Housing, transport, climate, police and drugs will be up for debate this weekend in Bristol at a “festival of ideas”.
Bristol Transformed returns to St Paul’s for the third time on May 14 and 15 with a focus this year on political education and empowering communities and workers. Panels and debates on the agenda include the city’s rental crisis, tunnels and Bristol’s transport system, and what action Bristolians can take against climate change.
Prominent campaigners, writers and politicians are booked to take part in the debates, with a big focus on encouraging different perspectives and getting audiences involved.
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Co-organiser Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins said: “Since the last festival, the pandemic has changed all of our lives, revealing the deep inequality at the heart of society. “In the face of this, the people of Bristol have made shockwaves across the world, finally toppling Colston after years of political inertia and with dramatic clashes with the police in defence of our fundamental right to protest.
“Now more than ever it is vital that we organise political education that is accessible, inclusive, and representative of our communities, and that opens up possibilities for a collective future.”
A panel on transport will explore whether tunnels and an underground or trams and better buses would be best placed to upgrade Bristol’s public transport network. Leading the debate on Sunday afternoon is Green Councillor Emma Edwards, who put forward a motion to council in March calling for trams and electric trolley cars to be included in any upgrades.
A debate on housing will look at how rising rents in Bristol is making the city “unliveable” for many, exploring how the rental market can be controlled to “serve people before profit”. The panel on Saturday morning includes Keith Cowling, a former architect and director of Stokes Croft Land Trust; and Steve Dale, the chief executive of Bristol Community Land Trust.
A talk on the climate crisis will debate how local people can best take action against global warming, whether through supporting parliamentary parties, organising direct actions, or campaigning for people’s assemblies. The debate will include Cllr Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green party; writer and campaigner Chris Saltmarsh, who co-founded Labour for a Green New Deal; and Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of the trade union Unite.
Bristol Transformed first launched in 2019, as an offshoot of the World Transformed fringe festival at the Labour conference. The second Bristol Transformed was held in early March 2020. This year’s festival however will have less of a focus on Labour, according to Mr Kneebone-Hopkins.
He said: “In the past there’s been a big focus on the Labour party. This year we’ll focus much more on helping people build power outside of parliament, via community unions like Acorn or workplace unions for example, and encouraging people to engage with their colleagues and neighbours, giving them the tools to make their lives better.
“[It’s about] giving people clarity, allowing them to cut through the confusion in the modern world—this is how the world works. Giving people an understanding of how economics works, and how society is structured about keeping poor people poor and rich people rich. Connecting the dots on why the NHS is getting worse, or why public transport is getting worse.
“These big existential threats like climate change or tha pandemic can be confusing and overwhelming. By giving people political education, it allows people to make sense of that.”
A few tickets are still available for this weekend’s festival, costing £10. It will be held at several venues across St Paul’s and Stokes Croft. The 12-member committee began organising the festival last October, and this year’s event should be more smoothly run than previous years, Mr Kneebone-Hopkins said.
“It’s a big job,” he said. “We have a lot of support from funders in the trade union movement, promoting it to their members. It’s a labour of love, nobody’s getting any money from this, we just think these ideas are important. This year, the third time around, we have definitely smoothed out a lot of the rough edges. It’s a well oiled machine by this point.”
