The Island
Former police station turned creative playground
The Island is a vibrant multi-use venue in the heart of Bristol city centre. Once occupied by Bridewell Police Station, it’s been in the hands of community arts charity Artspace Lifespace since 2008.
Home to over 100 resident artists, The Island boasts a diverse mix of spaces and facilities including dance and circus training studios, a sewing room and an art gallery, while doubling up as a thriving events venue – covering live music, workshops and classes, immersive performance art, and more.
After dark the Edwardian cells come alive with experimental club nights, recent highlights including Timedance’s forward-thinking techno and bass nights, jungle, soul and Afrobeats from Nightspace, and late-night sessions from leftfield festival En Masse.
The 300-capacity venue is at basement level and is not wheelchair accessible. Free tickets are available for personal assistants. See https://artspace.uk/venue/the-island/ for details of the different event spaces within the building.
Home to over 100 resident artists, The Island boasts a diverse mix of spaces and facilities including dance and circus training studios, a sewing room and an art gallery, while doubling up as a thriving events venue – covering live music, workshops and classes, immersive performance art, and more.
After dark the Edwardian cells come alive with experimental club nights, recent highlights including Timedance’s forward-thinking techno and bass nights, jungle, soul and Afrobeats from Nightspace, and late-night sessions from leftfield festival En Masse.
The 300-capacity venue is at basement level and is not wheelchair accessible. Free tickets are available for personal assistants. See https://artspace.uk/venue/the-island/ for details of the different event spaces within the building.
What's On At The Island
— The Island
pop
classical
salsa
bhangra
breakbeat
— The Island
exhibition
exhibition-opening
Get a feel for The Island
Our recent recommendations for The Island
A vital reading by multi-award-winning Palestinian poet Batool Abu Akleen from her acclaimed debut collection 48kg. Akleen’s heart-rending body of work chronicles daily brutalities of life in occupied Gaza, shifting between the mundane and the surreal to find “a language for the unspeakable”.
Poetry Reading: 48kg by Batool Abu Akleen at The Island.
Oblig is a bona fide legend of London’s grime, dubstep and garage scene. Strap in for peak-time, heavyweight riddims, paired with AliA’s new-school dubstep and two rifling b2b sets loaded with pummelling soundsystem grooves. Think Riz La Teef, Neffa T, Grandmixxer & Manga Saint Hilare… huge!
Journey deep into the thrumming edges of bass, techno and beyond as Seasoning bring their off kilter antics back to The Island.
Come toast a decade of Timedance, Batu’s ever-morphing imprint for dancefloor abstractions and off-kilter brilliance. Inside: Willikens dives deep into melted-acid odysseys, the perfect foil to Metrist’s corkscrewing club chaos + Northfield’s Mackenzie seals the night with riffling techno slammers. Unmissable.
Timedance celebrates its 10th anniversary on home turf
PWYC! BPFF and Malu Halasa curate an essential collection of Palestinian resistance art and visual intifada, from post-Nakba icons like Sliman Mansour to the contemporary creative subvertising of Khaled El Haber.
An evocative exhibition showcasing the resurgence of Palestinian political posters as powerful works of art during the war on Gaza.
Are mushrooms the best communicators on Earth? House of Boussé daddy Gender Criminal presents a new work exploring mycelium networks as modes of belonging, unearthing learnings from the undergrowth of fungal connectivity to help strengthen our communities via immersive drag, choreography and sonic storytelling.
I want a world where we all belong