Culture in Bristol

In summer the grounds of Ashton Court to the west of the city play host to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, a major event for hot air ballooning in Britain. The Fiesta draws a substantial crowd even for the early morning lift that typically begins at about 6.30 am. Events and a fairground entertain the crowds during the day. A second mass ascent is then made in the early evening, again taking advantage of lower wind speeds.

The annual

The Great Reading Adventure was introduced in 2003 as part of Bristol's bid to be European Capital of Culture 2008. It was inspired by an equivalent scheme in Chicago, where they were reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. In its first year in excess of 15,000 people read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson as part of the scheme.^[7] The Bristol Art Library (TBAL) is an art performance project created in 1998 by British artist Annabel Other. It consists of handmade books in a library the size of a suitcase.^[8]

The Bristol Festival of Ideas is an annual programme of debates and other events, which aims "to stimulate people’s minds and passions with an inspiring programme of discussion and debate".^[9] It was first set up in 2005 as part of the city's ultimately unsuccessful bid to become the European Capital of Culture for 2008, and awards an annual book prize, worth £10,000, to a book which "presents new, important and challenging ideas, which is rigorously argued, and which is engaging and accessible".^[10][11]

The city's principal theatre company, the

The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which originated in King Street as an offshoot of the Bristol Old Vic is now a separate company. Based in Clifton in a property bought with royalties from Julian Slade's musical Salad Days, the school trains actors, stage managers, directors, lighting and sound technicians, designers and costumiers for work in stage, television, radio and film productions. BOVTS is an Associate School of the Faculty of Creative Arts of the University of the West of England and an affiliate of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama. Alumni include Annette Crosbie, Brian Blessed, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gene Wilder, Jane Lapotaire, Jeremy Irons, Miranda Richardson, Patrick Stewart, Pete Postlethwaite, Stephanie Cole and Tim Pigott-Smith.^[12]

The Bristol Hippodrome is a larger theatre (1981 seats) which hosts national touring productions, whilst other theatres include the Tobacco Factory (250 seats), The Brewery (90 seats), Bierkeller Theatre (400 seats), QEH (220 seats), the Redgrave Theatre (at Clifton College) (320 seats) and the Alma Tavern (50 seats). Arnolfini stage a regular programme of experimental, physical and live art theatre and the University of Bristol Drama Department has a regular programme of visiting companies and in-house work at the Wickham Theatre.^[13] Other venues which have hosted theatre productions include Hope Chapel (Hotwells) (formerly the Hope Centre), the Hen and Chicken pub (Bedminster) and PACTS (Easton).

Bristol's theatre scene includes a large variety of producing theatre companies, apart from the Bristol Old Vic, including Show of Strength Theatre Company, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, acta community theatre, Myrtle Theatre, Cirque Bijou, Desperate Men, Theatre West and Travelling Light Theatre Company. Theatre Bristol is a partnership between Bristol City Council, Arts Council England and local theatre practitioners which aims to develop the theatre industry in Bristol.^[14] There are also a number of organisations within the city which act to support theatre makers, for example

The University of Bristol Drama Department offers undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in performance and screen studies.[17] The University of the West of England offers undergraduate and post-graduate drama and film programmes.^[18] Circomedia is a training school for circus and physical theatre skills offering foundation degrees and BTEC courses.^[19]

In addition there are around 25 active non-professional theatre companies in the Greater Bristol area listed in Bristol City Council's Leisure and Culture database.^[20] Mayfest is an annual contemporary theatre festival that takes place for two weeks in May. It is best known for presenting contemporary theatre but also dance, site specific, experimental, interactive and participatory theatre as well as music events.^[21]

The music scene is thriving and significant. In 2010, PRS for Music announced that Bristol is the 'most musical' city in the UK, based on the number of PRS members born in Bristol relative to its population.^[22] From the late 1970s onwards it was home to a crop of cultish bands combining punk, funk, dub and political consciousness, including The Pop Group, close friends of The Cortinas, who led the city's punk scene from 1976. Bristol's premier fanzine from this time through until early 1978 was Loaded. It featured all of the Bristol bands as well as those who visited the city, some of whom were promoted by the magazine.

Ten years later, Bristol was the birthplace of a type of English

Other forms of popular music also thrive on the city's scene. In the 1980s the city gave birth to thrash metal band Onslaught who became the first non-American thrash band to sign to a major label. Other notable rockers from Bristol include folk rock outfit K-Passa, Stackridge, Act of Contrition, Chaos UK, Vice Squad, Wushcatte, The Claytown Troupe, Rita Lynch, Herb Garden, Doreen Doreen, The Seers, Pigbag, and The Blue Aeroplanes. More recently a new wave of Bristol-based bands have been promoting themselves across the UK underground, including New Rhodes, Santa Dog, Tin Pan Gang, The Private Side, Big Joan, You and the Atom Bomb, Riot:Noise, Two Day Rule, Alien Trash Bin, Osmium, Hacksaw, Bronze Age Fox and Legends De Early.

There is also a left field / experimental music scene in Bristol, which has built on the tradition of Bristol bands like

Bristol is home to many live music venues including the 2000-seat

The Bristol Museum & Art Gallery houses collections of natural history, local archaeology, local glassware, Egyptology, Chinese ceramics and art, including the Bristol School. Touring exhibitions from other galleries are regularly hosted.

The City Museum is also responsible for

• The Tudor Red Lodge, built in 1580 as the lodge for a 'Great House' which once stood on the site now occupied by the Bristol Beacon. Displays include Tudor and Georgian rooms and a Tudor knot garden.
• The Georgian House was built by slave trader and plantation owner John Pinney in 1790 and is preserved in the style of a Georgian-era town house.
• The
  Blaise Castle House and estate on the northern outskirts of the city houses the social history collections. The grounds were designed by 18th century landscape gardener Humphry Repton and John Nash
  designed the dairy and conservatory.
• The remains of Kings Weston Roman Villa which is open on request.

Arnolfini specialises in contemporary art, live performance and dance and cinema.

Spike Island is an international centre for the development of contemporary art and design, home to a gallery, café and working space for artists, designers and creative businesses.

The

Bristol Archives in Hotwells houses the extensive city archives. The Royal West of England Academy in Clifton was founded in 1849 and exhibits works by William James Müller and Francis Danby amongst others.

The Alexander Gallery, F-block at the

A variety of youth clubs and day and residential activities, including National Citizen Service, are run by Young Bristol.^[28][29]

From the early twentieth century, Bristol had a number of cinemas including the

Bristol's architecture includes many examples of mediaeval, gothic, modern industrial and post-war architecture. Notable buildings include the gothic revival Wills Memorial Building, and the tallest building in the city, St Mary Redcliffe. The city is noted for its Victorian industrial architecture of the Bristol Byzantine style, characterised by deep red and polychrome brickwork and Byzantine style arches.

The city has examples through the changing styles of

The early and late twentieth century saw further expansion of the city. The University of Bristol was formed. An aircraft industry grew shortly before and during World War II, post-war this led to the creation of Bristol Airport. The city centre and harbour suffered from extensive bombing during the Bristol Blitz; with planned shopping, leisure and office complexes replacing lost parts of the centre while housing and port were displaced onto the city's outskirts.

Bristol's skyline at sunset, from Bedminster

Bristol is the home of two major football clubs –

The oldest pub in Bristol is claimed to be the Hatchett Inn, situated on Frogmore street since 1606, although The Bowl Inn and The Rummer descend from even earlier pubs on their sites.[37]

Bristolians speak a distinctive dialect of English. Uniquely for a large city in England, this is a

The most unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the Bristol L (or Terminal L), in which an L sound is appended to words that end in the letter a: a common illustration of this is the sentence "Africal is a malarial areal". Additionally, -al is drawn out as -awl, and an l may be added within a word with an aw, or an aw, in a word with al. Thus "area" becomes "areawl", and "drawing" becomes "drawling" etc. This may lead to confusions between expressions like area engineer and aerial engineer which in Bristolian sound identical. Another example is when unsure of the answer "I have no ideal" is the response. In the same way, the Swedish IKEA is known by some as "Ikeawl", and Asda supermarket as "Asdawl". The city's own name may have evolved in the same manner, as it transformed from Anglo-Saxon Brycgstow to modern "Bristol."^[39]

Another feature is the addition of S to verbs in the first and third person. Just as he goes, in Bristol I goes and they goes. As with other west country accents, H is often dropped from the start of words, th may become f, and -ing become -en.

There are several graffiti artists active in Bristol; one of whom is Banksy, who produced the album cover for Think Tank by britpop band Blur. Other Bristol graffiti artists include Nick Walker, Sickboy, Inkie, Stars,^[41] Lokey, cheo.

Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja was the first strongly active graffiti artist in Bristol in the early 1980s, with the nicknames of "3D" and "Delge".^[42] He appeared in the UK documentary called "Bombin'" alongside Wolverhampton artist and later DJ and producer Goldie.^[43]

Children of the Can: 25 Years of Bristol Graffiti by Felix Braun (FLX) and Steve Wright, is a book illustrating and documenting the street art scene in the city.^[44]

900,000 people visited an exhibition of Banksy's work at the Bristol Museum in 2009. In August 2011 Bristol City Council finally recognised the importance of graffiti to the city's culture by allowing an entire street to be painted by various international street artists. In August 2011 the See No Evil public art event was installed in Nelson Street, transforming it into a walk-through graffiti gallery. Among other works, it includes a 20-metre-tall (66 ft) mural.^[41]

• Media in Bristol
• List of Bands from Bristol
• Category:Music venues in Bristol

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Culture of Bristol.

• Bristol City Council: Leisure & Culture
• Bristol graffiti & street art on Flickr