
In 2025, Trinity Community Arts, St Pauls Carnival CIC, Citizens in Power and the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority will collaborate to launch a regional Citizens’ Assembly for Culture.
This bold new approach to cultural engagement will bring together citizens – people living, working or staying across the West or England – to explore how creative opportunities can be inclusive and accessible for everyone in the region.
Guided by the four pillars of the West of England’s existing cultural plan – skills, the economy, placemaking and well-being – the Assembly will create a series of recommendations that will help to define priorities for regional cultural output; what takes place and where, who is involved and how our regional offer is shaped and defined.
We’re pleased to share this dedicated website for the Citizens for Culture project. This platform marks an exciting next step towards the planned Assembly this year and it is designed to share news and updates on the project, including the latest events, blog posts and ways to get involved.
We are collaborating with Wecil who are providing expertise on the sites features and accessibility, we know this is always a journey so if you have any feedback about the site please do get in contact with us.
THE PROJECT SO FAR:

The partnership secured further funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for the delivery of Citizens for Culture. Citizens for Culture was announced as part of the delivery plans for West of England Mayoral Combined Authority’s Culture West programme.

The West of England Mayoral Combined Authority agreed to join the partnership and support the research phase. One of the objectives of this phase was to create a series of citizens’ panels with representative groups of citizens from across the region selected by the Sortition Foundation. These citizen panels created the design principles for the Citizens’ Assembly for Culture.

£10,000 of research and development funding was secured from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) which enabled the partners to begin the initial research phase. During this period, collaborators from the cultural sector helped explore how a Citizens’ Assembly for Culture could be used to co-create a cultural delivery plan During this phase, it was recommended that the plan should incorporate the wider region.

The project was initiated by St Pauls Carnival CEO, LaToyah McAllister-Jones, and Trinity‘s CEO, Emma Harvey, who, as community leaders, began to think about how people in Bristol – particularly those from under-represented groups – could help to inform cultural plans for the city. The pair began working with David Jubb from Citizens in Power to build democracy into cultural decision-making. programme.

We’re connecting with cultural leaders to explore the civic and democratic tools that we, as citizens, can access
Here LaToyah McAllister-Jones, executive director of St Pauls Carnival, reflects on her experiences of using various tools to facilitate democratic decision-making.
Opinion: LaToyah McAllister-Jones on voices in decision-making
I have always been attracted to work and play that enables people to have a voice. To be heard. After years of working with marginalised groups, from managing accommodation services for street homeless people to community organising in Hackney, I have developed an interest in the right to influence decisions being made about our lives.
One of the most interesting things about leading a community arts organisation is just how integral the community is to our work. St Pauls Carnival CIC is merely a custodian for the iconic event; we provide a stage and the community fills those spaces. Carnival celebrates African Caribbean talent in St Pauls and beyond as well as our culture and heritage. Our communities continue the traditions of our ancestors using music, dance and storytelling to share lived experiences and connect to our heritage. This is one of the most important things about our event: it allows us to tell our own stories, in our own words, using our voices.
In 2021, I was asked by Involve to facilitate Bristol City Council’s Citizens’ Assembly that would support policy development in housing, health inequalities and transport as the city emerged from Covid. The process was new to me, and I loved the way it cut through many of the challenges that we often come up against when engaging communities:
- Participants are randomly selected, and usually aren’t experts in the central assembly topic. There is a process to ensure that all participants are able to meaningfully contribute to the discussions, and this is critical to the success of an assembly.
- The process seeks to facilitate consensus, rather than debate which tends to have a winner and a loser.
- Participants are encouraged to explore what their real priorities are and what they might be prepared to forego for those priorities.
- Assemblies bring together a diverse range of people who you wouldn’t necessarily find together in a traditional social setting. This creates an opportunity for vastly differing viewpoints to be heard and influence how others participants might think about a topic.
St Pauls Carnival are currently delivering a Citizens’ Assembly for Culture in partnership with Trinity Community Arts, Citizens In Power and West Of England Combined Authority. The idea developed just as we were coming out of the pandemic and thinking about the lessons learnt; particularly the role of community. Together, we were curious about what it would look like to use the assembly process – democratic, person-centred and thinking about strengths of a place, its people and its assets – to reimagine what the cultural offer could look like in the South West region.
Democratic decision-making allows citizens to actively contribute to the discourse that shapes their communities. We also believe culture is experienced by everyone, in many different ways, and everyone should be able to access the culture that represents them. If this is to be the ambition, it is vital that we put people at the centre of that process. This means understanding how people experience culture, what it means to them and, as cultural leaders, asking ‘how can we reflect this in our approach and programming?’
The new Labour Government expressed an interest in the use of Citizens’ Assemblies earlier this year, and the format has been used to unpack challenging issues like abortion in Ireland. The South West region is already embedding this approach into how we speak to our communities, and we are at the forefront of using assemblies to understand how we deliver for everyone, and not just those who can afford it or who have easy access to culture.
Our Citizens’ Assembly for Culture project offers an exciting opportunity to create a new approach to engaging people in the cultural life of a place. The Assembly will take place in Spring 2025 as a central programme within Culture West, funded by the West of England Combined Authority and Arts Council South West. The recommendations coming from this Assembly will become part of the regional approach to delivering a citizen-led cultural offer.
We’re exploring how creatives in the South West are using art to amplify, challenge and reclaim narratives
As part of Black History Month we invited creatives and activists in the West of England to respond to this year’s theme ‘Reclaiming Narratives’ through the lens of Citizens For Culture’s core principles: inclusion, voice and influence.
In the second of this content series, writer and actress Mya Fraser shares her poem Justice.
Reclaiming the narrative: Mya Fraser and Justice
Think of a boomerang, an object which is designed to return
back to that throws forcer. What happens if it doesn’t come back?. History. Left behind whilst they dare to live without them. I believe in clarity. what i would like to clarify is the detachment clarify the sadness the hurt the wonders. I believe in comfort. something you can’t breathe properly without. your beats no longer stating the same rhythms. that irregulation speaks volumes. the very same songs the luth sings isolated. As if there’s a complete loss of control. where lies the control when the one creator’s captured fix stays lost. You’ve Left the hand waiting behind whilst finding that paternal break. The originator plucks the air it once sat. pondering in what it’s doing. Where are you? Hopeful you’re homesick. do theirs caress better? do theirs care for more?. Remaining wishful of tracing those invisible tracks in which the sand once led for you. Fulfilling the void that formed in your absence. To hear your sound once more would be an extraordinary pleasure in the figure and in the residential care of your beloved. Bring them home. Because again, I believe. and what i believe in most is a happy ending. rewriting a story doesn’t change the idea of the first plot, it manipulates the initial honesty. Here’s to history.
About Mya Fraser
Mya Fraser is a 20-year-old actress and writer, brought up in Oxford. At the age of 15 she decided to begin her acting career by joining young theatre companies based in her hometown. She later went on to receive her acting diploma in 2022 on a two year A-level equivalent diploma course at Bristol School of Acting.
She has been on multiple international tours with Mandala Theatre Company and is currently in their show Seed Guardians.
Follow Mya on Instagram
We’re exploring how creatives in the South West are using art to amplify, challenge and reclaim narratives
As part of Black History Month we invited creatives and activists in the West of England to respond to this year’s theme ‘Reclaiming Narratives’ through the lens of Citizens For Culture’s core principles: inclusion, voice and influence.
In the first of this content series DJ, vocalist and songwriter NGAIO discusses her music video Goddess.
Reclaiming the narrative: NGAIO and Goddess
The creation of this music video was so important to me, to tell my story of what it’s been like to find myself and my beauty in a Western world as a mixed-race woman. The beginning scenes were filmed on the streets of St Pauls, where my topless billboard was put up as part of the Censored campaign, which was put together to raise awareness about the sexualisation of women’s nipples and the persecution received when seen in public. Men can go topless at any time, but women can’t, why is that still the case? It folds into a wider discussion about how heavily women’s bodies are policed when we look at reproduction and beauty standards – it all comes back to what external people think women should do with their bodies and how they should look (which changes all the time). These consistent messages of scrutiny in society through the media, and comments made and overheard, led me to feel deep shame, embarrassment, and fear.
I have been on a journey of loving my curves and accepting – some days even appreciating – my lumps and bumps. Never in a million years when I was young did I think I would feel steady enough to not only be pictured without a top on, but to let that be shown to the world on a street 5 minutes from where I grew up.
Goddess is about saying we’re all Goddesses – no matter what anybody tells us, we are exactly what we need to be. We don’t need to starve ourselves. We don’t need to have the same face and body. Our uniqueness is what makes us individuals. Whatever the shape, size, colour, or gender; you are a Goddess in every sense of the word. People try to tell us that we should look a certain way or act a certain way. We’re consistently being told who we should be, but how we feel about ourselves shouldn’t be dependent on the external world. We are more expansive than that.
Goddess is about understanding that we are connected to more than this moment we’re in right now on this planet. It is about the connection that we have with our spirituality and our ancestors which is why in the middle scenes I’m surrounded by foliage outside with my natural hair picked into an afro. These scenes were to symbolise the necessity of connecting with nature and the Earth from which we are all born and will all return. Some see the Earth as a rock we live on that serves us, and that is so sad. This living, breathing, organism has given us and our ancestors life – it continues to connect us in space, spanning time we can’t even fathom.
The breakdown in the song is a celebration of that realisation that we are our past and our future and if we are ever feeling lost or unsure, we can tap into the Goddesses inside us to find our way. Through connection to nature or connection to ourselves – knowledge and love are always there, inside us. It ends on a scene which was a nod to a duo who have inspired this new chapter of my musical journey – Ibeyi and their first release, River.
It was filmed by Charlotte Sawyer, a long-term collaborator and lover of nature who’s just won an award for her incredible documentary Rave on for the Avon to raise awareness about the dangerously unsanitary state of our water in East Bristol.
This song – for me at least – was made for moments when I’m feeling unsure, to calm me with melody and stillness, to shake me up with love, before releasing me back into the world. I hope it can do the same for you.
About NGAIO
NGAIO, the versatile artist renowned for her vocals, songwriting, and DJing prowess, seamlessly blends these talents to craft electrifying live performances. This year, she debuts her first self-produced EP ‘Four Quarters’ and accompanying live show, featuring live vocals and recreations of her productions delivered through Ableton Push. Soundscaping trip hop, jazz, bass and global music in a multigenre sound reflecting her travels – there’s something for everyone. As a mixed-race woman, NGAIO infuses her artistry with personal experiences, enriching her music with poignant storytelling told through spoken word and jazz-infused vocals delivered with passion.
It’s rare to find a performer with this many strings to their bow. NGAIO’s versatility as an artist has seen her moving audiences to standing ovations with soul-striking vocals, spark tears through truth-laden spoken word, and destroy dancefloors with selections old and new. Each performance takes her audience on a journey of nostalgia and discovery. Transitioning from band and DJ gigs to curating a solo show, she intricately weaves jazz and underground bass influences, earning comparisons to the eclectic iBeyi and Greentea Peng. Beyond music, NGAIO advocates for cultural understanding, bridging divides between races and classes.
Check out NGAIO’s website or socials @ngaioamusic
Videographer – Charlotte Sawyer
Photographer – Charley Williams