Bristol City Centre Squatted: the last 50 years

A walking tour as part of Bristol Radical History Festival

Meet at the MShed front entrance at 4.00pm. Finish at the Louisiana around 5:30pm.

Bristol’s city centre has been a focus for squatters making a political point: on housing need and homelessness, in solidarity with strikes, in solidarity with land struggles and in defence of the natural environment.

This short tour includes five buildings squatted in the Harbourside, Old Town and Redcliffe in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2020s. The buildings were used for political organising, housing, music and as social centres.

Two people who squatted a building on the route in the 1980s will join us to tell their own story. The tour will be led by volunteers from community history project Bristol Squatted, using oral history interviews and archival research they have undertaken.