Bristol Harbour Festival to be more inclusive, mayor says

Bristol's Harbour Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022

This year's Bristol Harbour Festival will be made more inclusive, according to the city's mayor.

The comments from Bristol mayor Marvin Rees follow a previous report to the council which highlighted issues around the "whiteness" of the event.

"There were a lot of challenges around inclusion, around poverty, transport networks, older people and disabled people," Mr Rees said.

The festival's Ben Hardy said they try to make the event "wide and diverse".

A 2022 report to the city council highlighted the "whiteness" of the festival and the "invisible barriers" to members of the global majority, as well as participants with mobility issues or neurodiverse needs.

Mr Rees added: "Those barriers to participation were made all the higher in recent years by Covid and the cost of living crisis.

"Festivals have to take those barriers into account."

He said one of the ways the festival was becoming more inclusive was to include Bristol artists in the line-up, "to make it a platform for Bristol talent".

Ben Hardy, event manager of the Bristol Harbour Festival, added that the team make sure they have a "wide and diverse" range of performances as well as audience members.

"We are starting to replicate the demographic breakdown of the city in our audience, so I think we have made great strides in recent years."

"With 250,000 visitors and the event being free to access, maybe apart from London, there are not many festivals like this now in any major city," he added.

"I think the city is really lucky to have it."