Blog

Listen to 40 years of art & artists from the Arnolfini archive

by David, Sam and Philippa, from the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project The first collection held by Bristol Archives that Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) digitised was from Arnolfini, Bristol’s contemporary arts centre. 40 years of artists’ ta…

Bristol’s VE Day celebrations brought to life

On Friday 8 May, we mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day – the end of the Second World War in Europe. On Tuesday 8 May 1945, celebrations took place across the country and Bristol was no exception. Two different audio-visual archives from Brist…

Archives advice: Preserving audio from a CD

by Samuel Bates, Audio Digitisation Engineer Sometimes, the problem you expect is not the problem you end up with. On the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project, we are preserving thousands of at-risk audio items. We have cassettes and open-reel tapes,…

A dose of culture from home

As you may know by now, we have closed all of our museums to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. In the meantime, we are doing all we can to make Bristol’s museum collections available online for our audiences at home and around the world. We’ll b…

The effect of Coronavirus on Bristol

by Amber Druce – Curator of History Are you keeping a journal? One day, insights into this time during the Coronavirus pandemic will be really useful to historians so we’d love to hear from you if you can help. Our top tip for writing a journa…

Rock-tastic fun for schools during British Science Week

by Rachael Hall, engagement officer for learning Over 200 children came to the museum during British Science Week in March to learn about rocks and soils. They took part in a range of activities, such as handling different types of rocks and making a r…

My climate emergency dress – and why I donated it to M Shed

by Melanie Ruth, dress creator Why a climate emergency dress? I’ve used my dress as both an expression of my creativity and love of design – as ‘Wearable Art’. More deeply, it reflects my concerns about the climate emergency we face an…

Presenting Year 7s – behind the scenes at M Shed

By Saffron Smolka – Museum Learning Marketing Officer. On a very wet and wild day in February, a group of local Year 7 students had the whole of M Shed to themselves. This was on a Monday when the museum is closed to the public. South Bristol Yo…

Arnos Vale Cemetery archive now open

By Graham Tratt, Archivist The records of Arnos Vale Cemetery are now available for research at Bristol Archives. The collection documents how this Victorian cemetery developed and records the generations of Bristol people laid to rest in its groun…

One vast interconnected world: Paul Mellon grant to digitise collection

by Nicky Sugar, Archivist Throughout 2019, staff from the British Empire & Commonwealth Collection at Bristol Archives worked on a project to open up access to some of our oldest photographic collections. This was generously funded by the Paul Me…