News & Events

EU citizens that the deadline to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme to stay living in the UK is 30 June.  Please share with you contacts, family and friends. Bristol City Council auf Twitter: "The deadline to apply to the #EUSettlementScheme is 30 June. Please apply so you can stay living here. All #Bristol citizens are valued. Find out how to apply & where to get help: https://t.co/pG3K8Q0dSR #WeAreBristol @MarvinJRees @CllrAsherCraig @91Ways @upourstreet @ambitionlw https://t.co/GDLbNKfPK4" / Twitter

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We are delighted that approval has been granted to rename seven of the meeting rooms in City Hall to represent all of Bristol’s twin cities.  The names will appear on the doors and there will be a panel inside each room, with text and photographs to give information about the relevant city.  We are very excited about this, and grateful to the Guild of Guardians, who work closely with the Lord Mayor, for funding most of the costs.  It also means that anyone booking the rooms, including city officers, will book them as the ‘Bristol-Hannover Room’ etc.  which means that the twinnings’...

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Having had to abandon the plans for our Hannover friends to visit us in 2020, we had pencilled in a postponed visit at the end of August this year.  However, as things are still very uncertain, not least in terms of vaccine distribution, your committee has proposed to the Gesellschaft in Hannover that we cancel any further group visits this year, and plan to make up for it next year.  So in 2022, our 75th anniversary! We hope to manage to organise visits in both directions, as we did for both the 60th and the 70th anniversaries.  This will give us more time to organise really exciting visits...

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Bristol-Hannover Council played a leading role in organising an online regional twinning conference on behalf of Bristol International Twinnings Association on February 25th, a belated follow-up to the conference held in City Hall in September 2019. 49 delegates attended from a wide region encompassing Portsmouth, Devon, Worcestershire and Reading, and there was both great enthusiasm in the discussions on the day, and a lively response afterwards. People were stimulated by the ideas which came up in discussion groups after a year of exclusively online activity. Going forward as the lockdown eases,...

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Socialist realism is unmistakable. The stark political messaging, most notably developed in the two decades after the Russian Revolution in 1917, is simultaneously impressive and intimidating. The style was also intended as inspirational for the purpose of political propaganda amid the social, industrial and economic turmoil within the Soviet Union under Stalin. Posters with spacemen, soldiers, workers, women and children, doves of peace showed Stalin’s desire to portray the Soviet Union as a forward-looking workers’ state. BHC member Colin Evans, in the latest of his German art talks,...

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This year, Germany’s National Day of Mourning or Volkstrauertag was held on Sunday November 15th, to commemorate the bombing of Coventry on that date in 1940. The remembrance ceremony was held in the Bundestag in Berlin, and there was a photograph of Coventry’s bombed-out cathedral in the background. We were alerted to this by our friend Thomas Hermann, mayor of Hannover, telling us that it would be broadcast on ZDF, so it was possible to watch it via satellite TV. Prince Charles was the guest of honour and gave a full and heartfelt speech on British-German friendship, alternating between German...

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On November 12th, in Remembrance week, we had a moving and appropriate online event, which actually should have taken place at the end of the Mayors for Peace exhibition in February, but had to be postponed.  Bristol actor David Collins read poems based on recent conflicts: "What War Does to Us: 1914 until now".  David started the programme with poems from the First World War (the so-called 'Great War'), the horrific starting point of modern total war, with poems of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and others, and then went on, with new voices, some well known and some not, continuing the same...

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German Ambassador HE Andreas Michaelis undertook a two day programme in Bristol accompanied by his wife, Frau Heike Michaelis who is a teacher and by the German Consul General Hans-Guenther Loeffler. The delegation visited Airbus and then had a tour of the SS GB with German speaking head curator Joanna Mathers. The Ambassador learnt about the role of the German salvage team in rescuing the ship in the Falklands. This year is the 50th anniversary of the ship returning to Bristol. BHC Chair Ann Kennard and BAGS Secretary Jon Darch joined them for tea after the visit. The Ambassador had dinner with...

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Bristol artists Miss Hazard and The Hass took part virtually in the Hannover Urban Culture Festival last weekend. The artists were chosen from a short list kindly put together by Steve Hayles from Bristol UPFest. An artist from Hannover’s Polish twin town Poznan was also invited. Hannover’s Kulturamt covered the costs and the artists produced special pieces and sent them to Hannover to be included in the Kabine arts centre exhibition. This is the second year Bristol artists have taken part in the festival and everyone hopes next year more stars from Bristol will be there in person.        

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And Launch of the Celebration of 800 years of the Hospital of St Mark, now the Lord Mayor’s Chapel 1220-2020 On Sunday 1st March, BHC Chair Ann Kennard and Secretary Lynne Evans were honoured to attend the Lord Mayor’s Annual Civic Service, which had a very special significance this year, at the start of the 800th anniversary of the Lord Mayor’s Chapel. The Lord Mayor entered the Chapel with the Sword Bearer and Mace Escort provided by the Avon Fire and Rescue Service. The Lord Mayor welcomed the congregation to this historic ceremony, although she was sad to have to mention that the beautiful...

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