Features / Breakfast with Bristol24/7
Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Julz Davis
“Cake for breakfast – a proper rule-breaking meal,” laughed Julz Davis. “I have dreams about cake shops like this.”
We met for our breakfast interview at Ahh Toots, marvelling over the selection and both taking far too long to pick our morning delicacies.
Julz and I had met before, working together on a project with his ‘think-and-do tank’ Curiosity UnLtd. to honour Bristol bus boycott pioneer Paul Stephenson.
Once we’d settled on a whisky and ginger cake for him and a chocolate Guinness one for me, we caught up on his racial justice campaigning, activism and lifelong mission to “cause good trouble.”
Julz grew up in Knowle West in the 1970s, where he said he felt the impacts of racism and financial inequality every day.
Following a trip to Jamaica with his father three years ago, he knew that he wanted to find his way to make a difference: to fulfil “the dream”.
Since then, he has been working to raise awareness of race relations and civil rights history in our city.
These prompts, he explained, started as just two questions written on boards and displayed next to the Colston plinth in the city centre in 2023.
First, he asked how we can say thank you to Bristol’s bus boycott pioneers – giving the “monumental” figures their flowers while they are still a part of living history.
And secondly, he questioned the state of Martin Luther King’s dream today: a topic Julz thinks is even more poignant now.
With a rise of anti-immigration rhetoric and divisive discourse, Julz is keen to find opportunities to reconnect and “remember the ‘why’.”
“The challenge and the opportunity we have,” he said, “is to ask: how do we listen, communicate and learn to understand and appreciate each other? Difference is human nature.”
“I like ginger cake, you like Guinness,” he continued, gesturing at the crumbs we had left on our plates.
“There is not going to be a single person in here right now who likes the same combination.
“You might not even like cake – you might be a savoury person, and that’s cool; there’s something here for everyone.
“When can we learn just to let people eat cake and not worry about what cake they’re eating?”
With Curiosity UnLtd., Julz recently launched a bid to become the country’s civil rights capital.
He hopes that the city’s rich activist history can be discussed and taught on a wider level, putting Bristol on the map as a hub for social justice.
He said: “On the same day that Martin Luther King had a dream, Bristol stood up and marched. Most places would bite your right arm off for that.”
Julz Davis is the ‘disruptor-in-chief’ of Curiosity UnLtd – illustration by Lucy J Turner
Julz told me about his call for the Bristol Bus Boycott to be added to the national curriculum, saying that not enough people know about this key moment in the British fight for race equality.
“I’ve grown up with many of the bus boycott pioneers, running around them with my nappy on, and I didn’t know what they’d done,” he said. “There are so many untold stories that deserve to be shared.”
As we neared the end of our hot drinks, we began to talk about what the future of Bristol could look like.
In 2017, researchers at the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity and the Runnymede Trust found that Bristol was the seventh worst place to live as a person of colour in the UK – a statistic that Julz believes needs to change.
“As a Black man born and bred in Bristol, I had more chance of going to prison than to university. And that’s just not okay,” he said.
“Bristol has such an amazing presence of counter-culture and change,” Julz continued, punctuated by sips of coffee. “It’s a city of changemakers not waiting for permission and making their own opportunities.”
Julz said that he didn’t understand why we weren’t doing more to celebrate the city’s activist history and its trailblazers.
He hopes that celebrating Bristol’s civil rights past will make the city’s future a friendlier, more accepting place, saying that: “I want a better tomorrow for everybody today.”
As we bundled back into our winter coats and left the warmth of Ahh Toots, he concluded: “We need to build spaces to have cake, to have coffee, conversations like this and to build moments where we can just talk and learn from each other.
“And if we leave disagreeing, at least we’ve listened and haven’t shut each other down. Let’s be more serious about being silly.”
This article appears in Bristol24/7’s January/February 2026 magazine
Illustration of Julz Davis by Lucy J Turner
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
