Alan Dix is the Artistic Director of 509 Arts and has worked in the creative sector for over 35 years. He has directed touring theatre, new plays and community events in mills, parks, schools and castles. He ran the £4m Greenwich Millennium Festival, created My Last Car (‘car love meets climate change’) for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad and Directed Bike Story for the Tour de France Grand depart in Yorkshire.

He has directed large-scale community opera, music-theatre cabarets, gallery exhibitions, heritage projects and imaginative children’s shows. He collaborates with talented artists to build a response to communities and their testimony, using music, digital projection and contemporary storytelling. Life Class is one of two new pieces of work for Bradford 2025 City of Culture, the other being Unspun Stories, an immersive installation that explores Bradford’s recent textile history.

Mike Kenny was included in the Independent on Sunday’s list of Top Ten Living UK Playwrights and his plays are performed regularly throughout the UK and all over the world. He lives in Yorkshire and has worked many times with 509 Arts. He worked on Bike Story, Sing and Louder Sing, Calderand and The Batley Variations.

After training as a teacher he worked for many years as an actor in Leeds Playhouse Theatre in Education before becoming a playwright. He has written over a hundred plays. Recent work includes Self Raising, for Graeae, A Tiger’s Tale for M6 Theatre, and Cartoon, for Company de Louise, which was nominated for a Moliere Award in France. His Olivier Award winning adaptation of The Railway Children can also be seen as part of the Bradford Year of Culture.

Hannah is a British/Syrian designer based in Yorkshire. She trained at Wimbledon School of Art and has designed over 80 productions across the UK and Europe, working across various mediums including theatre, film, music videos and installations. Hannah regularly collaborates with directors, writers, choreographers and composers to create design-lead work from the earliest stages of development.

Recent theatre credits include: Sing, Dance, Leap (Royal Opera House), OUM (Dutch National Opera), Dizzy (Theatre Centre, Sheffield Theatres – UK Tour), Northanger Abbey (Orange Tree, Theatre by the Lake, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Octagon Bolton), A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction (York Theatre Royal), 24 (Day) (Almeida), Nuclear Children (Platform Presents, Edinburgh Fringe), Arabian Nights (Bristol Old Vic), Christmas Carol (Shakespeare North), Doncastrian Chalk Circle (CAST and National Theatre Public Acts).

Tim Brooks studied music at York University and education, as a postgraduate, at Leeds University.

He was a founder member of York-based contemporary music group, Soundpool (1982- 85); and founder member plus musical director of Cambridge-based contemporary music group, Cambridge Circus (1985-1990). Tim composed and performed with international touring circus theatre company, Snapdragon Circus (1990-91); was a secondary school music teacher (1996-2004); composed for Ryedale Festival Community Opera programme (2002-2011); and managing director of York Arts Education (2004-2023). He is currently a keyboard player and composer with contemporary music ensemble – SPELK (2019 – present).

His music continues to furnish a wide range of projects, from large-scale community performance to small ensemble and solo pieces; from contemporary dance scores to electronic music and installations.