My Bristol favourites: Constance Fleuriot

Constance Fleuriot is a Bristol-based writer, researcher and artist who is developing a computer game called Lux & The Shadowmaker (above) which has until 2pm on Monday to raise £5,000 needed to secure further backing from Creative England and Crowdfunder as part of their Queens of Code project, which hopes to support more women within the games industry.

Here are Constance’s top-five Bristol favourites:

Windmill Hill City Farm
“I have a big soft spot for Windmill Hill City Farm as it’s really where I grew up as a young teenage mum in the 1980s, meeting all sorts of interesting people and making quite a few friendships that have lasted ’til this day. All five of my children went to playgroup there, and at one point I was helping to run it as well. Then I went to art college and sort of lost touch with the place. I take my grandsons there when they visit, and it brings back all sort of memories.”

Running along the towpath to the bridge
“I did that thing you do, of drunkenly and rashly promising to go running with my friend Elspeth, who was recovering from an injury so she had to start again pretty much from scratch. I am not a sporty person, I am more of a cake person, but I found myself in Greville Smythe Park very early one February morning trying not to feel like I was going to die as I ran for a minute, eight times. Now there are five of us, the Southville Snails, who get together on a Saturday and time our runs to end just as Mark’s Bread Cafe opens at 8.30am. I was running for half an hour three times a week but got tendonitis back in early summer, so I am resting up until the new year when I have to start training as I agreed to join the other Southville Snails and run the Geneva Marathon. Luckily you can run as a relay so I can do the short sprint over the finish line and take all the glory.”

Mark’s Bread Cafe
“Mark’s Bread Cafe is great. Really friendly and practically at the end of my road, so it’s great for meeting friends or for nipping down with my laptop and doing some work while I enjoy one of their coffees – they serve the best soy flat white I have found in Bristol. When I run with the other Southville Snails on a Saturday, they let me have bacon sandwiches without bread if they don’t have any gluten-free available.”

Three Cane Whale
“I love Three Cane Whale. I’ve known one of them, Paul Bradley, for years. I met him in the 1980s back when he and his friends had just started Me, and have heard him perform in various guises since then. He’s just such a great live improvisor on his guitar. I just bought his new solo album, Banish Cherish, which is so quirky and I love it. I went to the Three Cane Whale concert at St George’s last week, where they played with some Baroque musicians. It was a wonderful blend of old and new songs and I was moved almost to tears by how beautiful some were. Three Cane Whale songs are often inspired by landscape and you can imagine that when you listen. They very kindly let me use a track on the video to promote my game and I hope to get some snippets of their music actually into it. It’s sort of joyfully melancholic.”

Bristol Games Hub
“Bristol Games Hub on Stokes Croft is a brilliant place, a classic Bristol thing where a bunch of people get together and share and support each other – similar to the ethos of the Pervasive Media Studio at the Watershed where I used to work and hang out. You hear a lot about people involved in games but the people at Bristol Games Hub couldn’t be more welcoming and friendly. They’ve already helped me a lot with my game project and have offered deskspace so I can go up there when I am working on the game. I’m hoping to raise enough from the crowdfunder scheme to pay one or two of the people at Games Hub to work with me to develop Lux & The Shadowmaker.”