St Pauls Carnival is held, usually on the first Saturday of July in Bristol. The celebration began life in 1968 as the St Pauls Festival, when the idea was "to create an event to help improve relationships between the European, African, Caribbean and Asian inhabitants of the area." Called the St Pauls Carnival since 1991, it is run by a non-profit organisation, St Pauls Afrikan Caribbean Carnival Limited. In 1968 the St Paul's Festival, had the aim of bringing together the European, […]
We are very pleased to be hosting an exhibition of political posters from the 1968 movements created our friends at the Interference Archive in New York. From the Atelier Populaire (print collectives) of France’s insurgent 1968 to the radical posters of the Prague Spring and the university occupations in the United States and Mexico City. This exhibition is an an entry point into the cultural production of the global '68 moment and its continued influence on politics, art, and design today.
What is the connection between the Bristol Sharples family of artists, the American Revolution of the 1780s and the Royal West of England Academy of Art? Join Lee Cox and Hazel Gower, director and writer of a TV film about Ellen and Rolinda Sharples, in exploring the places where they lived and worked at the beginning of the 19th century. Rolinda became the only female member of the Bristol School of Narrative Artists, whilst the Sharples family little known legacy led to the establishment of […]
What is the connection between the Bristol Sharples family of artists, the American Revolution of the 1780s and the Royal West of England Academy of Art? Join Lee Cox and Hazel Gower, director and writer of a TV film about Ellen and Rolinda Sharples, in exploring the places where they lived and worked at the beginning of the 19th century. Rolinda became the only female member of the Bristol School of Narrative Artists, whilst the Sharples family little known legacy led to the establishment of […]
Poet and letterpress artist Dennis Gould began the early 1960s in Stafford Prison. Serving with the Royal Engineers during the 1950s, he later took up the cause of the Committee of 100, the direct-action wing of the anti-nuclear movement, carrying out acts of non-violent civil disobedience for which he was detained at her Majesty’s pleasure. In 1965 Dennis helped to organise an anarchist fringe festival of poetry at the Octagon in Bath. He continued to campaign and work with Peace News and then […]
On this history walk we will discover how Bristolians were fed during the early modern era (17th-19th Centuries). Hear how a rapidly expanding urban area, without the ability to feed itself, was kept supplied. How Bristol in turn helped supply the rural hinterland and its relationship with Wales and the wider world. How the market system worked, and how it was regulated, at times by the civic authorities, or by the “moral economy” and the crowd. What happened when the chain broke, and how did […]
In two short reflective talks, Sheila Rowbotham and Hilary Wainwright will contribute personal memories of links between events, movements and ideas which surfaced in 1968 and the emergence of the women’s liberation movement of the early 1970s. They will describe how these helped to shape their approaches to politics. These will be followed by contributions and discussion from the audience. In 1969, Sheila Rowbotham’s influential pamphlet Women's Liberation and the New Politics, argued that […]
As part of her collection of historically-based narratives which provoke questions about society today, Heather Jane will present a story set in her homeland of Gloucestershire. 'The Dispossessed' is a tale weaving poaching, 18th century criminality, and dispossession of people from the land in Berkeley and the Forest of Dean; followed by historical facts and discussion pondering the modern-day fall out of enclosures.
Di Parkin, Secretary of Bristol Radical History Group shares her memories of 1968 from the Vietnam anti-war demonstrations and the women’s equal pay strike at Ford's Dagenham to the 'Prague spring', the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia and Enoch Powell’s 'rivers of blood' speech. Watch this talk
Professor Bush offers a critical reassessment of the events of 1968 and their aftermath. He will look at May '68 in Paris in a broader context of global protest and changing narratives of political analysis and authentic action. He will give a brief account of his own experiences of the summer of 1968 at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X. Thirdly, Professor Bush will examine a late echo of the sixties in the […]
