Any movement which is ignorant of its own history is a prisoner of other people’s history. We can’t possibly win the future unless we keep our hands on our own past. (Gwyn Alf Williams)

https://www.brh.org.uk/site/event-series/bristol-radical-history-festival-2024/

Free entry to all of Saturdays and Sunday events apart from Sundays film screening.

We are delighted to announce the 6th annual Bristol Radical History Festival. This year, due to popular demand, the festival has expanded to two days over the weekend of 20-21 April. The festival is hosted by two excellent Bristol venues, M Shed, the social history museum on the city’s historic harbourside and the Cube Microplex the volunteer-run Arts centre and cinema. Across two days and four themes, we can promise talks, walks, exhibitions, stalls, the never less than uplifting Red Notes choir and, on Sunday night, a special film screening. Watch this space too for details of our pre-festival aperitif, Opening the Archives, on Saturday 13 April. We warmly invite you to join us…

At M Shed – Saturday 20 April – 10.30am-4.30pm
War Zones: Bristolians who went to struggle for a better world
From the Haitian revolution to present day struggles in Myanmar and Syria, by way of the International Brigades in the Spanish civil war, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the Zapatista rebellion, these talks will reveal the stories and motivations of those courageous souls who have undertaken international solidarity, put their lives in danger and even taken up arms in the cause of social justice worldwide.

Workhouses and Madhouses: Histories of mental health and social care in Bristol
Investigating Bristol’s response to the poor and the mentally ill over the centuries, we show how the treatment of mental health and social care in the city changed in response to community pressure. From Mason’s Madhouse, an 18th century lunatic asylum in Fishponds, and scandals over the treatment of the sick and mentally ill in the Eastville and Bedminster workhouses during the Victorian period to hidden histories of the Muller Orphanage, we find out how the vulnerable were often trapped in intertwining exploitation. The more enlightened approach of the Victorian Glenside hospital, now the site of a fascinating museum of mental health, and the story of how some of Bristol’s most marginalised women defied psychiatric orthodoxy to create the user-led Bristol Crisis Service for Women in the 1980s, show us how much has changed and yet how much there is still to do.

Doing Radical History: a DIY guide
What is radical history? How can you do it? Find out in a series of talks, panels and multimedia presentations showing how anyone can chose a subject close to home and start their own research project. Find out how to ‘dig where you stand’ by uncovering treasures in your local archive, set up your own publishing press, create a community oral history project, celebrate overlooked heroes with commemorative plaques, make TV history from below and create educational resources that teach about the power of everyday folk. Citizen historians from the Bristol Radical History Group and beyond will share their knowledge, enthusiasm and experience to set you on your way to becoming the most radical historian you know!

It’s not just history talks…
History walks…leaving from M Shed
The real story of the Countering Colston campaign: find out what really happened
The 1831 Bristol reform riots: a new soundscape experience at the sites of riot
Bristolians vs the Blackshirts: militant anti-fascists in the 1930s
Exhibitions…in M Shed
Riot 1831! – The launch of an expanded exhibition in the protest gallery examining the Bristol riot
TTEACH – a display of the Transatlantic Trafficked Enslaved African Corrective Historical plaques
Mike Baker the ‘plaque maker’ – a celebration of the Bristolian artist, craftsman and historian
The 1831 reform riots in the southwest – a touring display unmasking disturbances in Somerset, Dorset, Bath, Newport and Worcester.
There will also be stalls with history books and merchandise from local and national groups.

As always, the festival at M Shed is a free event with no tickets or booking required.

Sunday events:

At the Cube Microplex – Sunday 21 April – 2.00pm-8.00pm

Republicans and Revolutionaries
Further talks reveal a hidden history of the Irish revolution with a Bristol connection; the development of autonomous working-class education; and two new radical histories of the Spanish Civil War, the first investigating the role of Irish Republicans in the international brigades and the second based on oral histories of women who fought in the conflict.

Running times:

2:00pm News From Nowhere: The Revolutionary History of Literacy    John Casey
2:40pm Fighting Women: Interviews with veterans of the Spanish Civil War Isabella Lorusso
3:40pm Fighting for two Republics : Irish volunteers in the British Battalion, International Brigades  Joe Mooney
4:20pm Revolution and What Happens After: Transgenerational Aftershocks  ​Ellen McWilliams

Our friends from the Bristol Squatted project will be leading a guided walk leaving from the Cube and taking us through the hidden history of squatting in St Pauls, Montpelier and Stokes Croft.

6pm Walter Rodney: What They Don’t Want You to Know - Film screening - £5

We are also delighted to offer in the early evening a rare screening of the new film Walter Rodney: What They Don’t Want You to Know at 6pm, followed by a discussion about the life and death of the revolutionary Guyanese academic and Black Power activist, by co-director Arlen Harris and Luke Daniels of Caribbean Labour Solidarity. Tickets for film screening are £5 get them here: https://www.headfirstbristol.co.uk/whats-on/the-cube/sun-21-apr-walter-rodney-what-they-don-t-want-you-to-know-106630#e106630


More info here: https://www.brh.org.uk/site/event-series/bristol-radical-history-festival-2024/

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Entry requirements: no age restrictions — Read more — Read less