Events Diary

This is where forthcoming events are listed. If you would like to receive email notification of events please ask to join the email list using the form on the contact page.

You can also see a list of Event Series and a list of all the events we have ever done listed chronologically.

Current & forthcoming Event Series:

Miscellaneous 2026 : Thursday 1st January to Thursday 31st December, 2026
Bristol Radical History Festival 2026 : Saturday 25th April to Sunday 26th April, 2026

2026 International Women’s Day Celebration

Date: Sat 7th Mar, 2026

Time: 11:00am to 5:00pm

Venue: City Hall, BS1 5TR

Series: Miscellaneous 2026

BRHG will be running their book stall in the Main Hall all day and..... Lord Mayor's Reception | Workshops 14:00 – 14:45 | In Search of Her Stories: using archival records to research women’s history The Bristol Radical History Group explores how to undertake women’s history using a range of resources. The talk draws on group member Judie’s current research into Bristol’s Magdalene Homes and the control of working class women’s lives and bodies in the 19th century. If you would like pre-book any […]

The Spies Who Ruined Our Lives

Date: Fri 27th Mar, 2026

Time: 7:00pm to 9:30pm

Venue: Curzon Cinema, Clevedon, BS21 6NN

Series: Miscellaneous 2026

In collaboration with the Bristol Radical History Group, we take a deep-dive into the SpyCops scandal. For over 40 years, British undercover agents spied on people in the UK and many other countries. The police unit infiltrated more than 1,000 activist groups (and victims including the family of Stephen Lawrence). To carry out their spying, the police stole the identities of deceased children. Under false identities, they started relationships with women, had sexual relations and even children. […]

Fighting Women: Interviews with veterans of the Spanish Civil War

Date: Wed 8th Apr, 2026

Time: 7:00pm to 8:30pm

Venue: Newport Rising Hub, NP20 1JN

With: Isabella Lorusso

Series: Not in a series

Isabella Lorusso author of Fighting Women: Interviews with veterans of the Spanish Civil War will be speaking about her collection of interviews from the 1990s with women veterans of the fight against fascism in Spain in the 1930s. Fighting women is a choral book, a set of interviews conducted with Spanish women who took part in the civil war. Some took up arms and fought on the front, others joined the POUM, Free Women or different anarchist groups. They all fought against Francoism and for the […]

Gafael Tir – A history of land rights and protest in Wales

Date: Fri 17th Apr, 2026

Time: 8:00pm

Venue: The Cube, BS2 8JD

With: Gwilym Morus-Baird, Owen Shiers

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Gafael Tir, the Welsh sister show to the popular Three Acres and a Cow, is presented in collaboration with Bristol Radical History Group. The show explores the history of ‘y werin’ (the Welsh common folk) and their struggle for a better life. Their tales are told and old ballads sung as we meet kings, crossdressing farmers, radical preachers, land workers and unions; a thousand years of history. Drawing on Welsh folk arts, the show touches on politics, human rights, freedom of thought and […]

Abolitionist, Quaker, Sailor, Dwarf and Revolutionary – Becoming Benjamin Lay

Date: Thu 23rd Apr, 2026

Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Venue: Friends Meeting House, BS2 9DB

With: Marcus Rediker

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Benjamin Lay (1682-1759) was a Quaker abolitionist (and dwarf) and one of the first people to demand the immediate emancipation of enslaved people worldwide. Scorned in his own day and since for his radicalism, he was until recently almost completely unknown among historians and the general public. Becoming Benjamin Lay, directed by Tony Buba, asks, what can Lay’s life tell us about living with courage and conviction in dark times? We are delighted to have historian and writer Marcus Rediker […]

Book Launch: Freedom Ship – The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea

Date: Fri 24th Apr, 2026

Time: 6:00pm to 7:30pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Marcus Rediker

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Freedom Ship is a gripping history of the enslaved African Americans who stowed away on vessels that carried them to liberty. Up to 100,000 fugitives successfully fled the horrors of bondage in the American South. Many moved northwards through a network of secret routes and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. Thousands of others, most of them completely unknown, escaped by sea. Their dramatic accounts of whispered conspiracy and billowing sails make Freedom Ship essential and […]

Woman Magic 2026

Ecofeminist posters from women artists weaving between Bristol, Wales & Sweden (1968-1983)

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

‘Moving from politics to magick we were still radical in our thinking’, in the words of artists Beverley Skinner, Anne Berg, Marika Tell and Monica Sjöö The works include radical visionary symbolism that mitigates against ecological crisis and social justice, openly campaigning for marginalised groups. The group of women artists that formed initially Woman Power then Woman Magic in Bristol in the 70s were advocates for a collaborative society that valued this form of interconnectivity, holistic […]

Documenting Bristol communities in the 1980s

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Carrie Hitchcock

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

A selection of social documentary photographs of community life in Bristol in the 1980s by Carrie Hitchcock. Featuring Barton Hill Youth Club, Lockleaze and St Werburghs in the 1980s and 1990s.

False Narratives

When dubious images set the political agenda

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Mike Jempson

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Over a 30-year period Bristol-based journalism ethics charity The MediaWise Trust challenged national newspapers over inaccurate, intrusive and unethical coverage. One method was to investigate and expose stories that distorted facts in a bid to set political agendas. The examples in this exhibition reflect just a few of the topics the Trust took on. Its Refugees Asylum-Seekers & the Media (RAM) Project (1999-2005) and the video On the Receiving End featuring exiled journalists had a […]

Aspirations of Women

Reflections from those who were schoolgirls in the South West in the early 1980s

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Wendy Hurley

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

This new exhibition uncovers valuable life stories as women from working class backgrounds reflect upon their experiences within a large comprehensive school. These marginalised voices give personal accounts which expose overarching themes and experiences, including gender discrimination and a rigid educational establishment. They also consider how the expectations imposed upon them during these years, to a degree, shaped their early adult lives. Many tell how later in life they went on to […]

Putting Welsh history on TV

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 10:30am to 11:20am

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Colin Thomas

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

This talk with video extracts, will look at attempts to turn the complexities of Welsh history into accessible television. It will include clips from Horrible Histories, Huw Edwards’s The Story of Wales and the ground-breaking and much-loved series, The Dragon Has Two Tongues in which Wynford Vaughan Thomas and Professor Gwyn Alf Williams offered two very different versions of Welsh history. The latter series, produced and directed by Colin Thomas in 1985, was recently described by […]

The General Strike in Bristol: an introduction

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 10:30am to 11:20am

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Rob Whitfield, Henry Fowler

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

In May 2026 we mark the centenary of the General Strike. This talk will cover the events of those nine days in Bristol and put them in their national context. We will also look at the miners' lock-out which began before and lasted longer than the General Strike.

War on Democracy: Loyalist Propaganda in Britain after the French Revolution

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 10:30am to 11:20am

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Steve Poole

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

When groups advocating democratic reform in Britain grew and prospered after revolution in France in the 1790s, William Pitt’s government responded with a ruthless programme of repression. Centred on prosecutions for seditious language and High Treason, the loyalist offensive was nourished throughout by anti-gallican, anti-republican propaganda. Tom Paine was burnt in effigy the length and breadth of the country, reformers beaten up by gangs of loyalist thugs, conservative tracts widely […]

Copper, Coal and Colonizers: The Welsh in the West Country and their impact on Bristol’s past

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 11:00am to 1:00pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Mark Steeds

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Exploring the Welsh people and places that helped shape the city’s history, from colonists to Chartists, enslavers to abolitionists – with the odd pirate and colonial governor thrown in for good measure. A two hour walk from M Shed to the Colston stump via Welsh Back and the Llandoger Trow. Meet outside the front of M Shed.

Red Notes Choir

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 11:20am

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Red Notes Choir

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Catch Bristol’s wonderful Red Notes Choir, who will support the Bristol Radical History Festival by performing at 11:20am. They’ll be singing in the Ground Floor Foyer by the M Shed main entrance. The Red Notes Choir is a Bristol-based socialist choir. They have a repertoire of songs from around the world on historical, union, peace, green and human rights themes. We use the streets of Bristol and further afield to spread our message of fighting for the rights of working people, those who are […]

Curating the Colonial Past

Decolonisation and struggles over colonial archives

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 11:45am to 12:35pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Riley Linebaugh

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

In the early 1960s, British colonial administrations in East Africa organized the systematic destruction and removal of documents from colonies approaching independence. This exercise was later repeated resulting in the deposit of roughly 20,000 files from over 40 dependencies in secret storage in and around London, where they remained until a 2011 court case brought against the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office by survivors of the Kenyan Emergency. This talk considers struggles to conceal and […]

Jenkin Morgan: Chartist Scarecrow

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 11:45am to 12:35pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Ray Stroud

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

The aftermath of the armed Chartist rising in November 1839, which ended in fighting at the Westgate Hotel in Newport, saw the inevitable state repression unleashed. The stories of the Chartist leaders John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones, who were sentenced to death and then transported are well known, but what of the others? Jenkin Morgan has become part of the invisible landscape of Welsh Chartism. This Pillgwenlly milkman and tallow chandler was initially sentenced to be hung, […]

The 1926 miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean and the Somerset coalfield

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 11:45am to 12:35pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Ian Wright, Dave Chapple

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Women, Rough Music, and Direct Action during the 1926 lockout in the Forest of Dean Ian Wright will discuss the use of rough music and skimmington-style protest by miners' wives against blacklegs and the police during the 1926 miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean. The talk will then explore the subsequent occupation of Westbury Workhouse by around 300 women and children in response to the withdrawal of Poor Law relief for miners’ families. Resistance and resilience: the 1926 General Strike and […]

Rethinking the Rebecca Riots?

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 1:00pm to 1:50pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Rhian E. Jones

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

The Rebecca riots were a series of disturbances and direct action that spread across south-west Wales in the early 1840s. They were carried out by local farmers, workers and others who dressed in dramatic costumes and acted under the symbolic leadership of “Rebecca”. This talk will look at the success of the rioters in resisting the imposition of tolls on road travel, for which they are best remembered. But it will also show that “Rebeccaism” was a wide-ranging popular movement, generated by the […]

BBC rebels in the 1970s

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 1:00pm to 1:50pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Dr Lucy Goodison, Colin Thomas

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

The BBC is often portrayed by critical commentators as a monolith, inherently biased and strictly regulated from within. This characterisation both denies the agency of its workers, and deserves further investigation. This talk considers the BBC in the 1970s in Bristol and London, as government intervention in the Corporation increased, particularly over the representation of the conflict in Ireland. At the same time control over programme content was increased by the casualisation of programme […]

‘An industrial Red Cross’: Labour women’s support for the miners’ lockout in the south west.

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 1:00pm to 1:50pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: June Hannam

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

This talk will describe the setting up of the Women’s Committee for the Relief of Miners Wives and Children in London by the Labour Party Chief Woman Officer, Marion Phillips. It will then focus on the efforts of Labour women to raise funds and to organise relief in the southwest and the support they gave to relief committees in Bristol and in Radstock. It will suggest that the Lockout gave them the opportunity to demonstrate that they had the necessary skills to organise relief on a national […]

The General Strike in Gloucester and Swindon

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 2:15pm to 3:05pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Tony Conder, Stuart Butler

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Gloucester Docks, Sugar and Strife - Tony Conder As an industrial city Gloucester's industries were hit by the strike in 1926. The dock workers and boatmen of Gloucester played a key role in taking action and suffering in the aftermath. The business of the docks pitted powerful conservative forces who made no attempt to recognise the emergency against an almost cheeky gallantry by their striking workforce. A Railway Town and the General Strike: Nine Days in Swindon in May 1926 - Stuart Butler […]

Causes and Characters of the Chartist Riot in Llanidloes, Mid Wales in 1839

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 2:15pm to 3:05pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Nick Venti, Nia Griffiths

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

The Newport Rising in November 1839 is the most celebrated event in early Chartism linked to Wales. But it marked the disappointing end of a year which had opened with high expectations from the General Convention of the Industrious Classes and the presentation of the National Charter to Parliament. Less renowned, but no less significant, were events in Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire earlier in April, when attempts to arrest local Chartist leaders led to a riot in which the established forces of […]

How the news is made

Propaganda and self-censorship in the media

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 2:15pm to 3:05pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Dorothy Byrne, Nicholas Jones

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Seasoned media journalists Nicholas Jones and Dorothy Byrne give an inside look at how the news is made. A former BBC correspondent, Nicholas Jones reflects on the dangers of being overwhelmed by a tsunami of propaganda orchestrated by the UK’s mass media. Looking back on a 50-year career reporting on the home front, Jones describes the impact of the coverage fueled by the British press, from the 1982 Falklands War to the 1984 miners’ strike and the Brexit referendum of 2016. All too often the […]

‘Bread or Blood’ – The Merthyr Rising of 1831

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 3:30pm to 4:30pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

The talk will cover the explosive social, economic and political reasons behind the Merthyr Rising of 1831. The Merthyr Rising in 1831, was a rising not a riot, as viewed by the status quo. It was the most ferocious and bloody event in the history of Industrial Britain. It will conclude by looking at the main legacy of May 1831 and the reasons why we commemorate the events today.

The Renaissance in the Upside-Down “Archives” World

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 3:30pm to 4:30pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Ghada Dimashk, Barney Cullum

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

The war on Gaza has unfolded in real time across social media, where civilians have become primary producers of historical record. Yet these platforms operate through opaque systems of moderation, algorithmic filtering, and AI governance that shape what survives and what disappears. Archivist and Librarian at the Palestine Land Studies Centre at the American University of Beirut, Ghada Dimashk will examines what happens when the traditional logic of the archive is inverted—when evidence […]

Reflections on the General Strike

Date: Sat 25th Apr, 2026

Time: 3:30pm to 4:30pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Chris Bowkett, Henry Fowler, Sheila Caffrey, Steve Mills

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

What should we learn from the 1926 General Strike and what might the 2026 General Strike look like? Were the TUC fully to blame for the failure of the strike? Why does the labour movement memorialise our failures rather than our victories? What is the relevance of 1926 today? Chairing this discussion and Q&A is Chris Bowkett, a trade union activist, USDAW Bristol branch chair and contributor to the Bristol Radical History Group. Chris has recently written a pamphlet on the relationship […]

Imagining Otherwise: Utopia and the Work of Hope

Date: Sun 26th Apr, 2026

Time: 1:00pm to 1:40pm

Venue: The Cube, BS2 8JD

With: Kirsten Harris

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

How can imagined worlds offer hope and drive change? Utopian thinking has been described as “social dreaming,” but it is social dreaming that is put to work. Across literature, film, music, and art, creators have been energised by utopia’s capacity to interrogate the present and envision other possibilities. This talk explores how utopia functions as a form of creative collective imagination that shapes the possibilities of shared futures, drawing on examples from the late nineteenth and early […]

Patriots, volunteers and scabs: The 1926 General Strike in Bristol

Date: Sun 26th Apr, 2026

Time: 1:00pm

With: Chris Bowkett

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

For nine days in 1926, the country ground to a halt as over four million workers downed tools in support of the miners. Mapping the flashpoints from the 1926 General Strike in Bristol, this behind-the-scenes walk around the city centre delves into the hidden histories from the strike, the use of propaganda and how the state fought back. A 2-hour walk from Kingsley Hall on Old Market Street via the centre ending at the St James Barton - Bear Pit....(and then to the Cube for a drink, samosas and […]

Everything for Everyone

Intentional Communities and the Utopian Impulse

Date: Sun 26th Apr, 2026

Time: 1:40pm to 2:20pm

Venue: M Shed, BS1 4RN

With: Chris Coates

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

From the Diggers to the Hippies via the Chartists, Owenites and Tolstoyan Anarchists the utopian impulse has resulted in literally hundreds of new communities across the UK. Drawing on 30 years of researching and living communally the talk will explore the past, present and future of intentional community in Britain.

Utopian Bristol: Visions of Our City from the Middle Ages to the Far Future

Date: Sun 26th Apr, 2026

Time: 2:40pm to 3:20pm

Venue: The Cube, BS2 8JD

With: Nathan (Nate) Taylor-Grey

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Bristol has always been a city of dreamers and visionaries. From religious millenarians to social reformers, from science fiction writers to climate activists, people have continually reimagined what Bristol could become. This talk explores these varied and often conflicting visions of our city's future, examining how different people and communities have sought to build their ideal Bristol, and what we might learn from their successes and failures. The presentation traces four interconnected […]

Making Utopia Great Again

Date: Sun 26th Apr, 2026

Time: 3:20pm to 4:00pm

Venue: The Cube, BS2 8JD

With: Paul Reid-Bowen

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

This talk revisits and re-evaluates the critiques of utopianism offered by Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt and Isiah Berlin at our current moment in history, a time when far-right movements and emergent fascisms are confidently tapping into the power of both utopian and dystopian narratives.

Future Song: a thrutopian vision of near-future Bristol

Date: Sun 26th Apr, 2026

Time: 4:20pm to 5:00pm

Venue: The Cube, BS2 8JD

With: Tim Kindberg

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Dystopian visions far outnumber utopian visions in literature, and my last novel, Vampires of Avonmouth, is no exception. Set late this century between Avonmouth, which has become a vertiginous mega-city, and a part of future West Africa corresponding to today's Accra, climate change is all too real, yes. But the 2087 world of the book is also pervaded by shoddy AI; it's run by technology corporations; and everyone's brains are directly connected to the internet. In effect, the first two of […]

Radical Abundance and How We Get it

Date: Sun 26th Apr, 2026

Time: 5:00pm to 5:40pm

Venue: The Cube, BS2 8JD

With: Keir Milburn

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

Capitalism has created a world of bullshit abundance, where we have too much of what we don’t need and too little of what we do. Through this system’s relentless pursuit of profits, we have been put on a collision course with social and ecological limits that can no longer be ignored. We need an alternative. We need radical abundance, a world of human and non-human flourishing made possible by democratically planned production. But radical abundance can’t just be voted into existence through […]

Ireland: The Silent Voices

Date: Sun 26th Apr, 2026

Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Venue: The Cube, BS2 8JD

With: Rod Stoneman

Series: Bristol Radical History Festival 2026

This ground-breaking documentary, originally made in 1983 for Channel 4 at the height of the war in Ireland, provided a critical counter-narrative to the pro-British propaganda spouted by most of the mainstream media in this country. Rarely seen, Ireland: The Silent Voices (80 mins), focuses on the stories and perspectives of ordinary people actively or passively involved in the conflict. In three parts, the film analyses the representation of the conflict on TV in Britain and in Europe. It […]