As you can guess, from the fact I make podcasts, I really love the medium, and one of the ones I enjoy is the Bristol History Podcast.
This has been created by Tom Brothwell, and he interviews different historians and authors to cover a wide range of different subjects that he’s interested in, and wants to find out more about. We sat down to talk about why he started, his approaches to history, and lots more, including some of the history about the River Avon.
Some of the Bristol History Podcasts we talked about include:
- The Eastville Workhouse and Bristol Radical History Groups’ work uncovering and memorialising the mass grave on Rosemary Green, with Roger Ball
- Tom’s thought-piece on re-naming the Colston Hall, which is one of my favourites of his podcasts. Of course, this includes a lot about TransAtlantic slavery and Bristol, and Tom’s podcast about that is here.
- Trip hop and the Bristol sound
- The interview with Madge Dresser about Women and Bristol
- The history of Bristol’s West Indian community – how they came to the city, and what happened next, with Edson Burton
- The two part podcast on civil disturbance and riots – part 1 and part 2
- The podcast with Steve Poole about Bristol in the 18th Century, including the ideas about what being Bristolian meant in the time
- The interview with writer Oliver Rigby about his children’s book, The Bristol Giants
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You can find the full lists of the Bristol History Podcast episodes on Soundcloud, and you can sign up to the podcast to get all the episodes as they’re released, on iTunes. There’s also a facebook group for the podcast, and if you’d like to send Tom any suggestions for future episodes, you can contact him at BristolHistoryPodcast [at] gmail [dot] com.
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During our conversation, we talked about Bristol Post editor Mike Norton’s recent apology for the ‘Faces of evil‘ headline, and why the Post is joining Ujima Radio and the Bristol Old Vic to run some City Conversations as part of the Ujima Radio Year of Change.
The Colston Hall press release about why they’ll be changing their name is here, and there’s a further statement about it from their Chief Executive, Louise Mitchell.
We touched on two of my Avon Stories podcasts in our conversation: Podcast 20, talking about the Canoe Pilot Project with artists Kayle Brandon and Heath Bunting, which includes talking about the Harbour as a commons; and Podcast 13, where landscape architect Wendy Tippett told me why the Cumberland Basin road system is the way it is, and how it was landscaped by Sylvia Crowe, as a utopian future city.
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You can download this podcast directly from the Avon Stories Soundcloud, and sign up for all the future podcasts via the Avon Stories RSS and subscribe on iTunes or Soundcloud to make sure you hear all the future stories. You can also follow the project on twitter and instagram, for regular photos of the rivers and other waters in Bristol.
Thanks to Tom Brothwell for the kind permission to use the photograph of him, and the Bristol History Podcast logo.
Avon Stories 