Bristol Festival of Nature

Water City Bristol Community Enabler Helen Adshead talking about the project and partner project Bristol Loves Tides at the Bristol Festival of Nature. Photo credit: BLT.

Meanwhile, parents (and other adults) were invited to share their Water Connections... which many were very happy to do.  They wrote up brief versions of their water stories on post-it notes, virtually placing these as ‘messages in a bottle’.  

The interactions led to many conversations about water connections with Bristol, and many people asked to be kept informed about future water-related events that Water City Bristol is involved with. Stories included memories of the 1968 flood on the Malago in Bedminster, and the intimate relationship with water created through organised walks and water mapping. 

The Bristol Festival of Nature is an annual free festival in Bristol that brings together people from policy, research, conservation and the media in a family-friendly and activity-focused two-day event focused on the celebration of the natural world.


This year, members of the Water City Bristol team alongside colleagues from another UWE-based project on Drought Resilience shared a table at the festival and engaged attendees in considering their relationships with water (and the potential lack of it!)


Over two tables, a large sheet of paper was rolled out and children were invited to draw and right about their experiences with water. This worked very well!  We got an amazing picture of an urban river and all its various life in and around it (including the Bristol Crocodile, apparently sighted a couple of years ago), among many other creative contributions.