Bristol Radical History Festival 2025

This year the 7th annual Bristol Radical History Festival at M Shed includes an international collaboration with Dublin’s East Wall History Group.

Join Bristol Radical History Group and East Wall History Group for an exciting day of talks, walks, exhibitions and stalls, plus the uplifting sound of the Red Notes choir.

This year’s three festival themes are:

Radical histories of housing

This theme takes a radical look at the history of housing in Bristol and beyond.  Explore the nineteenth-century socialist origins of the garden suburbs of Sea Mills, Hillfields, Filwood and Hartcliffe. We will also look at the municipal dreams of social housing “fit for heroes” and the post-war responses of squatting, shelter, plotlands, and self-build housing coops.

Hidden histories of incarceration

Has Britain ever introduced labour camps for the unemployed? What was “short, sharp shock” in the 1980s? And are there alternatives to prison? This theme uncovers where the British state has extended the boundaries and punitive content of incarceration to include those without work, juveniles, prisoners of war and political activists. Topics range from the soldiers of revolutionary France in Stapleton prison to the high point of prison reform in the 1970s.

Bristol Radical History x East Wall History Group

After the popularity of their international perspectives at last year’s festival, we are excited to host the East Wall History Group from Dublin in the Republic of Ireland to take over a whole theme this year. Also hailing from a port city with a long history of Atlantic links and rebellious working-class history, our friends from Ireland bring histories of international collaboration. Explore the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, solidarity during the UK miners’ strike, biographies of veterans in the fight against fascism and much more.

The full programme can be found here.