March 2025 Newsletter: Bristol Community Festival, Film Night, Wine Tasting, & Updates

BBP Newsletter.

Welcome to the latest newsletter from the Bristol Bordeaux Partnership (BBP)  - March's edition. Today we reflect on a number of initiatives underway to promote greater twinning between Bristol and Bordeaux. 

Bristol City Hall twinning activities 

BBP is liaising with Zoe Gibbons Bristol  International Twinning Officer to identify where BBP can help with upcoming Bristol based events. Further details will follow in future newsletters but the following are all in the planning stages:

• The Festival of Voice in conjunction with St Georges
• The Community Festival - see more info below
• The Harbour Festival 
• National Twinning Conference due to take place in Cheltenham later this year
• A visit to Bristol by the French Embassy

Members trip to Paris and Bordeaux

Unfortunately, as the release of group tickets to enter the newly restored Notre Dame has been delayed again, and with flight prices rising fast, the planned trip to Paris and Bordeaux will also have to be delayed accordingly. The visit is now planned for either October this year or next spring, probably April.

Gill Hood would like to hear from anyone interested in the planned trip re their preferences re dates. Please let Gill know on gannahd1@outlook.com

Wine tasting evening 

Following the success of last year's wine tasting evening, which focussed of course on the wines of Bordeaux, we are planning a further wine tasting evening. We will be returning to the Bristol Commonwealth Society this November 29th, when once again Ian Abrahams will introduce us to more wines of France - this time focussing on The Loire region.

More details will be shared in future newsletters.

UWE and potential student placements in Bordeaux

We mentioned last month that we took representatives from Bordeaux University to meet the  University of the West of England's (UWE) Education department. We explained how  the two Universities are now working on developing a formal Memorandum of Understanding between UWE and Bordeaux University. 

Recent updates from both Universities show that progress is being made, so fingers crossed we will be sending UWE students to Bordeaux soon. 

Bristol Community Festival

BBP, as part of the Bristol Community Festival (www.candobristol.co.uk/bcf), is hosting a number of zoom calls.

We believe that the peoples of Bristol and Bordeaux share similar interests and have similar needs and that sharing experiences and stories can only be good for all concerned. Whilst celebrating our past, we are looking to the future and are seeking to create participation from under-represented groups particularly (but not limited to): Young People (Aged 16-25) from the 30% areas of Bristol, Global South & minority ethnic populations, LGBTQ+.

We are seeking individuals, community leaders and organisations from Bristol, and corresponding organisations in Bordeaux, to take part in a short series of free online webinars of 60 minutes in order to map a path for international collaboration.

The webinars will be broadly based around Education, Sustainability, Innovation, Culture and Business. See the Bristol Bordeaux Partnership website for more details

French Film Night

BBP is trialling a new French Film Night with the first show on Friday May 16^th, 7.00pm at the British Commonwealth Society, Whiteladies Road.

This is a trial event to see if the idea is popular. We are starting with ‘La Gloire de Mon Père’ a French classic based on the autobiography of Marcel Pagnol, the famous French author of the 20^th Century (works include ‘Jean de Florette’ and ‘Manon des Sources’) The film is in French with English subtitles.

Gill will give a short introduction to the background of the author and film before the showing. Further details will follow in future newsletters but please let Gill know if you are interested using gannahd1@outlook.com

Bristol and Bordeaux Commercial twinning

BBP met again with Connor Jones, Vice President of Bristol Junior Chamber of Commerce, along with Zoe Gibbons, Bristol City Council's Twinning Officer and Valerie Bonnet from our sister organisation in Bordeaux the ABB. We discussed fostering closer links between the Chambers of Commerce of both Bristol and Bordeaux. The first step will be to arrange a visit of members of Bristol's JCofC to Bordeaux to meet with their counterparts - which Connor is investigating. The hope is for this to become a regular 2 way visit.

We will update you on progress in future newsletters.

We hope that these updates on the recent activities of BBP are of interest and may even prompt you to want to become more involved and to help us with some of these initiatives. If you want to know more, please reply to this email. We'd love to be able to spread the message re twinning in general and Bristol's links with Bordeaux in particular.

A bientôt!

Mike Healey (Chair (Vol) BBP)  and Mark Atherton (Secretary Vol))  for Bristol Bordeaux Partnership

www.bristolbordeaux.org