We believe that public spaces are for everyone, but often not everyone’s voices are heard or listened to when it comes to making plans and decisions about our public spaces.

So when we were approached by architecture and planning practice DK-CM to imagine a new future for Bristol Harbour that works more for everyone we were excited to see where this could go and showcase the breadth of talent in our community to the commissioner Bristol City Council.

To do this we hosted a lab with our community to get a wider idea of their relationship to the Harbour, whether they’re Bristol natives or have moved here more recently, or have no relationship to it at all.

We then recruited six Storytellers from Rising’s community to extend the engagement DK-CM were already doing into communities that they were less able to reach. With the aim of generating ‘short, sharp’ creative commissions that explore the harbour from a range of perspectives and using multiple forms of media. This included nighttime workers, trans and non-binary folk and communities at the edges of the Harbour area.