About Greater Brislington Together – Greater Brislington Together

Greater Brislington Together
Greater Brislington Together has been in existence since 2017 formed to replace the local
Brislington community neighbourhood partnership structure when council funding cuts
effected this service.
Since 2017 Greater Brislington Together has been a volunteer led organisation undertaking
the community engagement processes that the neighbourhood partnership used deliver.
5 years on it became clear that as an organisation we were able to facilitate and do far more
activities than the narrow remit of neighbourhood partnership and the task of running the
community engagement with just the CIL (community Infrastructure Levy) funding.
Right from the first year Greater Brislington Together facilitated community led grass route
action to get funded, and ensured schemes that supported community engagement
evidenced priorities were put together.
Our local green spaces has been something that many community voices felt passionate to
protect and has been a constant priority.
The first funded projects under GBT were the Brislington Green Trail, a partnership
between, Friends of Eastwood Farm, Friends of Brislington Brook (FOBB) Arnos Vale
Cemetery, SPRING (sandy park road improving neighbourhood group) BS4 youth, Eastwynd
community garden and Brislington Window Wanderland.
The combined outputs of the project were
2 new community gardens
10 green street planters on sandy park road
A new path between the upper and lower playgrounds at Eastwood farm
Sign posts in both Arnos Vale cemetery and Nightingale valley linking walks into a possible
circular route
A 3 days arts trail around the area
2 free half term family friendly window art workshops at the library
A community art project that encouraged feeling safe exploring the local streets after dark
A local walking map with amenities such as local toilets and cafes and green spaces.
But its ultimate true success was showing how volunteers and smaller groups of people
from the community could work together to deliver infrastructure projects benefiting the
area.
In addition GBT had helped in the growing of additional friends groups for parks in the area,
now for all the local green spaces, adding Friends of St Annes Park, Friends of Victory park,
Friends of Arnos Court park and Friends of Stockwood open space, and supported the
Conham bathing group with their actions to reduce sewage pollution in the river Avon. GBT
undertook a series of community litter picks that tackled areas with fly tipping issues such as
Woodcroft road woodland, Bellroyal to Bonneville road foot path, Victory park to Bonneville
road, many of which have also had the foot path surface now improved too.

In the early years the group also looked to tackle local issues such as transport, crime and
youth activities, but these areas needed the agency of others bodies that were not set up to
work with a small solely volunteer led group. We also asked the community if there was
interest in setting up a group to form a “local plan” to guide planning and developing in the
area but at the time there was not enough community support or volunteers to deliver one.
After Covid we recognised we were being more impactful focussing on what was strong and
positive in the area rather than what was wrong. We switched to focused on supporting the
community engagement for other projects and delivering activities that used the interest
and abilities of local volunteers.
Between 2021 and now we have supported community, participated in or organised events
such Brizdays, Sandy park road Christmas lights switch on, Victory park community picnics,
St Annes community picnics.
We have secured additional funding and delivered
8 Brislington Village Markets,
3 Christmas shopping mouse trails,
an arts project to brighten up Brislington Village and
provide free community youth arts activities.
Tree planting in Victory park
And 5 wildlife photography workshops
A community notice board for Victory park (coming soon)
An interactive walking map project
Supported the network of welcoming spaces and free/ low-cost community activities
Our success:
Are one of the few groups in Bristol to have continued neighbourhood partnership activity
with no funded employees
Penny has probably face painted over 1,000 faces and this helps GBT have one of the widest
age and representation of engagement about living in the area as well as supporting local
celebrations and fundraising days
Our local Area CIL process now has one of the most active number of local organisations
applying for funding, and by far the most participated in community engagement levels for
evidencing support for these projects in Bristol.
The monitoring and improvements to our green spaces and connections with wider Bristol
wildlife projects is enhancing the biodiversity in our green spaces.
We have worked with other organisations especially on increasing youth activity options in
the area including Learning partnership west, Bristol Children’s scrape store and connecting
local sports, faith and youth groups with funding opportunities.
We have helped share information such as deliberator locations, community space
directory, event calendar and promotion, funding opportunities, increased participation in
local groups for over 55s and community activities that were already happening.
We printed and published the support in difficult times sign posting leaflet now widely
distributed through the east Bristol food bank network, schools, food club, local notice
boards, sports centres and library

We support the Brislington and st Annes Repair café, New age Kurling group, as well as the
friends of victory park group and previously Friends of Arnos court park group with funding
applications and as an umbrella organisation to facilitate local volunteers setting up and
with running community groups in the area creating action, change and improvements, with
and by the community.
Our priorities since Covid have been:
loving our local green spaces
Supporting our local highstreets
Connecting communities,
GBT is currently just a core committee of 4/5 individuals and with additional volunteers for
activities. We are now acting as a community anchor organisation across the wider area of
Greater Brislington, which includes st Anne’s, Hungerford road, Broomhill, Kensington park
area, sandy park road area, Brislington Village, Arnos vale and Paintworks and are
connecting to the local health and wellbeing priorities as part of the VCSE alliance (voluntary
charity and social enterprise)
Its all good but as we can tell what we currently do is limited by the skills and time we had,
and we need to expand our numbers and range of interests in order to expand what we can
help make happen as a community.
If you want to watch someone explain this approach to building community, happiness and
wellbeing through recognising and building on community assets please watch this:
https://youtu.be/a5xR4QB1ADw?si=KKFSoJFzkXzgYTBk
If you are inspired or interested in being involved more:
We are looking for the following if interested please get in touch:
Trustees:
As a group our activities have got to the point that we should register as a charity
organisation if we are looking to expand on what we are doing.
We are looking for 5-7 individuals who would like to be a volunteer trustees
It will involve around two or three 1-2hr meetings per year + AGM and would be to oversee
that GBT acts in the way we set out to do as a community organisation.
It does require your name and contact address to be listed on the charities commission
website.
We are looking for GBTs trustees to represent the range of lived experiences for the area
that make up our community

There are no specific additional skills requirements we are looking for people wanting to
help make a positive difference to Brislington to be a trustee . This link can explains the
details of trustee responsibilities:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80ddf940f0b62305b8d98d/Jigsaw.pdf
A youth voice in Brislington
We are looking for representation from those under the age of 20 who may not be able to
be a trustee or committee member but would like to be able to engage with community
decisions and actions.

Meeting welcoming host
Our public community meetings are held through-out the year normally April, June,
September and November. For the last 12 month we have started each meeting with a
warm shared meal time. If you wish to be a meeting host or would like to cook a suitable
meal option for 20+ people we would love to hear from you, or if you would prefer not to
cook but would like to be the welcoming friend people first say hello to, as we aim to make
a warm welcome to as many as possible to our public meetings please get in touch.
Sub-committee volunteer roles
The Great Brislington mouse trial committee
The Mouse trail will be in its 4 th year this year, we are looking to set up its own sub
committee to distribute/ allocate/ and retrieve the mice characters, and design and
distribute the marketing and promotion materials with the budget agreed by the
committee.
Please get as Penny has run out of anagrams ideas and needs more help to get the trail out
on time and leaflets into schools.
Market and events team
We will again be hosting a market in Brislington Village for the Saturday for the BS4 arts trail
weekend on Saturday 14 th June, and are again looking to make these an event space as well
as a market with some free community family friendly activity and space for communities
groups as well as showcasing our local stall holders.
Wild life project volunteers
We are actively developing an ecology monitoring project for Brislington Brook, if you are
interests please get in touch to help with a number of activities supporting the other
residents of our area
Wildlife Photography group walks coordinator
Our workshops have showed that the combination of mindful time in outside space while
sharing and photographing the local flora and fauna has been an activity suitable for a wide

range of ages and photograph skills, we would love to see the activity continue as regular
walks possible at the time of 2-4pm on Sundays that has been suitable for many.
Victory Park community Picnic team
Looking again to run a free fun day for the end of the summer holiday, if you can think of
ways to make the day bigger and better, or want to have a go at face painting the day aim it
to have a fun days but still not requiring people to have to spend £ then please get in touch.
Volunteer coordinators and community connectors
Do you like chatting and are good at sharing information and supporting others, did you
become the street WhatsApp contact during covid? As we grow we recognisees it becomes
a role in its self, helping others and being a point of contact. if you are good at getting
people to lend a hand and let them know ways to help, or planning a rota we would love to
hear from you.

Committee positions:
In November GBT will hold our annual AGM
Roles to be elected at every AGM are Chair, Secretary, Treasurer
We also would love to hear from anyone with interest in communication and marketing
skills or charity administration
If you are interest in being on the GBT committee please get in touch committee meetings
tend to be either online, at the Langton or round Penny’s kitchen table.

if you would like to know more please explore our website, like our facebook page Follow us on twitter and encourage people to join our mailing list

our public meetings are listed on our Community Calendar

2023 – Elected Committee

Chairperson – Penny Morgan

Treasurer – Rob Logan

Secretary – Cheryl Warner

Dougal Matthews – web / wildlife / liveable neighbourhoods

our priorities for this year are