Culture in Bristol

Torrential rain during the 2007 festival and mounting costs incurred as a result of the Licensing Act 2003 led to the dissolution of the not-for-profit company which organised the event.

The St Pauls Carnival takes place in Bristol during the summer and features a procession and late night music.

[5] The biennial Wildscreen Festival showcases wildlife filmmaking in the city that is home to the BBC Natural History Unit.

In its first year in excess of 15,000 people read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson as part of the scheme.

BOVTS is an Associate School of the Faculty of Creative Arts of the University of the West of England and an affiliate of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama.

Alumni include Annette Crosbie, Brian Blessed, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gene Wilder, Jane Lapotaire, Jeremy Irons, Miranda Richardson, Patrick Stewart, Pete Postlethwaite, Stephanie Cole and Tim Pigott-Smith.

[16] The University of Bristol Drama Department offers undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in performance and screen studies.

[18] Circomedia is a training school for circus and physical theatre skills offering foundation degrees and BTEC courses.

It is also a stronghold of drum and bass with notable bands like the Mercury Prize winning Roni Size /Reprazent and Kosheen as well as the pioneering DJ Krust and More Rockers.

This music is part of the wider Bristol Urban Culture scene which received international media attention in the 1990s and still thrives today.

Other notable rockers from Bristol include folk rock outfit K-Passa, Stackridge, Act of Contrition, Chaos UK, Vice Squad, Wushcatte, The Claytown Troupe, Rita Lynch, Herb Garden, Doreen Doreen, The Seers, Pigbag, and The Blue Aeroplanes.

More recently a new wave of Bristol-based bands have been promoting themselves across the UK underground, including New Rhodes, Santa Dog, Tin Pan Gang, The Private Side, Big Joan, You and the Atom Bomb, Riot:Noise, Two Day Rule, Alien Trash Bin, Osmium, Hacksaw, Bronze Age Fox and Legends De Early.

These musicians are supported by record labels such as Invada, Farm Girl, Blood Red Sound and Super Fi, and promoters such as Qu Junktions, Illegal Seagull, Let the Bastards Grind, Noise Annoys and the, now defunct, Choke (music collective).

Internationally recognised jazz and blues musicians active in Bristol include Eddie Martin, Jim Blomfield and Andy Sheppard.

The Royal West of England Academy in Clifton was founded in 1849 and exhibits works by William James Müller and Francis Danby amongst others.

The Alexander Gallery, F-block at the School of Creative Arts, Bower Ashton, Bristol Architecture Centre and Glenside Museum.

A variety of youth clubs and day and residential activities, including National Citizen Service, are run by Young Bristol.

The Tudor period saw large mansions and estates built for wealthy merchants outside the traditional city centre; in contrast to public houses and old Almshouses.

In the eighteenth century, squares were laid out for the prosperous middle classes filling in land between the city and the immediate surrounding villages.

An aircraft industry grew shortly before and during World War II, post-war this led to the creation of Bristol Airport.

The city has a large number of amateur football, cricket and rugby clubs and many active participants in a range of sports from tennis to athletics, and rowing to golf.

[38] Once common across England, this feature has now receded to Bristol and the rural West Country, as well as parts of Lancashire.

This speech feature is predominant in Newfoundland English, where many of that island's early European inhabitants originated from Bristol and other West Country ports.

Other Bristol graffiti artists include Nick Walker, Sickboy, Inkie, Stars,[41] Lokey, cheo.

Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja was the first strongly active graffiti artist in Bristol in the early 1980s, with the nicknames of "3D" and "Delge".

[43] Children of the Can: 25 Years of Bristol Graffiti by Felix Braun (FLX) and Steve Wright, is a book illustrating and documenting the street art scene in the city.

In August 2011 the See No Evil public art event was installed in Nelson Street, transforming it into a walk-through graffiti gallery.