Regenerating Little Germany | Q&A with Kamran Rashid
Bradford’s historic mercantile quarter was once the reason the city was among the wealthiest in Europe, and has more recently become the focus of attention for regeneration efforts. Place Yorkshire met with Kamran Rashid, chief executive of local social enterprise Impact Hub, who is spearheading the vision for the project.
When did you decide to focus on the regeneration of Little Germany?
I’ve been committed to Little Germany for eight years. My younger brother and a friend of his bought a building there and we’ve built a vision for Impact Hub around that. As things naturally progressed, Little Germany felt like it was the right place for us to be.
To quickly tell you about Little Germany, it’s 20 acres of land, 84 buildings, including 55 grade two-listed buildings and three grade one-listed buildings – it’s one of the most densely populated areas anywhere in the UK for listed buildings. It’s called Little Germany because in the 1800s, German Jews came to Bradford as merchants. Bradford was producing some of the best quality wools in the country because of the soft water in the surrounding area, but they were not selling it. The German Jewish merchants saw this as an opportunity, and as a result of that made Bradford one of the richest cities in the world, because of that trade.
For me, it’s important because they were immigrants that came into a city and made that city so successful, and I’m a son of an immigrant, and I think it’s important for me to be thinking about the heritage of that place and how it looks to me.
Little Germany was a place for business, and Impact is very much about where business meets social impact, and that’s what social enterprise is. The independent Labour Party started in Little Germany, it was there for the workers. J.B. Priestley, one of our greatest playwrights in Britain, was the chairman of Bradford Playhouse. The first free school in the North of England, the Quaker School, was in Little Germany. So it has the social side, as well as the business. For me, that narrative of business meeting impact, the history and the heritage of Little Germany speaks to that.
As things progressed it became a natural home, and I see us as a custodian in time.
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- Credit: Stevie Campbell Creative
- Rashid meets King Charles in Little Germany. Credit: David Lindsay
- Credit: Stevie Campbell Creative
What does the regeneration project entail?
First and foremost, it’s about building a vision for a place. Otherwise, it’s just a series of buildings that happen to share space in the city. What does it mean to be Little Germany? If we think of areas like Manchester, Birmingham, Shoreditch – they have an identity. There’s something important about growing an identity for Little Germany, which is owned and drawn from the people who live there, and the shareholders who have an interest within the area, with a collaborative approach.
Then it’s about the buildings. We’ve got one building that we’re keen to do a demonstration project on, to show the benchmark that we want to set in Little Germany, then there are other buildings we’re looking at to see how we can offer support to fulfil the vision that we’ll continue to develop.
In terms of the collaborative approach, our group is made up of the council, former councillors, businesses who are already within the area, historians, so it is quite a diverse project, really. It’s chaired by James Mason, who is the chief executive of the West and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, and they’re quite heavily involved. Their headquarters are in Little Germany, so they’ve got a big stake in terms of the regeneration of the area and bringing it back to life.
Other stakeholders are the Business Improvement District, the Broadway Shopping Centre, Schofield Sweeney, which is one of the largest independent law firms in our district, an award winning landscape architect, a number of property agents such as Square Foot, so we’ve got a really diverse and wide ranging stakeholder group, not just diverse in professions, but demographics as well.
The aim is to have residential, businesses, and retail all together, and it ties in very nicely with the Year of Culture.
Was it a conscious decision to bring this forward in Bradford’s Year of Culture?
No, it wasn’t conscious. I think the timelines aligned naturally, but having the UK acknowledge our culture status is definitely helping catalyse the project and helping it move with more speed.
Click to launch larger images
- Credit: Stevie Campbell Creative
- Credit: Stevie Campbell Creative
- Credit: Stevie Campbell Creative
Do you have any timelines for when you’ll start work on the buildings?
We’ve developed our vision for Little Germany and we’re hoping to start work, if everything goes to plan, around the middle of next year.
Viability always comes up when we talk about development. Has that reared its head or has the National Lottery Funding smoothed that over?
It would be very difficult to do without that support and intervention, but I think it’s about creating momentum as well. Things are starting to happen in Little Germany, and that momentum will continue.
Have you appointed any architects or contactors on the project?
We work with GWP Architecture from Leeds, Richard Townsend and his team, and they’ve been incredibly supportive.
And in terms of development, do you anticipate any challenges with retrofitting the buildings or bringing them up to modern standards?
There’s nothing that’s come up at the moment. We had to replace some windows on a chapel a few years ago for safety reasons, and we managed to secure a local firm that could do the wooden frames with the sash windows. So the talent exists; I don’t think we will struggle with that. There’s a lot of specialist organisations and businesses that can do the retrofitting and I know the council has supported that as well.
Breakdwn of building usage in Little Germany. Credit: via Yasper
What is your hope for Little Germany?
We understand that we need to drive public and private partnerships, and the local authority has been great and they support and buy into the portfolio for regeneration. I think they realise that there’s a really ambitious, exciting vision that’s developed for Little Germany, which tips its hat to its heritage.
It’s not about putting neon lights and diamonds on buildings, it’s about celebrating its heritage, and we understand that to do that properly it’s going to be a bit more expensive, it’s going to take a bit more time. It’s going to take more of a team effort and I think everyone understands that and is prepared to step up and contribute their part to make that happen.
We transitioned from Impact Bradford to Impact Yorkshire very recently and we were very, very privileged to receive a visit from His Majesty King Charles. I think becoming Impact of Yorkshire, people have started to ask where we will be based – Bradford and Little Germany will always be our home and for me, it’s about making our building, our community of Little Germany, a destination for people who want to do business that makes a difference to society, which is not just about making money.
We hope people from across Europe travel into Little Germany to visit us and whilst they visit, see the magnificence and the splendour of the area.
