Se Fire on the Main Stage at the Ashton Court Festival
In summer the grounds of Ashton Court to the west of the city play host to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, a major event for hot air ballooning in Britain. The Fiesta draws a substantial crowd even for the early morning lift that typically begins at about 6.30 am. Events and a fairground entertain the crowds during the day. A second mass ascent is then made in the early evening, again taking advantage of lower wind speeds.
From 1974 until 2007, Ashton Court also played host to the Ashton Court festival each summer, an outdoors music festival which used to be known as the Bristol Community Festival. Torrential rain during the 2007 festival and mounting costs incurred as a result of the Licensing Act 2003 led to the dissolution of the not-for-profit company which organised the event.[2]
The Slapstick Festival celebrates silent film comedy every January and the organisation also promotes screenings throughout the year.[4] In November the Encounters Short Film Festival offers a platform for new short films.[5] The biennial Wildscreen Festival showcases wildlife filmmaking in the city that is home to the BBC Natural History Unit.[6]
The Bristol Festival of Ideas is an annual programme of debates and other events, which aims "to stimulate people’s minds and passions with an inspiring programme of discussion and debate".[9] It was first set up in 2005 as part of the city's ultimately unsuccessful bid to become the European Capital of Culture for 2008, and awards an annual book prize, worth £10,000, to a book which "presents new, important and challenging ideas, which is rigorously argued, and which is engaging and accessible".[10][11]
The city's principal theatre company, the Bristol Old Vic, was founded in 1946 as an offshoot of the Old Vic company in London. Its premises on King Street consist of the 1766 Theatre Royal (400 seats), a modern studio theatre (150 seats), and foyer and bar areas in the adjacent Coopers' Hall (built 1743). The Theatre Royal is a grade I listed building and was the oldest continuously operating theatre in England.
The Bristol Hippodrome is a larger theatre (1981 seats) which hosts national touring productions, whilst other theatres include the Tobacco Factory (250 seats), The Brewery (90 seats), Bierkeller Theatre (400 seats), QEH (220 seats), the Redgrave Theatre (at Clifton College) (320 seats) and the Alma Tavern (50 seats). Arnolfini stage a regular programme of experimental, physical and live art theatre and the University of Bristol Drama Department has a regular programme of visiting companies and in-house work at the Wickham Theatre.[13] Other venues which have hosted theatre productions include Hope Chapel (Hotwells) (formerly the Hope Centre), the Hen and Chicken pub (Bedminster) and PACTS (Easton).
Other theatres
Bristol's theatre scene includes a large variety of producing theatre companies, apart from the Bristol Old Vic, including Show of Strength Theatre Company, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, acta community theatre, Myrtle Theatre, Cirque Bijou, Desperate Men, Theatre West and Travelling Light Theatre Company. Theatre Bristol is a partnership between Bristol City Council, Arts Council England and local theatre practitioners which aims to develop the theatre industry in Bristol.[14] There are also a number of organisations within the city which act to support theatre makers, for example Equity, the actors union, has a General Branch based in the city,[15] and Residence which provides office, social and rehearsal space for several Bristol based theatre and performance companies.[16]
The University of Bristol Drama Department offers undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in performance and screen studies.[17] The University of the West of England offers undergraduate and post-graduate drama and film programmes.[18]Circomedia is a training school for circus and physical theatre skills offering foundation degrees and BTEC courses.[19]
In addition there are around 25 active non-professional theatre companies in the Greater Bristol area listed in Bristol City Council's Leisure and Culture database.[20]Mayfest is an annual contemporary theatre festival that takes place for two weeks in May. It is best known for presenting contemporary theatre but also dance, site specific, experimental, interactive and participatory theatre as well as music events.[21]
Music
The music scene is thriving and significant. In 2010, PRS for Music announced that Bristol is the 'most musical' city in the UK, based on the number of PRS members born in Bristol relative to its population.[22] From the late 1970s onwards it was home to a crop of cultish bands combining punk, funk, dub and political consciousness, including The Pop Group, close friends of The Cortinas, who led the City's punk scene from 1976. Bristol's premier fanzine from this time through until early 1978 was Loaded. It featured all of the Bristol bands as well as those who visited the city, some of whom were promoted by the magazine.
Ten years later, Bristol was the birthplace of a type of English hip-hop music called trip hop or the Bristol Sound, epitomised in the work of artists such as Tricky, Portishead, Smith & Mighty and Massive Attack. It is also a stronghold of drum and bass with notable bands like the Mercury Prize winning Roni Size/Reprazent and Kosheen as well as the pioneering DJ Krust and More Rockers. The progressive house duo Way Out West also hails from Bristol. This music is part of the wider Bristol Urban Culture scene which received international media attention in the 1990s and still thrives today.
Other forms of popular music also thrive on the city's scene. In the 1980s the city gave birth to thrash metal band Onslaught who became the first non-American thrash band to sign to a major label. Other notable rockers from Bristol include folk rock outfit K-Passa, Stackridge, Act of Contrition, Chaos UK, Vice Squad, Wushcatte, The Claytown Troupe, Rita Lynch, Herb Garden, Doreen Doreen, The Seers, Pigbag, and The Blue Aeroplanes. More recently a new wave of Bristol-based bands have been promoting themselves across the UK underground, including New Rhodes, Santa Dog, Tin Pan Gang, The Private Side, Big Joan, You and the Atom Bomb, Riot:Noise, Two Day Rule, Alien Trash Bin, Osmium, Hacksaw, Bronze Age Fox and Legends De Early.
There is also a left field / experimental music scene in Bristol, which has built on the tradition of Bristol bands like The Pop Group, Third Eye Foundation and Crescent. These musicians are supported by record labels such as Invada, Farm Girl, Blood Red Sound and Super Fi, and promoters such as Qu Junktions, Illegal Seagull, Let the Bastards Grind, Noise Annoys and the, now defunct, Choke (music collective). Despite regular performances and the success of many of its members, this scene tends to be passed over in the national press' view of Bristol music which focuses on Trip Hop,[23] which represents only one aspect of the city's musical culture. Active bands include Gravenhurst (Warp), Team Brick (Invada), The Heads (Invada), Gonga (Invada), Joe Volk (Invada), Fuck Buttons (ATP - now moved to London), Hunting Lodge (Yosada), SJ Esau (Anticon, Twisted Nerve), Bronnt Industries Kapital (Static Caravan), Zoon van snooK (Lo Recordings, Mush Records), Aut (Fällt), Geisha (Crucial Blast) and Defibrillators (Gravid Hands). Bristol was also a home to post-rock music, with bands such as Flying Saucer Attack and Movietone.[24]
Bristol is home to many live music venues including the 2000-seat Bristol Beacon, formerly Colston Hall, named after Colston Street and the Colston School that once occupied the site, which can attract big names, the Trinity Centre (a community-run converted Church in the Old Market area of Bristol), the O2 Academy which is part of the national touring circuit for rock bands, the Anson Rooms (part of the University of Bristol Union), the Mothers Ruin, The Thekla, Fiddler's, the Bristol Folk House, Start the Bus, the Hatchet, the Fleece, the Croft, the Cooler and the Louisiana. The Colston Hall was renamed in 2020, following three years of consultation, after protests regarding Edward Colston's ties to the Atlantic slave trade.[25]
The Tudor Red Lodge, built in 1580 as the lodge for a 'Great House' which once stood on the site now occupied by the Bristol Beacon. Displays include Tudor and Georgian rooms and a Tudor knot garden.
The Georgian House was built by slave trader and plantation owner John Pinney in 1790 and is preserved in the style of a Georgian-era town house.
The Blaise Castle House and estate on the northern outskirts of the city houses the social history collections. The grounds were designed by 18th century landscape gardener Humphry Repton and John Nash designed the dairy and conservatory.
Arnolfini specialises in contemporary art, live performance and dance and cinema.
Spike Island
Spike Island is an international centre for the development of contemporary art and design, home to a gallery, café and working space for artists, designers and creative businesses.
Other cultural venues
The Watershed Media Centre exhibits digital arts and cinema. The former Industrial Museum, housed in former warehouses at Prince's Wharf has been extensively rebuilt and, now called M Shed opened as a museum of Bristol life in 2011.
Bristol's architecture includes many examples of mediaeval, gothic, modern industrial and post-war architecture. Notable buildings include the gothic revival Wills Memorial Building, and the tallest building in the city, St Mary Redcliffe. The city is noted for its Victorian industrial architecture of the Bristol Byzantine style, characterised by deep red and polychrome brickwork and Byzantine style arches.
Examples of most of the stages of the Architecture of the United Kingdom from the mediaeval era onwards are present in the city. Little remains of the fortifications of the walled city and castle, although several churches from the 12th century have survived. The Tudor period saw several large mansions and estates being built for wealthy merchants outside the traditional city centre. Almshouses and public houses for the rest of the population remain mixed in amongst areas of more recent development. In the eighteenth century, several squares were laid out for the prosperous middle classes in the expanding suburbs which grew to take in many of the surrounding villages. The development of the floating harbour provided a focus for industrial development and the local transport infrastructure including the Clifton Suspension Bridge and Temple Meads railway station, the original part of which was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The twentieth century saw further expansion of the city, with the growth of the University of Bristol buildings and the aircraft industry. During World War II the city centre suffered from extensive bombing during the Bristol Blitz and redevelopment of shopping centres and office buildings continues into the twenty-first century.
Bristol has 15 Michelin-starred restaurants as of August 2022,[31] including Casamia, winner of Ramsay's Best Restaurant in 2010. Bristol also hosts the UK's largest restaurant, Za Za Bazaar. In close proximity to the orchards of Somerset, Bristol has acquired a reputation as "England's most cider-friendly city",[32] and is also home to Harveys Bristol Cream sherry. Other foodstuffs claiming Bristolian heritage include the Clark's Pie, and Mothering Buns.[33] Bristol was named the top city in the world for vegans in 2020 according to a Google Trends analysis,[34][35] and the world's best culinary destination in 2019.[36]
The oldest pub in Bristol is claimed to be the Hatchett Inn, situated on Frogmore street since 1606, although The Bowl Inn and The Rummer descend from even earlier pubs on their sites.[37]
Bristolians speak a distinctive dialect of English. Uniquely for a large city in England, this is a rhotic dialect, in which the r in words like car and park is pronounced, usually nowadays as a postalveolar approximant but more traditionally as a retroflex approximant.[38] Once common across England, this feature has now receded to Bristol and the rural West Country, as well as parts of Lancashire.
The most unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the Bristol L (or Terminal L), in which an L sound is appended to words that end in the letter a: a common illustration of this is the sentence "Africal is a malarial areal". Additionally, -al is drawn out as -awl, and an l may be added within a word with an aw, or an aw, in a word with al. Thus "area" becomes "areawl", and "drawing" becomes "drawling" etc. This may lead to confusions between expressions like area engineer and aerial engineer which in Bristolian sound identical. Another example is when unsure of the answer "I have no ideal" is the response. In the same way, the Swedish IKEA is known by some as "Ikeawl", and Asda supermarket as "Asdawl". The city's own name may have evolved in the same manner, as it transformed from Anglo-SaxonBrycgstow to modern "Bristol."[39]
Another feature is the addition of S to verbs in the first and third person. Just as he goes, in Bristol I goes and they goes. As with other west country accents, H is often dropped from the start of words, th may become f, and -ing become -en.[39] Bristolians often add "mind", "look" or "see" to the end of sentences: "I'm not doing that, mind.". Another Bristolian linguistic feature is the addition of "to" in questions relating to direction or orientation. For example, "Where's that?" would be phrased as "Where's that to?" and "Where's the park?" would become "Where's the park to?". This speech feature is predominant in Newfoundland English, where many of that island's early European inhabitants originated from Bristol and other West Country ports. They lived on the island in relative isolation in the centuries to follow, maintaining this feature. These linguistic features can also be heard in Cardiff.
The linguist John C Wells codified the differences between a Bristol accent and Received Pronunciation in his Accents of English series in the following way.[40] It is much more similar to General American than most other accents in Britain.
Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja was the first strongly active graffiti artist in Bristol in the early 1980s, with the nicknames of "3D" and "Delge".[42] He appeared in the UK documentary called "Bombin'" alongside Wolverhampton artist and later DJ and producer Goldie.[43]
Children of the Can: 25 Years of Bristol Graffiti by Felix Braun (FLX) and Steve Wright, is a book illustrating and documenting the street art scene in the city.[44]
900,000 people visited an exhibition of Banksy's work at the Bristol Museum in 2009. In August 2011 Bristol City Council finally recognised the importance of graffiti to the city's culture by allowing an entire street to be painted by various international street artists. In August 2011 the See No Evil public art event was installed in Nelson Street, transforming it into a walk-through graffiti gallery. Among other works, it includes a 20-metre tall mural.[41]
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. The county is in the West of England combined authority area, which includes the Greater Bristol area and nearby places such as Bath.
Edward Colston was an English merchant, slave trader, philanthropist, and Tory Member of Parliament.
Collegiate School is a private day school in Bristol, England, and is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.
Pero's Bridge is a pedestrian bascule bridge that spans St Augustine's Reach in Bristol Harbour, Bristol, England. It links Queen Square and Millennium Square.
Bristol Beacon, previously Colston Hall, is a concert hall and Grade II listed building on Colston Street, Bristol, England. It is owned by Bristol City Council. Since 2011, it has been managed by Bristol Music Trust.
There are 100 Grade I listed buildings in Bristol, England according to Bristol City Council. The register includes many structures which for convenience are grouped together in the list below.
Komedia is an arts and entertainment company which operates venues in the United Kingdom at Brighton and Bath, and a management and production company Komedia Entertainment. Beyond hosting live comedy, the venues also host music, cabaret, theatre and shows for children, featuring local, national and international performers. The Brighton and Bath venues operate cinemas within their buildings in partnership with Picturehouse. Komedia also creates broadcast comedy and has most notably co-produced and hosted the live recordings of seven series of the Sony Award-winning Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! for BBC Radio 4 and is a co-producer on BBC1's sitcom Count Arthur Strong.
Somerset is a county in the south west of England. It has a varied cultural tradition ranging from the Arthurian legends to The Wurzels, a band specialising in Scrumpy and Western music.
The culture of Plymouth is a social aspect of the unitary authority and city of Plymouth that is located in the south-west of England. Built in 1815, Union Street was at the heart of Plymouth's historical culture. It became known as the servicemen's playground, as it was where sailors from the Royal Navy would seek entertainment. During the 1930s, there were 30 pubs and it attracted such performers as Charlie Chaplin to the New Palace Theatre. It is now the late-night hub of Plymouth's entertainment strip, but has a reputation for trouble at closing hours.
The Bristol underground scene is a cultural movement in Bristol beginning in the early 1980s. The scene was born out of a lack of mainstream clubs catering for the emergence of hip hop music, with street and underground parties a mainstay. Crews formed playing hip hop in disused venues with sound systems borrowed from the reggae scene: City Rockers, 2 Bad, 2 Tuff, KC Rock, UD4, FBI, Dirty Den, Juice Crew, Rene & Bacus, Soul Twins, KC Rock, Fresh 4, and the Wild Bunch were among them. These names were the precursors to the more well known names that came from this scene. It is characterized by musicians and graffiti artists. The scene was influenced by the city's multiculturalism, political activism, and the arts movements of punk, reggae, hip hop, hippies and new age.
Cabot Circus is a covered shopping centre in Bristol, England. It is adjacent to Broadmead, a shopping district in Bristol city centre. The Cabot Circus development area contains shops, offices, a hotel, 250 apartments and formerly, a cinema. It covers a total of 139,350 m2 (1,500,000 sq ft) floor space, of which 92,900 m2 (1,000,000 sq ft) is retail outlets and leisure facilities. It opened in September 2008, after a ten-year planning and building project costing £500 million.
Paul Stephenson OBE is a community worker, activist and long-time campaigner for civil rights for the British African-Caribbean community in Bristol, England.
The Bristol Ensemble, formerly the Emerald Ensemble, is a professional chamber orchestra, based in Bristol, England. The ensemble has been in existence since 1994, when it was formed as a musicians' collective by violinist Roger Huckle. Their repertoire includes classical, popular, jazz and contemporary music. The size of the group depends on the programmes being performed and can range from trios to a full complement of 70 or so musicians. They perform standing up.
Scrumpy & Western EP was the second record released by Adge Cutler and The Wurzels, containing the two tracks from their original 1966 hit single, "Drink Up Thy Zider" and "Twice Daily", with two further tracks "Pill, Pill" and "Hark At 'Ee Jacko". The band's first single had reached number 45 in the UK Singles Chart, despite the B-side, "Twice Daily" being banned by the BBC for being too raunchy. The subsequent Scrumpy & Western EP, released the following year, did not achieve a chart placing, however it gave its name to whole new genre of music: Scrumpy and Western. All the tracks were recorded live by Bob Barratt at The Royal Oak Inn, Nailsea, on 2 November 1966.
M Shed is a museum in Bristol, England, located on Prince's Wharf beside the Floating Harbour in a dockside transit shed formerly occupied by Bristol Industrial Museum. The museum's name is derived from the way that the port identified each of its sheds. M Shed is home to displays of 3,000 artefacts and stories, showing Bristol's role in the slave trade and items on transport, people, and the arts. Admission is free.
The Cube Microplex is cinema and event venue in Bristol, England. It operates as a non-profit cooperative and is entirely staffed by volunteers. Since opening in 1998 it has hosted international and local artistic and cultural events including films and music performances as well as providing a focal point for Bristol's artistic community. The building includes a roughly 108 seat auditorium as well as a bar serving local and ethical products.
Anika is a British and German singer-songwriter, musician, political journalist and poet.
The arts in Atlanta are well-represented, with a prominent presence in music, fine art, and theater.
Bradford Odeon is the name applied to two different cinemas in central Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. One, in Godwin Street, was built in 1930 and survives; the other, in Manchester Road, was built in 1938 and demolished in 1969.
The statue of Edward Colston is a bronze statue of Bristol-born merchant and trans-Atlantic slave trader Edward Colston (1636–1721). It was created in 1895 by the Irish sculptor John Cassidy and was formerly situated on a plinth of Portland stone in a public space known as "The Centre" in Bristol, until it was toppled by anti-racism protestors in 2020.
1 2 Harry Stoke & Vinny Green, 2003. A Dictionary of Bristle. Bristol: Broadcast Books.
↑ p. 348-349, Accents of English 2 John C Wells, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992
1 2 Cullen, Miguel (26 August 2011). "Graffiti gets the star treatment in Bristol". The Independent. London. Retrieved 10 November 2011. Nick Walker was author of perhaps the most striking piece at the event, a 20-metre mural on the front of a tower block, of a sinister man in a black bowler hat dripping a bucket of red paint over the cement.
↑ Braun, Felix; Wright, Steve; Jones, Richard Foster (November 2008). Children of the Can: 25 Years of Bristol Graffiti. Bristol: Tangent Books. p.288. ISBN978-1-906477-07-3.
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