STRIKE! is a large-scale projection-mapped installation by Urban Projections, created for Bradford 2025. The work responds to a defining moment in the city’s industrial history - the 1890–91 strike at Manningham Mills - and centres the predominantly female workforce who led it.

Projected onto the chimney and façade of Lister Mills, the piece uses the full scale of the building, including its 76m (249ft) chimney. Once the largest silk mill in the world, the site becomes both surface and subject. Light and moving image move up and across the structure, drawing the eye vertically and holding attention on the histories embedded within it.

The visual language draws on archival material, protest graphics and typographic forms, reworked through projection into a shifting surface of text, pattern and image. Elements layer, repeat and break apart across the architecture, building a sense of rhythm and collective momentum. Poetry by Princess Arinola Adegbite and a score by CJ Mirra run through the work, bringing voice and presence alongside the visuals.

The piece reflects on the four-month walkout of over 5,000 workers and the wider impact it had - from increased unionisation to the formation of the Independent Labour Party in Bradford. It also brings forward the stories of women whose actions shaped these shifts, including figures such as Julia Varley and Margaret McMillan, whose work extended beyond the strike into wider social change.

Developed alongside a large-scale engagement programme with local schools and community groups, the project connects historical research with lived experience. Working with partners including Mek Summat and poet Nabeela Ahmed, participants contributed through workshops in writing, printmaking and banner-making, drawing from histories of protest and rights movements. These contributions fed directly into the development of the work.

Presented across three evenings in October 2025, STRIKE! repositions the mill as a site of visibility and collective memory. It brings attention back to stories of labour, resistance and the women who helped shape not just Bradford, but wider social and political change.