The Trinity Centre will remain closed for public events and gatherings until such times as restrictions ease. Trinity has been and will continue to closely monitor Public Health England guidelines in relation to the COVID-19 situation, in order to respond as necessary.

We will be working to adapt and deliver some activities online as part of grant funded projects - including the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund - and will liaise with community partners to make sure we support any coordinated responses to support those most vulnerable during these difficult times.

Ticket holders

We will communicate via our website and mailing lists regarding all cancellations or postponed events. All tickets will be valid for rescheduled dates, however if you would like to request a refund, please do so by contacting our bookings team on info@trinitybristol.org.uk and include the event name, date and the email you used to make the booking. Please note, that it may take time to respond to refund requests.

Hirers

Please contact your Booking Coordinator via email about your planned event to discuss either postponing and rescheduling or cancelling your event.

Advice for the Community

We urge individuals to follow Public Health England guidelines to limit the spread of COVID-19 - do not leave your home or mix with anyone outside your own household unless absolutely necessary.

If you or anyone else in your household are displaying any symptoms of COVID-19 - a high temperature, a new, continuous cough, a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste - get a test as soon as possible and stay at home until you get the result.

If you are unsure or need to check symptoms, visit the NHS COVID-19 Self Assessment.

The Trinity Centre will be closed for public events and gatherings from 5 November, until such times as restrictions ease. Trinity has been and will continue to closely monitor Public Health England guidelines in relation to the COVID-19 situation, in order to respond as necessary.

We will be working to adapt and deliver some activities online as part of grant funded projects - including the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund - and will liaise with community partners to make sure we support any coordinated responses to support those most vulnerable during these difficult times.

Ticket holders

We will communicate via our website and mailing lists regarding all cancellations or postponed events. All tickets will be valid for rescheduled dates, however if you would like to request a refund, please do so by contacting our bookings team on info@trinitybristol.org.uk and include the event name, date and the email you used to make the booking.

Hirers

Please contact your Booking Coordinator about your planned event to discuss either postponing and rescheduling or cancelling your event.

Advice for the Community

We would urge individuals to follow Public Health England and stay at home unless they have a specific reason to leave, such as education and work which cannot be done from home.

If you or anyone else in your household are displaying any symptoms of COVID-19 - a high temperature, a new, continuous cough, a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste - get a test as soon as possible and stay at home until you get the result.

If you are unsure or need to check symptoms, visit the NHS COVID-19 Self Assessment.

IGNiTE resident Ania Varez describes her practice as 'community-engaging'

I want to give people in England a point of contact with a crisis that is largely undocumented in the UK. Ania Varez

Ania Varez is a Venezuelan artist who trained in classical dance and moved to Bristol in 2015 having graduated from the London Contemporary Dance School, before moved away from performing dance towards more participatory projects that explore issues of migration and loss.

We supported Ania during our 2018 IGNiTE Artists residency programme to develop her project Guayabo (Venezuelan slang for heartbreak). This was a participatory work that invited people to gather around their pain and the pain of others, challenging our ways of acting and caring for one another through geographical distance or cultural differences, as a medium of survival, transformation and belonging.

We really liked Ania's reasons for applying for an IGNiTE residency:

"The experience of leaving my home in the midst of a severe humanitarian crisis and facing the challenges of being an immigrant in the UK, as well as witnessing the current migration crisis worldwide, has strengthened my urgency to develop a practice for these issues to be addressed collectively and creatively, here in England."

Viki Browne during her residency at the University of Gloucester

I tend to work from what feels like the most difficult or sticky area of my thinking and whenever I’m like: ‘No, I’m not going there’, I’m like: ‘Oh, here we go! Viki Browne

Viki Browne is a performance artist who creates work about topics that are uncomfortable, risky or taboo.

As part of her 2018 IGNiTE artist residency, Viki focused on developing a new project Hyper Fem which considers whether the performance of femininity through drag can be as powerful, political or subversive when performed on a female identifying body.

The new piece was strongly inspired by some of her recent previous projects which involved wigs, Drag and performing as a "make up girl in a tiny dress".

Hyper Fem challenges restrictive gender norms dictated and commodified by the patriarchy.

How Viki describes her work:
“I thought: ‘I like that, I want that, I don’t know why it feels really naughty and forbidden. This is really difficult and feels very against my personal feminism. So I started making work about that. That’s what I’m bringing to IGNiTE – furthering my thinking about the performance of femininity and wether that can be a political and subversive performance, particularly if femininity is positioned on a female body”

Lullabies workshop at Easton Community Centre. Photo @ Alexa Ledecky

Roxana is a multi-award winning Iranian/British multi-disciplinary artist working with music, storytelling, film and live performance in a participatory context for over 20 years. Core to Roxana’s work is a desire to connect with the human stories that unite us, using a multi art approach to tackle issues of racism, discrimination and belonging.

In 2018 Roxana joined the Trinity team developing her project, Lullabies, during her IGNiTE residency. Lullabies, was inspired by Roxana signing traditional Iranian lullabies to her children at night. Here she began to imagine how many others might be singing songs in different languages to their children and the stories behind them.

During her pilot project Roxana worked with local communities and schools to collect lullabies from families. She recorded interviews and songs from communities across Bristol, including Somali, Kurdish, Irish, Israeli, Iranian, Hungarian, German and Afro-Cuban songs.

In 2020 the project was selected to be part of Here and Now, a national project celebrating of 25 years of National Lottery Funding and showcasing everyday culture.

With the support of Trinity Roxana is continuing to develop Lullabies and in 2021 and will deliver online Zoom workshops. There is an open call for the public to submit their Lullabies and there are a series of adaptive podcasts with BBC R+D.

During her residency Ella will use Latin, HipHop and Contemporary dance theatre to explore what it is to be a 'citizen of the world' and challenge notions of belonging, home, identity and coming of age as ‘other’ through her project ‘Foreign Bodies’.

"I am super happy to be coming back to my Bristol Roots. It will be a very special project for me to be working in my home town and getting to know the community."

Ella discovered dance at Cotham school in Bristol, then trained at Laban and The Place, graduating with a postgraduate diploma in 2011. She also has a Politics and Sociology degree from Leeds University. In 2013, she was selected as a future Dance Leader for the ABLE leadership program and in 2015, awarded a Bench fellowship for emerging female choreographers. She has trained internationally in Cuba, Brazil and USA including The Graham school- New York, La Ena- Havana, Deborah Colker- Rio De Janeiro and Funceb- Salvador da Bahia. Credits include Russell Maliphant Company, Southpaw Company, Professional cast of the Olympics Opening Ceremony, Wendy Houston, poet Warsan Shire, Adidas, and apprentice for Upswing Circus. She established Latin company Element Arts in Leeds in 2005 and has produced Roots of Rumba (an annual Latin Dance Theatre Festival) since 2013.

Find out more about Ella here: www.ellamesma.co.uk

Lady Like by Ella Mesma, programmed as part of IGNiTE at Trinity.  Photo @Jessica Bartolini

Bristol Dance Futures are offering £8,000 for four Dance Connect Artist residencies. The residencies will see artists work in collaboration with Bristol based organisations, with the aim to see how dance practise could enrich a working environment and to exchange learning.

Dance Connect is an initiative by Bristol Dance Futures and aims to nurture talent, provide continuing professional development opportunities for dancers, and create a vibrant dance ecology so people of all ages can engage with high quality dance.

The Dance Connect initiative will embed four dance artists in Bristol’s arts, cultural and community organisations for 40 days, over a period of up to 11 months from November 2020

To apply now* please complete the Full Partnership Application form addressing the aims and the assessment criteria below.

(*Please note applications will only be accepted from those who have completed an Expression of Interest form. You can also download the Full Partnership Application form as a PDF here and the Guidelines and Assessment criteria here)

For more info please contact Deborah Baddoo - dancefutures@theatrebristol.net

Dance Connect Aims:

• Raise the profile of dance within individual organisations and more broadly within the cultural sector
• Embed the value of dance and the contribution dance artists can make within and across organisations - strengthen Bristol’s dance ecology and lever more support for dance
• Better equip organisations to work with dance artists
• Create opportunities for critical dialogue between organisations, dance artists and audiences
• Provide opportunities to test, grow and change the practice of individual dance artists, people working within organisations and the wider sector
• Create models of working which can be sustained beyond the period of this initiative

Criteria for Assessment:

• Experience in working within their chosen field of activity
• Imaginative and ambitious nature of the application
• Specificity of ideas
• Potential for impact of the residency
• What difference the residency will make to the artists' and organisations' practice
• Potential for legacy after the residency has ended
• Ideas on how they might share the impact of the Dance Connect residency

Full Partnership Application deadline 5pm 13th November 2020

Trinity Centre during the Festival of Light event in 2018 Photo Khali Ackford

This year Trinity will not be hosting our annual fireworks display.

Having run the popular free community event since 2004 this year we have decided to take a well earned break to focus on developing our Community Activities programme.

Our newly announced Community Kickstart project will launch on the Nov 3 during our very first Community Feast.

We are calling local residents who have an idea and the passion to start an activity (BS2, BS5) to join us for a hearty veggie meal (cooked by our friends at CoExist Community Kitchen) and to find out more about how to get support and small amounts of funding to get their ideas off the ground.

We also have lots of regular activities happening in our garden including Play & Learn Sessions for 0 – 5 and their carers, as well as regular volunteer work. You can always join us on the Nov 5 at our annual Heart & Soul Celebration as we welcome members, friends and supporters for an evening looking back at all the wonderful events, projects and activities that took place at Trinity in the last year.

This is a great opportunity to ask us any questions about getting involved with Trinity and how to get your own ideas or projects off the ground and out in the community.

During the celebration we will welcome resident artist Roxana Vilk who will be sharing her project 'Lullabies' and our Communities team will be running an easy drop in workshop to create bird feeders. Plus, there will be food from Pieminister who have kindly donated vegan and veggie pies.