Vocalise Sucess Story

Written by Julia Widz

On the 29th of March, we had a visit from University of East Anglia. International development students came to visit Bristol.

The professors, Teresa and Kavita who were organising the tour, came to visit Bristol last year to get to know the city and find things that the students could do during their week here in spring. Teresa and Kavita spent a day around St. Pauls and Montpelier visiting pearls around the city like the Portland Square or our famous Turbo Island.

They were especially interested in community organisations and projects as well as social activism. This led the teachers to St Pauls Learning Centre, where they found a copy of Vocalise! The professors immediately appreciated the great work we do and important role we have as a networking and information hub for our community and wanted their students to get involved with us.

So, we organised a lovely, personalised day tour for students around St. Paul’s and our community. There were 26 students in total and three teachers. For the first part of the day, we split students into two groups. And then we took each group for a walk around our area. We covered a big chunk of St Pauls, things like the 2 of 7 saints of St Pauls, community centres, the Alfred Fagon statue. The guide was one of our directors, Kabbo Hue Ferdinand. The students got to learn about the history of Hamilton House, as well as saw some beautiful street art like Banksy, Captain Jamaica among others.

After the walks, we took a break and met back in Docklands Community Centre where we continued the day full of experiences. We started with a drumming session by Rubba. Rubba is a great artist from our area – you probably know him already! He does afrikan drumming workshops in DMAC, you can also find him performing sometimes in venues like Star and Garter. We then had a storytelling and creative writing workshop by Kabbo, followed by a chat about Vocalise with our founder Vandna. We talked about how the magazine started, how it is to run an organization like this.

The day was not only full of fun and energy but also educational! The students enjoyed it very much and felt that they learned a lot.

If you’d ever like to take part in a tour like this, or any of the above activities let us know. We loved being able to organise this event and would love to repeat that. We can organise a day, a morning, an afternoon activity for you, your family, school, or workplace! You can mix and match activities you’d like, and we will always find something that suits best depending on your budget, needs and interests! Just get in touch and share our offer among your networks.