A group of people dancing together in a nightclub with pink walls

Features

Joy as resistance: inside the club night changing Bristol’s queer scene

With violence and political hostility towards trans and queer people on the rise, club night Soft Butch has become a vital space for community, connection, and liberation

Kill the Bill prisoners are fighting repression from behind bars

Meet the Bristol author helping women write their way through early motherhood

An 19th-century illlustration showing a group of people, imagined to be in Elizabethan England, throwing objectss at a cockerel.

People's History

Cock-throwing, dog-tossing and bare-knuckle boxing: the brutal history of Pancake Day in Bristol

Shrove Tuesday is a minor holiday at best these days. But turn the clock back, and both animals and humans in Bristol would have had a lot more than pancakes to worry about as Lent approached.

A man with glasses and a beard stands in front of a park playground, showcasing a casual yet thoughtful demeanour.

Features

Project helping new dads cope with parenthood faces uncertain future

Features

‘Like riding a wave – then the water cuts out’: Bristol’s TV workers hit by redundancies as companies close down

Bristol’s queer communities are taking the fight against pinkwashing genocide

Pinkwashing, when powerful entities adopt a veneer of supporting LGBTQIA+ rights, has been a prominent PR tactic used by Israel to gloss over its brutal occupation of Palestinian territories. Queer communities are pushing back.

Filton 18: ‘The more you oppress people, the more they will rise’

The British state is treating Palestine Action activists who targeted an Elbit Systems Israeli arms facility on the outskirts of Bristol like terrorists – subjecting them to repressive sanctions in jail as they await trial.

Are self-swab kits ‘the start of the end of sexual violence’, or could they cause more harm than good?

Against a backdrop of chronic underreporting of sexual assaults, thousands of self-administered rape test kits have been distributed across Bristol, targeting university campuses. But are users, already coping with trauma, being given the clarity they need to make informed choices?

No silver bullet: why we should stop criminalising young people and start investing in them

Anti-knife violence campaigners and youth workers speak out on school exclusions, the reasons children are carrying knives, and why the police must stop ‘victim-blaming’ kids.

Concerns over donations to Bristol MPs are about more than just freebie Taylor Swift tickets

Local Labour MPs Darren Jones, Dan Norris and Damien Egan have taken donations from a range of sources, including pro-Israel lobby groups. Does that compromise their integrity in Parliament?

South Bristol’s new youth centre is technically in Knowle West. Can it deliver for kids from Hartcliffe too?

A huge Youth Zone, part of a national network, will be opening in 2026 by the Imperial Retail Park. But is it what this side of the city needs? And will young people feel welcome, no matter what postcode they live in?