Getting Discomfortable
The Seers, Welcome to Deadtown, 1990
On the day of the announcement that Bristol intends to bid to become UK City of Culture 2029, Trinity's CEO Emma Harvey reflects on comfort, justice and freedom of expression...
Folk are fed up with feeling broke. With political change being slow. With public services not working properly. Fed up of being polite and patient while people with power blame and game. Time poverty shrinks our lives. The ground beneath us feels uncertain.
This town is dead, it's a living hell...
I listen to the Seers and scroll through socials. It's the day after Martin Luther King Jr Day. A day that since Regan’s office has been marked as a US federal holiday. Jeanne Theoharis - who's has spent decades interrogating the myths we tell about one of the most recognisable civil rights activists - reminds us, injustice is comfortable for too many people. Silence permits cruelty. Comfort begets control.
A legacy that may have at times become flattened into a dreamy utopia, with King upheld as a non-threatening ‘colourblind’ figure. This isn’t accidental. It reassures the status quo and eliminates discomfort, to uphold politeness at the expense of justice.
The removal of free national parks on MLK Day and Juneteeth may serve as a reminder of King’s rage at economic and health injustice, his clarity about power and the complicity of politeness. His insistence that financial and political imbalances block true democracy if not robustly challenged. Politeness + comfort ≠ change.
Back in Bristol, I read a newsletter from Curiosity UnLtd who's Creativist leader Julz Davis been driving a campaign for Bristol to celebrate it’s role as Home of Civil Rights in the UK. Recognition of Bristol as a city of changemakers not waiting for permission and making their own opportunities.
That's the spirit of Bristol that matters. Not as branding, but as a way of being and just getting on with stuff. Because waiting for permission is another form of comfort. And comfort is what shrinks our minds and our worlds.
Art doesn’t decorate movements. It sustains them, says Julz. Creativity that's about truth-telling and shining a light on injustice where regular discourse falls short. A culture of asking difficult questions whilst also celebrating joyously that helps us imagine the ancestors we want to be and the role we want to plan in the world we’ll eventually leave behind.
We’re all frogs in the pot. Going along with process because we’re all so deep in it. Accepting the terms. Competing for funds like City of Culture and Pride in Place. A window of opportunity, but a window nonetheless that risks creating a sense of scarcity and of pitting places and communities against each other for central government funding, even though we know culture is a public good and civic life is essential to all of us. Without addressing that power of how we consider and distribute resources, participation is theatre not justice.
I want to shout but I can’t make a sound
Without the whole town coming down
There’s no-one around
I can’t dance, I can’t sing, I can’t do anything
Welcome to deadtown
The song continues as I read social posts asking so what...what can culture do about all that? These things tend to be gravy trains for a few. It will make no difference to most of us. This can be true, but that does not mean that we should not at least try.
That's the challenge of a UK City of Culture year for Bristol and we must take up that challenge if the benefits are to be felt. Bristol, like the UK doesn't lack creativity and is seen to be comparatively culturally resourced. But this hides more complex narratives, not least that we have a creative workforce that delivers far beyond the city's geographical boundaries, working across the UK on major cultural commissions and festivals, including playing visible roles in the delivery of City of Culture programmes in other UK cities.
And yet still we're a city whose networks can feel opaque and decision-making spaces unreachable. Systems that aren’t designed to make space for the art of the possible. People are muted. Expression is risky. Joy is rationed.
On the flipside, culture is passion. It’s activism. It’s identity. It's a shared memory. It’s the space where difficult conversations can happen - not as abstract debates, but as continued deliberation - a relay race passing the baton onto the next generation to build from where we tried and got some stuff right but still have work to do. Culture doesn’t change the world on its own: it creates the conditions for change. In a sea of voices telling us what to think and who’s right and who’s wrong it gives us a moment to close our eyes and hear our own voice and a tool to convert that voice into action to take about what matters to us.
The real test isn’t whether the whole city agrees or disagrees that we should go for this. It’s whether we stay in the room when things start to get uncomfortable - or even show up in the room when we’re invited. Discomfort isn’t the enemy - it's possibility. Talking to someone you disagree with and softening our edges. Taking a chance on a new artwork and seeing the world through a different lens. Speaking to a stranger and learning something new. Letting your certainty wobble to bring a skip to your step.
New worlds are built from shared courage. We don’t have to have all the answers right now. That’s why it’s called work. Believe in this. Believe in us. We’re all we’ve got. We’re our best chance. The work that needs doing will only come from us, together - locally and globally - communities refusing silence, complicity, refusing the polite status quo.
Shout in support of Bristol UK City of Culture. Shout in disagreement. Shout from the rooftops. It’s our time to bring our global town alive. Let’s go dream big.
This is an opinion piece by Emma Harvey. Click here to read more about Bristol's UK City of Culture bid.
