The Bristol Cable

Unpacked – Ben Carpenter: what should youth services look like?

In December the government announced plans to invest £500m in the country’s youth services – which were gutted during austerity – and create 50 major new and revitalised youth hubs – including at Docklands in St Paul’s. Shockingly this is the first time there has been a national youth strategy in a couple of decades. Our guest today is a man who – like your host Neil – has a long history of working with young people. He’s the outspoken Ben Carpenter, founder and CEO of local youth and community organisation Grassroot Communities [https://grassrootcommunities.org/]. The pair reflect on the state of youth services, and whether the government’s plans go far enough. We get into the massive new Youth Zone opening in south Bristol this month – what are the pros and cons of these kinds of places? And with young people facing massive challenges from financial insecurity to online harms to knife crime, we ask what services should be there for them in an ideal world. Enjoy… The Bristol Cable [https://thebristolcable.org/] is Bristol's community-owned cooperative newsroom – fiercely independent journalism that puts people before profit. Since 2014, we've been holding power to account through investigative reporting, community campaigns, and democratic media ownership. Because when journalism serves the community, not shareholders, real change becomes possible. Support [https://thebristolcable.org/join/?joinbutton=headerclick] independent journalism and help us bring more vital conversations to Bristol: become a Bristol Cable member.

Unpacked – Paul Smith: spending £20m and not betraying Hartcliffe

This week we welcome back to Unpacked Paul Smith. Last time we had him on the show, in 2020, he was in the local news every week as the councillor in charge of Bristol's housing. For most of the last six years he's been out of the public spotlight, but in the last few weeks has been selected to help locals decide how to spend millions of pounds of government money in the place he grew up – Hartcliffe. While he's not lived there for more than 25 years, it’s a place he remains passionate about – enough to have written a book, Hartcliffe Betrayed [https://www.brh.org.uk/site/pamphleteer/hartcliffe-betrayed/], about how the neighbourhood has been failed by people in power, ever since it was planned after the Second World War. Paul, himself a former local Labour councillor for Hartcliffe, and more recently the CEO of a housing association, now finds himself trying to ensure Hartcliffe doesn’t get betrayed again. The programme he'll be leading, Pride in Place [https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-is-pride-in-place], will see £20m invested in the area over 10 years. So why is Paul the right man for the job? How will he ensure that local people get a proper say in how that money – less than it sounds – is put to work? And what would success look like? Sit down and find out, in a hard-hitting and sometimes humorous edition of Bristol Unpacked… The Bristol Cable [https://thebristolcable.org/] is Bristol's community-owned cooperative newsroom – fiercely independent journalism that puts people before profit. Since 2014, we've been holding power to account through investigative reporting, community campaigns, and democratic media ownership. Because when journalism serves the community, not shareholders, real change becomes possible. Support [https://thebristolcable.org/join/?joinbutton=headerclick] independent journalism and help us bring more vital conversations to Bristol: become a Bristol Cable member.

Unpacked – Yassin Mohamud: Bristol's first Somali lord mayor

Welcome back after a short break to Bristol Unpacked, and the start of our new season running through until summer. For the first episode we welcome Yassin Mohamud, a Green councillor for Lawrence Hill, the ward that includes Barton Hill, which as well as sitting within the controversion East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood scheme was the scene of the disastrous Barton House tower block evacuation in 2023. It's a busy, diverse inner-city area where there is always plenty to keep local politicians on their toes. In the week this episode goes live Yassin will be sworn in as Bristol’s Lord Mayor [https://bristolgreenparty.org.uk/green-councillor-yassin-mohamud-to-be-next-lord-mayor-of-bristol/] – the first in our city to come from the Somali community. While it’s mostly a ceremonial role, he’s pledged to use to bring people back together and ensure everyone feels listened to. We’re keen to hear more about how his background in community work and dealing with difficult issues might help him do that. We’ll also get into the importance of his identity, and how his new platform can help challenge anti-immigrant attitudes – which were amplified last year by Reform’s West of England mayoral candidate Arron Banks, who accused Bristol’s Somalis of being at the forefront of crime. Hope you enjoy, we'll be back again in two weeks. The Bristol Cable [https://thebristolcable.org/] is Bristol's community-owned cooperative newsroom – fiercely independent journalism that puts people before profit. Since 2014, we've been holding power to account through investigative reporting, community campaigns, and democratic media ownership. Because when journalism serves the community, not shareholders, real change becomes possible. Support [https://thebristolcable.org/join/?joinbutton=headerclick] independent journalism and help us bring more vital conversations to Bristol: become a Bristol Cable member.

Lewis Wedlock: towards a positive masculinity

This week we welcome Lewis Wedlock to discuss his work as a ‘masculinities educator’ with young people in schools in Bristol and across the country. In our age of controversial 'hypermasculine' online influencers – perhaps most famously, Andrew Tate – this can be an eye-opening experience, to put it mildly. Of course the ‘manosphere’ of which Tate is part has broken massively into the wider consciousness recently. Last year the hard-hitting Netflix drama Adolescence went viral, followed just a few weeks ago by Louis Theroux’ documentary Inside the Manosphere. Many people – including Lewis – questioned whether that film should have done more to challenge the men making a fortune out of packaging idealised, unobtainable and sometimes toxic versions of masculinity on social media and podcasts. People outside of that world – and especially parents of boys – can find it both terrifying and bewildering, in terms of its appeal. So this week we’re seeking to get into why it’s so attractive and what its impact is. We’ll ask be exploring what Lewis – who has a book out, called Masculinity in Schools – believes a more positive vision of masculinity can look like. The Bristol Cable [https://thebristolcable.org/] is Bristol's community-owned cooperative newsroom – fiercely independent journalism that puts people before profit. Since 2014, we've been holding power to account through investigative reporting, community campaigns, and democratic media ownership. Because when journalism serves the community, not shareholders, real change becomes possible. Support [https://thebristolcable.org/join/?joinbutton=headerclick] independent journalism and help us bring more vital conversations to Bristol: become a Bristol Cable member.

Unpacked – Kerri Matthews: what happens when parents go to prison?

What happens to families when a parent ends up in prison? That’s the question we’re getting into this week on Unpacked with Kerri Matthews, a director of Bristol's EveryFamily charity. Over more than a decade EveryFamily [https://everyfamily.org.uk/], which started as a SureStart children's centre, has developed specialist services working with families where a parent is in prison – something Kerri, a mum herself, has been at the heart of. It leads on supporting families affected by parental offending across South Gloucestershire, Somerset and, via a contract with Avon and Somerset Police, Bristol. So what is the impact on a child when their parent is jailed – something that’s been likened to a bereavement? What’s it like working with mums and dads to open up about their own feelings and relationships – and parenting – in the tough environment of a prison? And looking at the big picture, what needs to change in how we work with children and families, to give people the best chances in life? Neil and Kerri get into all this and more, in this week’s Bristol Unpacked – hope you enjoy. The Bristol Cable [https://thebristolcable.org/] is Bristol's community-owned cooperative newsroom – fiercely independent journalism that puts people before profit. Since 2014, we've been holding power to account through investigative reporting, community campaigns, and democratic media ownership. Because when journalism serves the community, not shareholders, real change becomes possible. Support [https://thebristolcable.org/join/?joinbutton=headerclick] independent journalism and help us bring more vital conversations to Bristol: become a Bristol Cable member.