Old Market is set to undergo a vibrant take-over this Autumn as the city-centre location becomes host to, Destination Old Market, a programme of public events showcasing the area's cultural and creative scene.

Taking place throughout October to November 2024 we have created a programme that will feature pop-up gigs and performances in secret locations in the area - shining a spotlight on the many artisans, makers and independent businesses based in the area.

"Living in Old Market for nearly a decade has made it feel like a part of me. I love the blend of its buildings, the unique characters, and the deep historical significance it holds for Bristol. My goal is to share with audiences a side of the city that’s often overlooked or taken for granted." - Tom Marshman, Artist

Businesses and shops will transform into DIY venues and will host pop-up performances from some of Bristol's finest live music, experimental sonics sounds & DJs. Line up so far includes Bristol's t l k, Copper Sounds + Sarahsson, Josephine Gyasi and James Storm. Pop up venues so far include pubs, hairdressers and retail shops.

Audiences can delve deep into Old Market's rich contemporary history through a new theatrical promenade performance devised by writer and artist, Edson Burton, in collaboration with artist Tom Marshman. Taking place in locations throughout Old Market, the audiences will uncover the captivating lives and stories that have shaped Bristol's Old Market into one of the city’s most memorable streets.

People can book Destination Old Market events through our website. A £5 deposit is required when booking. This deposit can either be refunded or exchanged for a voucher that can be spent in Old Market business taking part in the Destination Old Market.

Destination Old Market will take place on the following dates:

A Sound Odyssey:

Saturday 12 Oct

Saturday 02 Nov

A Theatrical Promenade

Sunday 13 Oct

Sunday 20 Oct

Sunday 27 Oct

Sunday 03 Nov

About Destination Old Market

Destination Old Market is produced by Trinity Community Arts and is part of the City Centre and High Streets Culture and Events Programme, funded by Bristol City Council and the West of England Combined Authority. The initiative aims to attract more visitors to the City Centre, boosting local businesses and the economy.

Summer Family Sessions - Image Credit: Alastair Brookes

Are you a maker? Want to share your skills, interests or hobbies with your community?

On the 05 October we are teaming up with Eastside Community Trust and Somali Kitchen to host a free celebration of community creativity. This free event will take place at Easton Community Centre from 10am –4pm as part of the UK-wide Fun Palaces weekend.

During the day, there will be community volunteers offering a range of skill swaps – from a Fix It cafe to craft activities. Alongside this we are looking for other community makers to host their own skill swaps. This could be anything from a crocheting workshop to a keynote on stamp collecting – the day is all about sharing your skills with your neighbours!

We are offering each maker £50 towards materials/costs of your choice

How to get involved:

• Fill out this form, letting us know what skill you want to share.
• Deadline is midnight on Sunday 15th September.
• If you have any questions, please contact esther@trinitybristol.org.uk

Event information

• Fun Palace, 05 October 2024
• Easton Community Centre, Kilburn Street BS5 6AW
• Cost – free no registration required – just turn up
• Click here to find out more

Experience the magic of sand animation as Oksana creates breathtaking pictures in real time from sparkling grains of sand, all accompanied to beautiful musical compositions. With a simple wave of her hands, she transforms the sand into enchanting worlds conveying her soul and artistry

In the first act, you'll be mesmerized by a sand animation that brings to life the story of Oscar Wilde's The Star-Child, with audio narration in both Ukrainian and English.

Finally, in the second act, the sand animation will present a Prayer for Ukraine, which is the artist's interpretations of current events aimed to raise awareness about the war in Ukraine.

All funds raised at the event will go to support Ukraine.

For inquiries, please contact here.

Storytelling Sessions - Image Credit: Francisco Vicaria

Over the summer, as part of our Communities and Neighbourhood's programme, we hosted a series of free storytelling and movements session for parent/carers living in or around local neighbourhood, Stapleton Road.

The sessions where developed by Hibaq and Suad, who have recently joined the Trinity Team as Community Connectors. Community Connectors activate conversations with residents living within Trinity's locality which in turn help shape activities at Trinity.

Keen to encourage local families to spend creative time together during the summer break from school, Hibaq and Suad devised a four week programme of free-to-access activities that used storytelling and movement to explore and share stories of culture and heritage. Hibaq and Suad then invited families whose children attend local primary school, Easton CE Academy (one of three schools in the Cultural Alliance) to come along.

"I’ve had a lot of things on my mind this week, but here I forget everything, I relax" - Feedback, Participant, Storytelling Sessions

During the sessions parents and children took part in singing traditional songs, creating movement and dances. Hester Welch, the lead artist during the sessions, observed that during the sessions "families explored different ways of uncovering and sharing stories, building confidence in themselves and their surroundings, and celebrating these skills".

As well as using storytelling and movement to create connections between mothers and children, the sessions allowed space for women to have 'focus time' - a space to connect and express themselves in a calm, quiet environment while their children happily worked together elsewhere, creating dances and artwork to share back to them.

Across the four week project, we welcomed 45 participants from 12 families - all of whom live within a 20min walk of the Trinity Centre.

Read more about our commitment to celebrating, platforming and developing community creativity or find out what events are coming up as part of our Community & Neighbourhoods programme, including storytelling, singing, craft and drama drop-in workshops at our September Garden Party.

Join us for three workshops exploring creative ways to enjoy nature around us.

Take pictures and share thoughts as we create simple films together with Shanti Sherson (Wellspring Settlement) and Jon Aitken (Watershed), our facilitators for these sessions.

We will be working from the beautiful garden at the Lawrence Hill Health Centre, Hassell Drive, BS2.

This will be a chance for us to share time together, enjoy and capture our surroundings.

Dates: Wednesday 4th, 11^th & 18^th September 10am - midday (arrive from 9.45am for refreshments and to meet everyone).

Places are limited. To find out more or to sign up, contact Jen on jen@trinitybristol.org.uk or call 0117 935 1200

Actvitities include:

• music
• activities for children, face painting and bouncy castle
• freshly cooked Jamaican food
• cream teas and cakes
• a visit from a fire engine

All of this is for everyone in the community to enjoy

If you would like to volunteer, please contact newtownlive20@outlook.com. Volunteers will receive a free meal and drink on the day

This street party is a collaboration between Newtown Network and Lou Lou British, Salvation Army, Trinity Tabernacle Church, and Lawrence Hill Health Centre.

St Pauls Carnival Panel Discussion at Glastonbury Festival 2024 - Image Credit: Khali Ackford

Trinity is committed to creating ways in which citizens can take an active role in shaping arts and culture. As part of this commitment we are connecting with leading voices in the cultural sector to ask them to share their thoughts on the different civic and democratic tools that we as citizens can access. In the second in our series of opinion pieces exploring civic participation LaToyah McAllister-Jones, Executive Director of St Pauls Carnival, reflects on her experiences of using various tools to facilitate democratic decision-making.

Opinion: Voices in Decision-Making, LaToyah McAllister-Jones

I have always been attracted to work and play that enables people to have a voice. To be heard. After years of working with marginalised groups, from managing accommodation services for street homeless people to community organising in Hackney, I have developed an interest in the right to influence decisions being made about our lives.

One of the most interesting things about leading a community arts organisation is just how integral the community is to our work. St Pauls Carnival CIC is merely a custodian for the iconic event; we provide a stage and the community fills those spaces. Carnival celebrates African Caribbean talent in St Pauls and beyond as well as our culture and heritage. Our communities continue the traditions of our ancestors using music, dance and storytelling to share lived experiences and connect to our heritage. This is one of the most important things about our event: it allows us to tell our own stories, in our own words, using our voices.

In 2021, I was asked by Involve to facilitate   Bristol City Council's Citizens’ Assembly supporting policy development in housing, health inequalities and transport as the city emerged from Covid. The process was new to me, and I loved the way it cut through many of the challenges that we often come up against when engaging communities:

• Participants are randomly selected, and usually aren’t experts in the central assembly topic. There is a process to ensure that all participants are able to meaningfully contribute to the discussions, and this is critical to the success of an assembly.
• The process seeks to facilitate consensus, rather than debate which tends to have a winner and a loser.
• Participants are encouraged to explore what their real priorities are and what they might be prepared to forego for those priorities.
• Assemblies bring together a diverse range of people who you wouldn’t necessarily find together in a traditional social setting. This creates an opportunity for vastly differing viewpoints to be heard and influence how others participants might think about a topic.

St Pauls Carnival are currently delivering a Citizens’ Assembly for Culture in partnership with Trinity Community Arts, Citizens In Power and West Of England Combined Authority. The idea developed just as we were coming out of the pandemic and thinking about the lessons learnt; particularly the role of community. Together, we were curious about what it would look like to use the assembly process - democratic, person-centred and thinking about strengths of a place, its people and its assets - to reimagine what the cultural offer could look like in the South West region.

Democratic decision-making allows citizens to actively contribute to the discourse that shapes their communities. We also believe culture is experienced by everyone, in many different ways, and everyone should be able to access the culture that represents them. If this is to be the ambition, it is vital that we put people at the centre of that process. This means understanding how people experience culture, what it means to them and, as cultural leaders, asking ‘how can we reflect this in our approach and programming?’

The new Labour Government expressed an interest in the use of Citizens’ Assemblies earlier this year, and the format has been used to unpack challenging issues like abortion in Ireland. The South West region is already embedding this approach into how we speak to our communities, and we are at the forefront of using assemblies to understand how we deliver for everyone, and not just those who can afford it or who have easy access to culture.

Our Citizens’ Assembly for Culture project offers an exciting opportunity to create a new approach to engaging people in the cultural life of a place. The Assembly will take place in Spring 2025 as a central programme within Culture West, funded by the West of England Combined Authority and Arts Council South West. The recommendations coming from this Assembly will become part of the regional approach to delivering a citizen-led cultural offer.

Find out more about the Citizens' Assembly for Culture project:

• Read the first piece in this series about civic participation: Edson Burton’s exploration of why voting matters
• Sign up to an online information session with the Citizens' Assembly team
• Email Imogen@trinitybristol.org.uk to join our Citizens For Culture mailing list
• Read our blogs to find out more about the Citizens' Assembly project

Nature in Newtown - Image Credit: Alastair Brookes

Throughout the summer, we’ve been working with our Community Connectors to programme activities for the local community. Working with Shanti Pant, our Community Connector for Newtown, we devised a programme that encouraged residents local to Newtown to spend time together, enjoying and learning about local green spaces through gentle exercise and nature walks.

“You just don’t know what is on your doorstep” - Feedback, Nature in Newtown Participant

Newtown is one of three local neighbourhoods that Trinity is working closely with over the course of this year, to develop a greater understanding of residents’ interests and experiences, and how we can offer support to share creative activity. As a Newtown resident, and nature-lover, Shanti was keen to share her experience of how spending time in nature can provide a simple way to support wellbeing and connect with others, so we worked with her to create this project.

Nature in Newtown ran for ten weeks from June - August, led by Subitha Baghirathan, and supported by Shanti. With Lawrence Hill Health Centre as the groups’ meeting point, Subitha shared a range of wellbeing exercises and activities for participants to experience including; tai chi, vagus nerve breathing, mindfulness activities and listening walks. Through rain and shine, we welcomed ten local people over the weeks, enthusiastically sharing their knowledge of the area, and learning new things from each other.

We found out that there is plenty of nature surrounding Newtown, and new places to discover too. A walk through some tunnels - shared by one member of the group - contained beautiful tiles documenting ‘The Industries and Crafts of Bristol’s Rich Industrial Heritage’, a walk along the railway path encouraged group members to use Subitha’s tree book to identify different species by their leaves, and a visit to Trinity’s garden enabled the group to meet Fleur, our garden project facilitator, who showed them around the space and talked about our volunteer programme.

Over the weeks, participants reported an increased feeling of connectedness to their local community, confidence to explore the local area, and confidence to engage with others.

For the second part of this project, we’re inviting practitioners Shanti Sherson (Wellbeing at Wellspring Settlement) and Jon Aitken (filmmaker at Watershed) to join us at Lawrence Hill Health Centre’s community garden, for Filmmaking in Newtown.

Over three sessions in September, Shanti and Jon will lead nature-based activities and help participants create simple short films together that document our connection to nature.

Speakers and guests

• Holly Jacks, Choir Leader, Wild Goose Choir
• Emma Harvey: Citizens Assembly & advocating for community spaces
• Jenny Bodnarchuk: Speak Out: Amplifying Youth voice through arts
• Jen Farmer and Edson Burton: Co-creating a community offer

Refreshments

Drinks and nibbles available from 5:30pm 

Sign up information

All welcome to come along and celebrate the organisations and people who empower Trinity's values

AGM attendees will be able to access a limited discount code for Kabaka Pyramid (10 Oct), event registration required.

Discover the impact of our work

Review our Annual Report 2023/24 to learn about our diverse calendar of events, progress in extending our reach, strengthened partnerships, and commitment to enabling Creative Expression for All.

Click here to explore the report

Become a Trinity Member

Membership at Trinity is for those who take an active interest in the Centre as a community and cultural hub. Whether you are a local resident, a regular hirer or a promoter, or you just want to give a bit back to the community.

Click here to find out more about membership and sign up

AGM papers for Members

2023/24 Minutes

2023/24 AGM Notice

2023/24 Draft Annual Accounts (under review by Board of Trustees for approval at meeting)

Bristol Harbour Festival 2024 - Image Credit: Amy Fern

We were delighted to be welcomed back to programme the vibrant dance stage at this year's Bristol Harbour Festival - one of the biggest events in the city welcoming over 250,000 visitors across the weekend.

'This cocreated dance piece has been a wonderful creative project that brought dancers together from different backgrounds from across Bristol to create a unique, emotive piece' - Penny Marie, Dance Workshop Facilitator

Taking over the stage in Queens Square, we platformed a huge range of dance styles and traditions present in Bristol’s dance community; from Indian to Irish Dance, Voguing to Turkish Belly Dancing.

Some highlights from the weekend included Anna K, Bristol Ballroom Community, D-Wild Fitness and RSVP Drummers. We also platformed established resident dance groups based at The Trinity Centre, such as Gerry’s Attic, a dance group for older people who rehearse at Trinity every week.

In the lead-up to Bristol Harbour Festival, we commissioned Dance Facilitator, Penny Marie, to lead a series of participatory dance workshops in which attendees co-created a new dance piece to be performed at the festival. Across five workshops dancers of all abilities and backgrounds collectively devised a 15 minute dance piece entitled 'Our Light Within' that they performed on the Saturday of the festival.

Alongside this, HYPE Dance, who offer weekly street dance sessions at Trinity, hosted the Ultimate Dance Championships 2024 – a competition open to all dance styles for ages 12 and above. Winners of this competition showcased their dancing skills in front of the Harbour Festival audience and a panel of judges that included professional dancers Bethany Kyle, Tesleem Adeyemi and Candice Scott. Alongside this, HYPE brought performances from Lil Hype, Hype Dance and Hype Carnival Squad.

We wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who made the takeover at Bristol Harbour Festival 2024 such a success; from the facilitators, the talented dancers, the technical team behind-the-scenes, our partners Movema, Gerry’s Attic and HYPE Dance, and of course to everyone who came along to watch the performances and support dance in Bristol.

Programming the Dance Stage is one of the many ways we are creating pathways for communities to connect and celebrate together though culture. Click here to find out more.

Sign up to a free workshop series with Kabbo Ferdinand – an African Indigenous storyteller and musician, and Natasha Gatward an immersive performance artist and eco-conscious costume designer.

In the three-day workshops you will learn about creating your own performance, from devising the story to designing lighting - this immersive course will give you the opportunity to create a performance piece from start to finish.

Plus, on completion of attendance (three sessions) you will receive a £100 voucher

Attendees will have an opportunity to showcase their performance at the Garden Party - A Community Celebration

Workshop details:

• Tuesday 30 July, 11am 3pm
• Wednesday 30 July, 11am 3pm
• Thursday 01 Aug, 11am 3pm

Food will be provided

Reasonable transport costs to the workshops will be covered

How to take part:

Register online using this form

If you would like any help with completing the form, please email liamc@trinitybristol.org.uk

About Speak Out

Speak Out is a creative development project exploring art and social justice. It is funded by the We Move Fund created by Children in Need and BBC 1XTRA

Head to Trinity for our end of summer community celebration

Set in our historic grounds this family friendly day will have creative arts workshops, performances from local and emerging artists and activities for children and young people.

Line up

Workshop Corner 12pm -4pm

Get involved with permaculture workshops in the garden, creative workshops and explore crafts, youth theatre and more in Fyfe Hall with artists Ruth Ramsay, Sayambrita Mukherjee and local creatives at Threefold.

Next-Gen Takeover - 12:30pm - 4pm

Check out performances from young people across Bristol as they take to the stage.Featuring performances from ACE, Basement & Trinity's Children and Young People Programme.

The Den 12pm -7pm

Hear from our local Councillor Yassin Mohamud and Shona Jemphrey as well as creative sharings from exciting Trinity projects featuring storytelling, singing and the Citizen's Assembly Programme. 

Music Lineup:
Indian Man, Sisanda & Ru, Bigfoot Brass Band, and Soufian Saihi.

Shop Local    12pm – 7pm

Featuring a fantastic mix of stalls featuring PBA Studios, Bristol Vintage, East Bristol Books, cherelle dion, So Mi jewellery, Haus of Coco / Fancy Finance and many more!

More information

Access - if you have access requirements please let one of our team know how we can help.

Play your part in Trinity's future and support events like Garden Party, with a suggested donation of £3 per person.

Please note that no alcohol and no dogs can be brought on site. Bag searches will take place.

About Trinity Presents

This is part of Trinity Presents - our in-house programme of music and performance, bringing world-class artists and emerging talent to inner-city audiences.

Expect the usual great tunes, great company and a chance to see all your friends or make lots of new ones. Some of our members come for a while – some stay the whole night.

Music will come from DJs (Will, David, A-J) who are here to get you on the dance floor. You can let one of the Misfits Team on the day if you have a special music request. There is plenty of space to sit back and watch if you prefer and the bar will be open all evening (18+, ID required for buying drinks).

There is some parking on site, you just need to pay at the car park machine or via the Ringo app for how many hours you stay. If the car park is full, you can also park on nearby street parking.

We can’t wait to see you there.

The Misfit’s Guide to a Good Night Out

Travel Safely:

• Make sure someone knows where you are going and when you expect to be back.

• If you need help booking a taxi let one of the Misfits Staff know.

Know your limits:

• We all love dancing at Rhythm of The Night but it is also good to take a break when you need to.

• Keep yourself safe by not drinking more than you can manage.

Enjoy yourself and allow others to enjoy themselves too:

• We all have the right to have a good time. If you don’t feel comfortable because of someone else’s actions let the Misfits Team or Venue Staff know and we can help.

• Keep an eye out on other people you are with. If we all look out for each other, we can all have a good time.

• Respect each other's space and give each other room.

Are you ready to experience a weekend like no other? Immerse yourself in the vibrancy and depth of West African and African Diaspora cultures over a jam-packed weekend of:

• 25+ artists from Senegal / Guinea / Burkina Faso / Nigeria / Brazil and More
• Dance, Percussion & Singing Workshops
• Live Music Concerts
• Saturday “Come Together As One” Performance Evening & Party
• Sunday  "Teranga" Closing Event Celebration with all our artists
• African Food & Stalls
• Visual Art Installation

Come down and let loose while supporting Bristol's independent media.

This is a family-friendly event with a creche and kids activities to keep attendees of all ages busy.

From 5pm -8pm their will be, food, a live podcast recording, and activities, community stalls and a collage making workshop in The Den, and from 8pm onwards, the dancing begins with DJ sets in the upstairs Fyfe Hall space.