The Vision Project

BUILDING BRISTOL
AS AN INCLUSIVE CITY OF HOPE
WRITTEN BY MARVIN REES
Marvin is the Mayor of Bristol, and has been re-selected to stand as Labour’s candidate for that role again in 2020.
My vision as Mayor of Bristol is clear: to
help build an inclusive city where no-one
is left behind. It’s a vision that underpins
our Corporate Strategy as a Local
Authority, as well as wider city strategies
such as the One City Plan...
I want Bristol to be a place in which everyone’s
hopes and aspirations can be made real. To do this,
we need to ensure that people are not held back
by poverty and that our collective successes are
fairly shared. But the mantra of inclusion is easy to
preach and hard to practice. So what does it mean
for Bristol and how are we trying to make it real?
The first thing to say about inclusion is that it
can only be achieved when we have a mindset
that sees people as assets and not burdens. It’s
easy and all too common to see leaders and
organisations take a ‘deficit approach’ and focus
only on people’s needs and disadvantages. But we
will only become a truly inclusive city if we focus
on the contributions that everyone can bring, and
then set about creating the structures and systems
that enable those contributions.
The second principle that underlies our inclusive
approach is that progress can only be achieved
through collaboration. Inclusion is everyone’s
responsibility, and cannot simply be delivered by
a Local Authority or any other organisation or
group acting alone. That’s why the we’ve adopted
what we call the One City Approach, seeking to
bring together different actors in the city and
catalyse greater collaboration and alignment. This
is happening through the One City Plan which
sets a collective vision for the city all the way to
2050, the City Office which is providing a hub for
collaboration and engagement, and the City Funds
which is pooling financial resources in order to
make systemic gains.
With these principles in mind, we can focus on
the contents of inclusion, which for me consists
of four key elements which all need to be held
together. They are access, outcomes, belonging
and influence. Access means making sure that
everyone in the city is able to benefit from and
contribute to services and activities. There is of
course a physical element to this, which involves
making sure our city is as physically accessible to
everyone as possible.
But there is also a cultural element which involves
breaking down the less visible barriers which hold
people back from being able to engage with
services and other activities. We were proud last
year to become the first Local Authority in the
UK to ‘Ban the Box’ and no longer use a tick box
in our job applications asking people about their
criminal record. We took this step because we
believe that everyone applying for a job at the
council should be given the same encouragement
and opportunity irrespective of their background.
Bristol is a place where the opportunities to share
in the city’s success are not evenly distributed and
barriers exist that prevent some from fulfilling their
potential.
Our aim is to remove one of those barriers and
send a message that we’re interested in getting
to know the person applying for the job first and
begin our conversation there.
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THE VISION PROJECT