Your say / Barton Hill
‘At a time when communities feel so divided, arts and culture have an important role to play’
In an era of culture wars, anti-diversity backlash and increasing community divisions, what role can arts and creativity play in connecting communities and bringing people together?
Travelling Light is a children’s theatre company based in the heart of Barton Hill. We started the year with Winter Lights, a community event created with local children, young people and residents to celebrate joy, light and the warmth of community.
The event, part of our 40th birthday celebrations, was popular beyond our expectations.
Despite Storm Éowyn and 40mph winds, 700 people came together in the Wellspring Settlement at Barton Hill.
700 people came together to join Travelling Light’s Winter Lights event this year
Children and families enjoyed storytelling, making lanterns, creative workshops, eating food together and a special performance by our Travelling Light youth theatre.
The event ended with over 100 people lighting up the nearby urban park with a bright and joyful lantern parade.
Reflecting on the feedback from those that came, it was clear that many local people valued Winter Lights for reasons beyond having a fun family day. It was important because it brought people from our diverse and vibrant community together.
A staff member from a local school involved in making lanterns for the parade told us: “It’s a real community event – you can see that by looking around. It’s amazing. So many cultures working together.”
Another said: “It’s made me feel really happy. Seeing the kids smiling. No one is seeing race or judgement – all are one big community.”
A parent of three young children said: “It makes you feel great. Today is such a good presentation of UK diversity – everyone joining in as one community.”
And another parent, of a baby and seven-year-old, said: “You don’t get to interact with other people much these days because everyone is indoors on their phones, so this was lovely. You get to feel part of the community.”
Winter Lights brings people from Barton Hill’s diverse community together
For me, Winter Lights reminded me of everything I love about living in (and having grown up in) inner-city Bristol.
As a mixed heritage parent in east Bristol, seeing children running around playing and creating together, taking part in theatre they made together and lighting up the local park with lanterns couldn’t have felt more different to last year, when the national race riots created a culture of fear and division.
I remember boarded-up shops and, for the first time, not feeling safe to take my daughter out.
Coming together as a community, being together, celebrating and having fun felt important and much-needed.
So many people told us how important free and local opportunities for creativity on their doorstep are.
Free and affordable creative opportunities can help break down barriers that keep people isolated and apart
In a community where recent stories have focused on the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhoods scheme, and how it has highlighted very real divides between people living in the same postcode areas, Winter Lights showed a different picture of what the community is and can be.
So, what does this mean more widely? At a time when communities and society feel so divided at a local, national and global level, leaving many people feeling less safe and less connected, arts and culture have an important role to play.
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy talks about the arts helping us “tell our national story”, which could feel like a rather grand and abstract statement with more to do with big museums in the capital city than with people’s day to day lives.
However, on a local level it perhaps has more meaning.
We need local creativity to help make our areas feel like vibrant, welcoming and happier places to live.
Free and affordable creative opportunities can help break down barriers that keep people isolated and apart.
Perhaps we can also play a small part in challenging and changing the narratives that divide us, those that are so prominent in today’s anti-diversity rhetoric and culture wars.
We can help tell a different story about who we are and who we want to be, changing our ‘national story’ street by street.
This is an opinion piece by Dienka Hines, CEO of Travelling Light Theatre Company
To find out more about Travelling Light and support their work, visit www.travellinglighttheatre.org.uk
All photos: Edward Felton
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
