Let's get on and have some fun in Bradford City Centre!

For a while now I've banged on about the importance of events to successful regeneration. It's not enough to build shopping centres, parks, public squares or iconic buildings. These places and spaces have to be animated - they are made by what happens in them not merely by the fact of their existence.

Bradford City Centre is a case in point. On an ordinary day it leaves a deal to be desired, there's the semi-derelict former Odeon, the hole that will be a Westfield shopping centre some day and a central business district that splutters and struggles. But Bradford Council has done better than most in animating the spaces that is controls - I've written before about the success of the Bradford International Markets Festival and the recent Bradford Classic (featuring a Le Mans Jaguar and Aston Marten) repeats that success with a different audience.

And last weekend we saw Garden Magic - again a repeat but this year featuring a magnificent sand sculpture of Charles Darwin. As Julian Dobson put it in his Living with Rats blog by way of comment about the risible YouGov PlaceIndex:

"A jazz band was playing in Centenary Square outside the city hall as part of the city's Garden Magic week, while an artist has been carving a giant sand sculpture of that little-known Bradfordian, Charles Darwin (though you might mistake him for Titus Salt at a distance)."

Leaving aside that Darwin lived at Downe House in Kent, Julian's observation shows how important animation and activity is to delivering regeneration. And that animation - the events you put on - do not need to be pasteurised for middle-class sensibilities or to indulge the prejudices of Guardian-reading folk. They must have variety, edge and excitement. A sense of risk and a challenge to the normal expectations of a city centre event.

I am delighted that the Park at the Heart is now to go ahead - it will transform the centre of the city and will create a new stage for events, animation and excitement. I want to see a great bandstand - what else for a park - so we can feature Bradford's brass bands. After all, they are the best in the world. And also to feature new music whether jazz, indie, punk or the sounds of Bradford's young asians.

So let's not wallow in the grumpy old man, glass half empty, depressing, "It'll never work" attitude - let's get on and have some fun in our city centre!