В Бристоле вышел документальный фильм о борьбе района Стоукс-Крофт с джентрификацией

The crazy story of Stokes Croft is now a feature-length film "What comes out of the film is that the battle is not yet over" It is one of Bristol’s more famous, infamous or notorious areas - known for being the centre of the city’s alternative counter-culture. And for the last ten years, two young film-makers have been documenting the rise and fall and rise and change of Stokes Croft, the street synonymous for its anarchy, street art, creativity and battle against the forces of gentrification. The story of Stokes Croft begins back in the 1980s and 90s when the main A38 north out of the city centre became a neglected eyesore with empty, decaying buildings as investment in the city failed to trickle down out of Broadmead, Cabot Circus and the harbourside. But Stokes Croft had nightclubs like Blue Mountain and Lakota, the ‘SLAP’ no-man’s land that is Turbo Island and the Canteen, and into the vacuum left by urban decay stepped a new community of artists, musicians and creatives. Banksy immortalised the area with Mild Mild West in 1999, as the area became famous for its DIY drum n bass nights and raves, in many of the now empty old industrial buildings and squats. By 2007, Chris Chalkley founded the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft, an arts-based initiative looking to stake a claim to takeover the main street and fill it with street art. “It was about bottom-up change - sweeping the streets, cleaning things up and painting things beautifully and challenging the council to stop us doing it,” Chalkley recounts, in the documentary. “That’s the thing about Stokes Croft, that the cracks and the messiness matters, and is of value,” he added. But by the start of the 2010s, the outside world of corporate development and regeneration began to be felt in Stokes Croft. First, developers began proposing to transform the Carriageworks building and Westmoreland House next door - which had been eyesores on the main road for decades, but was providing a home and workspaces for transient artists and squatters, as well as a canvas for the area’s street artists. That galvanised the community to act, kicking off a battle over its future that lasted for a decade before it was finally redeveloped into upmarket flats. And then, in 2011, the existence of Stokes Croft, and the fact that a ‘People’s Republic’ had been declared there became nationally famous because of the riots over the course of two nights in late April 2011. Most of the shops and businesses along Stokes Croft were either empty or independently-owned by either locals or artists and creative people setting up in the ‘People’s Republic’. But when Tesco took over an empty shop and refurbished it ready to open, a huge campaign began to try to stop it. What triggered the riots itself was a police raid on ‘Telepathic Heights’, a large squat opposite, and, the ‘Tesco Riots’ gained national notoriety, cementing Stokes Croft as the centre of Bristol’s alternative world. The rest of the 2010s saw battles over control of Hamilton House - where a huge community of artists and creatives and existed but were gradually forced out - and the Carriageworks, where demonstrations and campaigns shaped, but didn’t stop, the creation of up-market flats. Then the PRSC was given the job of creating art work in the Bearpit, but that ended in acrimony and the council reclaiming it, destroying the famous Ursa the bear sculpture that had become a landmark in the city. Ironically, as is often the way with gentrification, Stokes Croft’s neglect and empty spaces attracted the artists and creatives who turned the place into a counterculture community, which then attracted more people to come, which then made it attractive to developers to take back control of the area they had previously given up on. Student flats and build-to-rent flats have since been built on places like the Blue Mountain nightclub, and Turbo Island is currently the subject of a controversial row over its status. The film, made by Quincy Andrews and Leo Plunkett, documents the history of Stokes Croft, and features everyone from Carla Denyer - a former Green Party community activist and student who is now the area’s MP - to St Pauls poet Lawrence Hoo. “I think what comes out of the film is that the battle is not yet over, and the freedoms that people had in Stokes Croft were really hard won,” said Chris Chalkley. “Ultimately it was crushed by the powers that be, but it’s the beginning of the next phase, which is about land justice and who has control of the area in which people live,” he added. The feature-length documentary, called The Republic, premiers at the Watershed in the city centre on Tuesday, August 18, from 6pm with a screening and a Q&A session with a panel that includes local councillor Ani Townsend, the CEO of Trinity Community Arts Emma Harvey, and Chris Chalkley.