By Allan MacLeod, Head of Civic and Inclusivity at the University of the West of England

Over the eight years that I’ve attended City Gatherings, they’ve had a mix of styles and covered a range of topics. From their 60 attendee origins to 450 person Zoom calls, to squeezing 42 speakers into a three hour agenda, they’ve been varied and exciting events. They’ve invited UN Ambassadors, celebrities like Joe Sims, the Head of Greenpeace, the Director of CBI and the local arm of Extinction Rebellion. But at this week’s City Gathering there was a new focus – the power of Community in leading change.  

While many Gatherings reflected the ambition to present community voices through programmes like One City Many Neighbourhoods or the City Fellows, the clear message of Monday’s event was that Bristol’s communities are already leaders and can be co-delivery partners for change in Bristol. 

Jon Alexander (author of Citizens) called for a dynamic shift, particularly from our policymakers and institutions. He challenged us to move from treating Bristolians as consumers that the city’s institutions serve, to citizens that create, lead and participate in the future of direction the city. The inspirational Voscur member organisations led the discussions of the potential One City Missions, and showcased what a breadth of community action and wealth of community wisdom Bristol has.  

None of this is new to community leaders. The council’s community team and the city’s grassroots organisations have long been doing this but their work has often been overlooked or underappreciated. The call from the Gathering and the previous week’s Bristol Climate and Nature Partnership’s gathering was clear – Bristol’s communities are here and they are ready to lead and deliver.  

This mirrors a move many Universities are making as well. Universities are signing Civic Agreements to show their commitment to be facilitators of collaboration, funders of action and providers of resource. The new UWE Bristol Civic and Inclusivity team are co-signatories of one such Civic Agreement with John McWilliams’s Civic team at the University of Bristol.   

Both our institutions have deep connections to Bristol’s communities. This is a key part of the Bristol Civic University Agreement – to work with and for Bristol’s communities, not to dictate to and extract from. We’ve worked with VCSE partners through research bids, resourced through student volunteers & internships and collaborated to tackle some of the city’s biggest challenges around climate change, food and social mobility to name just a few. But we know that both Universities can go further.  

As the new head of Civic and Inclusivity at UWE Bristol, my role is to drive this further. We want to champion community leadership and expertise. We want to support more action at a community level. We want to partner with communities to find solutions to the new One City Plan missions.  

Those missions will need to be ones that every citizen can see themselves in and contribute to. That is a huge task that the City Office are left with after a fantastic City Gathering. But the energy is there, and Bristol is blessed with more than just a collaborative spirit; its communities are strong and can drive systemic change, and they showed that at Monday’s Gathering.

 Illustration by RTiiiKA

Allan MacLeod

Allan is the Head of the Civic and Inclusivity team at the University of West of England. He was previously PolicyBristol Manager at the University of Bristol, leading the team that aids the translation of research to policy. He has also worked in the City Office as Operations and Stakeholder Engagement Manager, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lead for the Council and SDG Research and Engagement Associate at the Cabot Institute and Bristol Climate and Nature Partnership.