Mayor Marvin Rees’ second term ended as of Monday, 6 May 2024. Bristol City Council is looking at archiving the Mayor’s Blog, before it closes later this year. Please refer to news.bristol.gov.uk going forward. The post 6 May 2024 appeared first on The Bristol Mayor ..read more

Marian Liebmann reflects on eleven years of working with the Holocaust Memorial Day Steering Group. I joined the Holocaust Memorial Day Steering Group in the days when the City Council took a lead, but included volunteers to make sure it was a community event. My parents were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, and I have always felt very strongly about prejudice and racism of all sorts. At that point I was still working full-time, but felt it was an important cause. A committed member of staff from City Hall once chaired the committee, and the Council also researched and printed a booklet of ..read more

Today’s guest blog is from Olivia Cowell, a musician and blogger from Bristol, and also a volunteer at The Cause Bristol CIC. Situated at the heart of our vibrant city, The Cause Bristol CIC shines as a beacon of empowerment, creativity, and community spirit.  Dedicated to driving positive change, our organisation initiates transformative programs aimed at uplifting individuals and promoting unity within our community. Empowering Creative Youth: At The Cause Bristol CIC, we prioritise nurturing the artistic potential of the next generation. Our engaging youth sessions provide a supportive ..read more

Today’s guest blog is from Karen Ruisi – Cerebral Palsy Plus Fundraiser. We were honoured to recently welcome Mayor Marvin Rees to our Friendship Club on Tuesday 26th of March, during Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month.  The Friendship Club is a weekly social club for adults with Cerebral Palsy, which is still going strong after 50 years! Around 25 people attend this Club regularly, and it is a vital source of support which combats social exclusion and loneliness, something that many people with complex disabilities like Cerebral Palsy face in their everyday lives. One of our members Graham h ..read more

Today’s guest blog is from the Women’s Work Lab team. Back in February 2020, standing in City Hall, Mayor Marvin Rees helped officially launch the Women’s Work Lab, a Bristol based social enterprise that supports mums on benefits back into work via a nine month training, work placement and coaching programme. Back then, there was one cohort of 15 women; all of them united by their desire to get back into work despite facing multiple barriers. And it worked, despite the challenges of the pandemic and lockdowns, two-thirds of those mums landed new roles. Jobs that fitted around family life. With ..read more

Our administration cares deeply about Bristol’s parks and green spaces. Over eight years, we have worked hard to protect and invest in them, despite national austerity, and just last week we launched our strategy to improve their accessibility for all residents.  We also care about Bristolians’ right to bury and subsequently visit their loved ones, in the city they lived, close to the people they cared about.   Making tough decisions is part of leading a complicated and diverse city like Bristol. Working with the cards you are dealt, finite land and resources, and then choosing ..read more

Professor David Olusoga OBE spoke powerfully at our event on Wednesday at Bristol Beacon, which saw my final major speech as Mayor of Bristol. Watch his introduction from the start of this video, and read below. After the city poet’s new poem and my speech, David and I were then in conversation at Bristol Beacon. 2016-2024 Good evening and welcome to Bristol Beacon. My name is David Olusoga, and I’m here to introduce the evening’s events and to offer some of my own thoughts. One of the depressing things about being an historian is that you discover that almost all of the best historical quot ..read more

Today’s guest blog is from Councillor Don Alexander, Cabinet Member for Transport and Labour Councillor for Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston Ward. Bristol is a city which was planned, developed and built with cars as a priority. But this approach, as well as our city’s rapidly growing population, combined with the lack of alternative options, often results in congestion and poor air quality. This administration has worked to tackle this by providing residents with improved transport alternatives. At a strategic level we’ve improved bus prioritisation, secured Clean Air Zone support and even open ..read more

This afternoon I joined Councillor Asher Craig, Deputy Mayor of Bristol, at M Shed, ahead of tomorrow’s launch of the Bristol Legacy Foundation: a new chapter in our city’s journey in grappling with the legacies of slavery. An extended ‘history of protest’ display, including the Colston statue, opens tomorrow at the same Bristol museum. In that exhibition, I offer these reflections on events before, during, and after its toppling: “I have lots of thoughts and feelings about the Colston statue, what happened to it and what happened around it. Its place of honour in the middle of Bristol was ob ..read more

*Check against delivery* Welcome to Bristol Beacon. This is an appropriate venue for my last speech.  This building captures many of the complexities and contradictions that is Bristol. I’m a black, mixed race mayor descended from enslaved Africans – the great, great, great grandson of Samuel Richardson, who was hung by the British for participating in the Morant Bay Rebellion. I am of working class stock: Irish migrants who settled in South Wales, my Welsh grandfather and the Bryer family in Bristol. And I stand here as mayor of a city with a history of entrenched inequalities and one w ..read more