The first international festival of activist street bands, Honk UK held as part of Bradford City of Culture 2025 is a collaborative effort achieved with the help local street band Peace Artists and Ken Field of Honk USA. The HonkFest is now well established in the USA will be celebrating their 20^th anniversary in October 2025.

The Honk Festival movement follow established the guiding principles with “bands play at street level, usually for free, with no stages to elevate them above the crowd and no sound systems or speaker columns to separate performers from participants. These bands don’t just play for the people; they play among the people and invite them to join the fun.

Bands create an irresistible spectacle of creative movement and sonic self-expression directed at making the world a better place.”

There is a political dimension to the Honk movement too with everyone at HONK! to be mindful of their words and actions, remembering we live in a world filled with social and institutional oppression that we don’t want to reproduce within our own community, whether in the form of harassment, discrimination, or just a bad taste left in someone’s mouth after a disrespectful exchange.

The belief that music in the streets helps to reclaim and redefine the use of public space that can bring elements of power, energy, and healing to struggles for collective liberation.

Lasting change begins at the grassroots, and democratically organised events and struggles that promote broad-based coalition and movement building that opposes those that encourage divisiveness and disunity.

Honk USA aspire to build a “Brave Space” – a supportive environment in which we take on controversial issues with each other, and engage in disagreement and discomfort with each other, knowing that doing so will help us build deeper and more trustful relationships.

In these uncertain times of war and conflict across the globe political discord in the UK, Europe, and USA the idea build supportive relationship within our communities has become more important for future as well as our own health and wellbeing.

Honk! Bradford was a new street band created from local musicians, performed together with members of visiting street bands from around the world to create the big pickup street band performance hundreds of musicians. The show featured a performance of a Patti Smith song “People have the Power” with the Bradford Voices community choir as well as the Honk Song arranged by members of the Peace Artist performed with a local rap specialist Silver Finger Singh and the Bradford Punjabi Roots band drummers.

The street band took place during the last weekend in September, and the community band had about 3 weeks to get in shape for the performance, local band leader Dave Evans ran the initial workshops to amateur musicians up to speed, before handover the baton to Ken Field for the final week of rehearsal. The entire process was very empowering for the amateur musicians involved, pushing the instrumentalists outside of their comfort zone, not all the music was written. The first rehearsal involved clapping rhythms, singing, learning songs and soloing by ear.

The final week of rehearsing, the community band joined up with other performers; the community choir, rap artist, Punjabi drummers as well as the street bands from the UK from all over the world. The dress rehearsal held the giant event space at the Bradford Hotel was an exciting electric experience hearing the sound of hundreds of musicians playing together.

The musical directors and coaches warned everyone involved to expect the unexpected, particularly for the inexperience members of the community band it was good advice. Personal I was not ready for seven trombonists clustering around my music stand in the actual performance nor the speeding electric cycles weaving between the musicians they were assembling for the performance. The result being organised chaos that everyone enjoyed.

The performance of Ken Field’s composition, “Nezalezhnist”, which translates from the Ukrainian language as “Independence” was written to help bring peace and give support to that country and all other illegally oppressed countries. The piece uses the C minor harmonic scale with a melody influenced by the music from the Balkans played with feeling and emotion. Ken Field led the piece with a Saxophone solo and featured the melodica solo played by a Ukrainian musician from the Honk Band.

The festival finale was the Bandslam held the enormous Bronte Suite at the Bradford Hotel, that comprised of a public performance from all the bands that had taken part, an incredible line up of diverse groups. Each of the international bands had their own distinct style some were almost symphonic in their approach to orchestration of arrangements using limited instrumental forces. Costumes and well-rehearsed choreographed routines made the many of sets outstanding spectacles, involving the audience to participate too with extended congas, rowing dance, and a mock tug of war. It was an experience I will never forget.

UK Bands included: Ambling Band (Bristol), Bandanarama (Hull) Baybeat Streetband (Morecombe), Blast Furnace (Ulverston), Boom Dang (Barrow in Furness), Cacophany Arkestra (Preston), Homecoming Brass Band (Bradford) Horns of Plenty (Oxford) Storytellers Band (Newcastle upon Tyne), Stroud Red Band (Stroud).

International Bands included: Good Trouble Brass Band (Boston USA), Le Pompier Pony Club (Marseilles, France), The OZ HONKeroos (Wollongong, Australia), Tinitussis (Hamburg, Germany), Toeters & Bellen (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Xaranga’n Roll (Valencia, Spain).