it - turning their idea into a piece of kit they eventually gifted to the design studio.

It is now used for community art projects in and around West Yorkshire, with Antony Dunn - poet in residence of the People Powered Press - and other writers and artists, working with often under-represented groups to help them find their voice.

Antony Dunn works with community groups in and around Bradford to help them find a voice

The press - and this typeface, Graft - were created for Oli Bentley's These Northern Types project

He explained: "These Northern Types was an exploration of what it is to be from the north of England, or to be in any country at the opposite end of the country to the centre of power, and government and finance, influence and wealth and all of that.

"As a part of that project, Oli was talking to community groups in Leeds about what it was to them to be from the North. He thought they had some important things to say and wanted to amplify those voices by printing them out really big on large pieces of paper, and sticking them up in public spaces."

This led to Mr Bentley's design of a typeface, called Graft, which is made of solid steel letters in a 750pt (25.4cm) size.

Mr Dunn said: "The idea was to lie these letters on the floor, put a sheet of paper over them, and print by going over them with a modified grass roller.

"The engineers who built these huge steel letters for us didn't think this was quite big enough, they said, 'you want a proper printing press for that'.

"They didn't know how printing presses worked so they had to do their research, and they built this beautiful, immense machine - the People Powered Press as it became known, just because they admired what we were doing."

The people who created the slogans helped print them at the press in Shipley

It is based at Salt Works, which holds workshops and drop-in sessions throughout the week

Mr Dunn said: "When it was gifted to us we felt we should do something meaningful and of actual value.

"The mission to amplify local voices and spread words worth spreading became set in stone for the operation of the press."

The posters seen around Bradford earlier this year were not commissioned by the Bradford 2025 team but were part of a project funded by the Arts Council.

The fact they were in situ when the judges came to visit was "serendipitous and pure fluke".

The project saw Mr Dunn work with several groups of people to distil their message into one a slogan each, which were then printed and displayed around the city centre this May.

There were jubilant scenes in Bradford when it won UK City of Culture 2025

This poster was made by a local group wanting to create posters for a protest

He said: "Each group co-authored a single phrase that was five, six, seven words long, that got to the heart of something they were passionate about or concerned about or anxious about or interested in or something that reflected their culture or their background.

"Everything went in our favour at the last minute," he added.

The People Powered Press now offers workshops to community groups and individuals, so they can write, create and print their own giant works using the press.