April 23rd 2010: The second TV General Election Debate
With the faces of the 3 main party leaders projected on the Arnolfini, police divers searching for possible bombs in the Avon River, halted traffic and The Apprentice-style filming of shiny/stylish/stunning Bristol, the election buzz was impossible to miss. Cameron, Clegg and Brown? It was anyone’s game.
Saturday 3rd July 2010 @ St Pauls, Bristol
Everyone knows being green has environmental protection as a core value. What is a little less well known is the high emphasis greens put on grassroots democracy and participation. Participation at its best, is all about the open exchange of ideas, mutual understanding, effective and timely information, promoting trust, highlighting decision-making processes, dealing with complex and possibly controversial issues, unique insights, and serving each other. It ideally develops a common view, a sense of purpose and allows communities to take control and set agendas. This is the way to learn to live better lives.
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Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th June 2010 @ Tobacco Factory, Bristol
Wouldn’t it be strange to walk through Stokes Croft, St Pauls and even parts of Bristol like Redland without that shock of a neon coloured poster pinned against the muted urban landscape? Punctuating your vision with a rebellious secret, fly-posters are a touchy subject: an urban Morse code to the city’s partiers and conversely, the focus of fierce distain for the seven-day a week breakfast eaters.
Fly-posters are arguably the best way for promoters to advertise their events. An invitation that doesn’t follow the usual commercial and controlled avenues of publicity, they gallop freely in the liberated fields of neon green, pink and yellow. Over the BRIGHT backgrounds, massive black letters scream line-ups, times and locations, beckoning the partiers to consider an evening of revelry. Furthermore, their supporters will say they are a given characteristic of the city: They signify life, vibrancy and a youth culture that is constantly progressing independently, both in music and style. Aspects of an enthused and evolving society everyone can enjoy.
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Picture this; I have just arrived into Parkway Train Station and I am looking to travel into the centre of town. It’s too far to walk, trains are too infrequent, the bus is unreliable and cramped, driving myself or in a taxi is too expensive and hardly eco-friendly, and it’s probably unrealistic to fly – what I need is a bicycle! Thank the lord then for Hour Bike, a new bicycle rent scheme to help you propel yourself across Bristol at your whim in a cheap, efficient and environmentally friendly way.
As 2010 swings into action, Bristol’s independent art scene starts the new decade in rude health. Away from establishments like the Arnolfini and Spike Island, there has been a marked growth in the kind of community work previously only found at places like the Trinity Centre. Although it’s merely the tip of the iceberg where the entire city is concerned, these days a walk down Stokes Croft is a sensory blur of colour and texture. Between the great waves of Hillgrove Street and the murals that skirt the derelict front of Westmoreland House, you find Turbo Island’s bold font, a tiny medieval Apothecary and countless tiny oddities that reveal themselves only with careful inspection.
Until very recent it was an ugly, derelict building in the heart of Stokes Croft and, fenced off from the public, it was showing very little signs of life. However, after a major renovation it opened its doors this summer and The Canteen has since miraculously become the epicentre of Bristol’s cultural quarter and is now one of the city’s most popular gastro-bar-venues.
As I walk around the modest Old Market HQ of the Bristol SOFA Project, a volunteer politely asks if I need any help. Surrounded by settees of all colours and cloths, an array of dining tables and chairs and rows upon rows of white goods, I’m momentarily stumped. It dawns on me how epic a task organising Shifting Old Furniture Around (SOFA, y’see…) must be, not to mention the back-into-work volunteer schemes, two showrooms and the numerous environmental awareness campaigns connected.
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