Category: Places

St Anne’s House shows community regeneration in action  

St Anne's House

Resilient, thriving, connected. People readily use phrases like these to describe successful communities.

They sound great on paper – and God knows I’ve used them myself enough over the years when writing about places. But words without people to make them real are just slogans.

After five years of hard work, I’m seeing something very special happening in Brislington that’s connecting positive intent with people’s lives.

Led by Jack Gibbon, the charity Bricks is moving forward with quiet determination to transform a 70-year-old former council housing office block at St Anne’s House into a space for hundreds of creatives, artists and community groups.

Its open house event this weekend attracted more than 1,000 people across three days. I went on Friday to the launch and on Sunday with my daughter for lunch and look around the exhibitions. It was fantastic to see the place busy, with so much happening throughout the building.

It’s fair to say that St Anne’s House was on its uppers before Bricks took on a lease from Bristol City Council to run the building as a community space.

I remember the first time I visited before becoming a Bricks trustee about two years ago. Its vastness, the single glazed metal-framed windows across three floors and the range and scale of activity happening there struck me. I was aware of Bricks’ public art installations at new developments across Bristol and thought they were the perfect custodian for a project like St Anne’s House. And I was hooked on the concept from that first meeting.  

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Collaborative, confident, clear – making the case for flourishing regions

An aerial shot of housing in Bristol, with views of the cityscape and the River Avon

“One of the things I heard in the Treasury at the time [I was a minister in that department] is that ‘there is no such thing as local growth.’”

The Rt Hon Greg Clark, ex cabinet minister.

Former housing secretary Greg Clark’s insight into his discussions with Treasury staff speaks to a mindset within government that’s constrained the economy for too long.

Overly centralised, mistrusting of local partners and blind to great organisations supporting growth across the country. It’s a bleakly depressing take.

Thankfully, that comment shared by Mr Clark in Bristol last week happened more than a decade ago. And although it’s easy to miss in the day to day, we’ve seen a shift since then.

Devolution is on the agenda. The Chancellor’s Mais Lecture pointed to further investment in cities. And local growth is happening.

In the west country, we now have the evidence to back it up. I attended the Festival of Flourishing regions yesterday (19 March), which launched a major piece of work by universities looking at how our region is doing.

The Brunel Centre’s Strategic Economic Audit of the West of England doesn’t roll off the tongue easily. But it contains a raft of data and insights from people who work here that should be invaluable to those making the case for investment, for government backing or just to better tell the story of this place.

The report highlights that our region which covers the four local authority areas around Bristol and Bath is the most productive outside of London. We’ve got innovative businesses, strong trade, a skilled labour market and four great universities.

It also speaks to challenges, which need fixing – transport, housing affordability, child poverty, and youth unemployment in Bristol.

I was struck by the section on business which highlights that SMEs in the region are stuck in a ‘holding pattern’, lacking confidence in the wider economy and reluctant to invest.

This is complex, multi-layered stuff. It was good to hear senior well-respected speakers like Greg Clark offer reflections in a measured way that stands in contrast to much of the shrill commentary we see in the media.

Anyone who lives and works in the West of England will have their own perspective on what works and what doesn’t. Like me, they’ll have their own views on what the data says. It’s worth taking a look for yourself.

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Gorton and Denton shows how not to lose, and what it takes to win

Losing part Reform logo pictured in Gorton and Denton

Even when losing a contest you badly want to win, there’s something to be said for dignity in defeat. You can still lose gracefully and earn respect and win friends.

There are memorable examples of this, which stand out against the febrile atmosphere surrounding public discourse today.

When New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern resigned in 2023, she said she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job justice. She could have blamed opponents or spun the decision. Instead, the message was simply: it’s time for someone else to lead.

Then there’s the letter I wrote about five years ago from former US President George HW Bush to his White House successor Bill Clinton in 1993, congratulating him on his victory and wishing him well.

“I’m rooting for you,” he wrote.

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The collaboration challenge: how places can keep moving through chaos

Chaos images - front cover of Spectator and Economist magazine.

A fast start to the year makes it important to find time to make sense of events and what they mean for us.

Headlines scream chaos at us. Donald Trump’s statements this week alone – on Greenland, threats of increased tariffs, slurs against NATO troops and peace boards with Putin – are enough to make the head spin. And maybe that’s the point.

We can’t know what this means for the global economy, security and the values that many world leaders seemed to share until recently.

Canadian PM Mark Carney’s incredible speech at Davos highlights a ‘rupture’ in these values. His call to other ‘middle countries’ to become beacons in ‘a world that’s at sea’ resonates. Canada’s response to Trump’s aggression – on taxes, investment, defence spending, and closer partnerships with Europe – seem hugely impressive set against the trivia served up here.

Could it be a defining moment? If you have 15 minutes, I’d recommend watching it.

The rupture Carney speaks of has been a long time in coming. Now it’s here, addressing it feels like the biggest collaboration challenge of my lifetime.

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Distinctive difference: PR that builds positive value

PR people often say that others don’t really understand what they do. This can make it difficult to explain the value of PR, even if this is clear to us.

It seems that many think of comms people as publicity agents. Media commentators regularly describe PR as a media-serving function. Our industry isn’t great at explaining its purpose, who it serves and how it does it.

This struck me in recent online exchanges following comments I shared from 2022 about Bristol’s political tensions.

Leave aside the irony of such questions coming from anonymous accounts. The comments made me consider whether I could do more to explain who my team supports and why it matters. So, here goes.

It’s useful to get it off my chest. I hope it’s helpful to others who don’t understand the role PR can play on many distinct levels.

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What? How? Where? Questions on the brownfield housing push

Aerial view directly above an industrial dumper truck or earth mover vehicle with muddy soil and tyre tracks in the construction industry on a brownfield site with copy space

‘The right homes in the right places,’ seems an innocuous, inoffensive phrase.

It straddles tense discussions about a broken housing market that’s weaponised and misunderstood in equal measure.

The Prime Minister deployed the term in the government’s latest pledge to ‘turbo-charge’ housebuilding by streamlining planning for development sites in towns and cities across England.

Although all that’s happening at this stage is another consultation (which I will return to), the statement led the news on Tuesday.

It taps into what some see as a dividing line between the government’s focus on previously developed – or ‘brownfield’ – land and Labour’s recent commitment to develop new towns. As the election draws nearer, it’s likely to spark heated debate.

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