Yesterday I went for a walk in our city Bristol with my siblings. They don't do many city walks and having lived in UK for practically all their life, there are some local places that they have never visited before. For example, these colourful houses are the second most iconic view of the city. (If you want to know what the most iconic view is, you can check out my other post here.) My siblings often drive by these houses, but always directly alongside the road. They never get to see it across the harbour like this.
Strolling to the M Shed
We continued strolling along the harbour under the chilly autumn sky. It's hard to believe that the leaves are falling already, Christmas will be here very soon! It took us about half an hour to arrive to M Shed. This is part of the city where the old meets the new. The old part is the busy dock dating back to the 13th century up to the 1970s. M Shed was one of the two old cargo sheds at the docks. In recent years it's been repurposed into a social history museum, and I can tell you, we have a lot of history here!! The new part is the many office and residential blocks. I think all cities in UK like to redevelop around their river and harbourside, it always seems to be very popular with real estate developers.
There are four big cranes outside M Shed that were used to unload goods from the ships. In the heydays in the 50s, there were 40 of these cranes along the dockside, it must have been quite a scene, and a very busy port. The 4 cranes that remain now, numbered 29 to 32 are owned by the local council and are part of our city heritage. I've been to M Shed quite a few times before, but have never been inside the museum, today was a good opportunity to do that. I even got to go out to the terrace on the third floor to see things from a higher level.
M Shed Museum
For those who aren't aware, Bristol's history is most infamously linked with the slave trade that dates back to the 17th century. Four centuries later, this still pains many people in the city, as a lot of the city was built from wealth earned from the slave trade. Traces of this infamous wealth can be found in many buildings and streets around the city.
One most notable reminder of the notorious past was a statue erected in the middle of the city centre. Edward Colston made a lot of money from the slave trade in the hey days. He also contributed much of his wealth back to the city. Buildings, schools, streets were named after him, and of course he was honoured with a statue. The statue has always been an eyesore for many locals, and in recent decades there were calls for it to be removed. Things came to a head in June 2020 during the height of the BLM movement. Protesters toppled his statue and threw it down the harbourside. The statue is now on permanent display at M Shed, not as an honour to a philanthropist, but as part of the city's history. The display may still divide people, but you can't change or hide history.
Another part of significant social history was the Bristol Bus Boycott in 1963. Back in those days, racial discrimination was still legal in the UK and the local bus company in Bristol refused to employ black people as drivers or bus conductors. A group of African-Caribbean migrants in Bristol started to campaign against this discrimination and organised to boycott the Bristol buses. The boycott garnered a lot of attention across the country and led to laws to ban racial discrimination in the UK forever.
Due to our past, social movements and activism play a big part in Bristol's city life. That's not to say there are a lot of riots going on all the time, I don't think we get any more than other big cities in UK. As stated by one academic, "Protest is very richly woven into the city's history and I think the people of Bristol today are influenced by that narrative of protest." Source BBC
Let's move on to something more upbeat as Snowpea would love this 😀
Alex Chinneck sculpture
The main objective of our city walk was to see some recently installed street art by an artist called Alex Chinneck. These are big metal sculptures like this iconic red British telephone booth that's been twisted.
And Alphabetti Spaghetti. Another iconic British object, the red post box. This one is tied into a knot.
And the last two are two street lights called First Kiss at last light. The first one is a pair of street lights, one tied onto the other like they're hugging one another. Here's me taking a photo of it.
And this pair here is tied up as a pretty bow. I love how these last two pieces are not only creative, but also functional.
Castle Bridge
And finally, after walking for nearly 8km, from day to night, we headed across the Castle Bridge to round off our city walk for the day.
