News Feed - Bristol Radical History Group

Level 2: Poster making: make a print poster with Cato Press

Bristol Radical History Festival 2018 Poster Light

Cato Press, Easton’s very own print workshop, continues the tradition and art of relief printmaking. Members of Cato Press will be on hand in the activities and exhibitions area on Level 2 with some radical designs. Be sure to pay them a visit to print your own poster to take away!

Outcasts, Cowards and Quakers – Re-examining the Conscientious Objectors of the First World War

This talk given by Professor Lois Bibbings will consider conventional ideas about objectors alongside an exploration of who these men (and women) were, what they did and why, what happened to them and how they were viewed. A complex picture emerges which takes us a long way from stereotypical images of objectors as, for example, despised, rejected, unmanly, lacking courage and/or devotedly religious. This event is organised by the Bristol Skeptics Society and takes place at the Smoke and Mirrors […]

Refusing to Kill – Bristol’s WW1 Conscientious Objectors

Over 350 men from the Bristol area refused to fight in World War 1. They claimed the status of conscientious objector for moral, religious or political reasons. Some agreed to take non-military roles. Others spent much of the war in prison, often under harsh conditions. This illustrated talk presented by Professor Lois Bibbings tells the stories of these men and the people in the city who supported them. This event is part of a series of Lunchtime Lectures by Bristol Libraries. There is no need […]

Level 2: Banner making: The Atelier Populaire: The Struggles Continue!

In May 68, visual culture was deployed as a form of radical protest, not just in the Parisian Atelier Populaire where students and faculty staff took over the Ecole des Beaux Arts, putting print on the map as a tool of global resistance movements, but around the globe from Italy to Mexico, from Japan to the United Kingdom, from the United States to Yugoslavia. These were "weapons in the service of the struggle… an inseparable part of it. Their rightful place is in the centres of conflict, that […]

History Walk 3: Degrees of Dissent: Bristol’s radical educational history, and what we can do to take learning back…

Join collective bread, print & roses on a tour through Bristol’s radical past, present and future. Together we will bring to life the city’s dissenting history, its rich tradition of self-help and mutual aid, from the intellectual and political ferment of radical taverns, to pamphleteering, popular education collectives, the neo-liberal assault on education today and the radicalising impact of the UCU strike and ask what kind of education we need for all our futures.

Studio 2: From Festival to Carnival: 50 Years of St Paul’s

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, […]

Level 2: Exhibition: Political posters of 1968

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.

History Walk and Film: Painted out of history

Ellen and Rolinda Sharples

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 […]

History Walk 1 and Film: Painted out of history

Ellen and Rolinda Sharples

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 […]

Level 2: Exhibition : Dennis Gould’s art and memorabilia

Stroud letterpress artist, poet and activist

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 […]