Vision for the future of Jacob’s Wells Baths

Jacob’s Wells Baths has been a community hub for generations. Having been built as public baths and renovated into a dance centre, the historic red-brick building is once again going through a dramatic transformation as Kate Wyver reports.

Every road led to Jacob’s Wells Baths on a recent Saturday afternoon for a family fun day headlined by musician-turned-children’s entertainer Kid Carpet. The huge building was full of colour and happy faces: a vision of how things could be if some serious ambition was matched by some serious money.

The transformation of a former bank into what is now The Old Market Assembly, complete with theatre, bakery, bar and restaurant shows what can happen with large empty buildings. Imagine a similar transformation here but on a scale much, much larger.

Anything but luxury flats. Please!

Last year, Bristol City Council dropped the site’s lease that allowed the building to be loaned out as a dance centre for very low rates. It was abandoned due to the poor condition of the building and the enormous costs needed for redevelopment, which would require extensive investment in order to run the business on a sustainable basis.

The council is currently in discussions about whether to sell or lease the building long-term again, but in this interim period a six month lease has been signed by community interest company Artspace Lifespace, who have previously helped transform The Island, and between 2007 and 2008 held a four-month series of events inside Clifton’s former Pro-Cathedral, a short walk away from Jacob’s Wells Baths.

Focusing on establishing financial sustainability for community sites, Artspace Lifespace transform desolate buildings into useful spaces. “We make space accessible to a wide variety of creative influences, to enrich and develop the multi-cultural identity of any community,” says project manager Dina Ntziora. “We support place-based, creative problem solving that encourages the emergence of new spaces for participation, diversity, and experimentation in the community.” 

This community focus has always been key to Jacob’s Wells Baths, and the building has a rich and varied heritage. Opened in 1887, the Baths were described at the time by the Western Daily Press as “one of the finest in the kingdom”. Close to Jacob’s Wells Industrial Dwellings, the baths were intended for use by the working poor. 

Converted into the home of Bristol Community Dance Centre in the 1980s, the public baths gained a now internationally acclaimed rosewood sprung floor built over the top of the pool.

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Read more: Behind the scenes at Jacob’s Wells Road Baths

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The building’s past still creeps through in its architecture. With buff terracotta dressings, gable stacks and a slate roof, the Northern Renaissance Revival Style design makes the building stand out on Jacob’s Wells Road. Inside too, the history of the building is evident through its design. Though the roof in the main studio has been lowered for safety reasons, the semi-circular steel roof structure can still be seen.

The building also has a boiler room, rarely seen by the public, which is still in its original condition with exquisite stone work, plumbing and overhead cast iron tanks.

As well as Artspace Lifespace, the development of the building is also being supported by Vivid Regeneration and Jacob’s Wells Community Hub. Vivid, a company who aim to creative positive change through sustainable regeneration projects, are funded by the Neighbourhood Partnership to conduct a feasibility study in order to help decide the long term future of the building.

Helen Bone from Vivid explains: “This involves looking at what building works are required, consulting with local people about what they would like to see the building used for and assessing the need for dance and performance space in the city.”

Jacob’s Wells Community Hub are an organisation working for a vibrant, local, inclusive community centre and are currently using the former cafe space in the building to showcase a need for such a facility in the area. It is currently the only space in the area that is suitable for a community centre, dance and performance space,” says Hannah Anne from the group.

Bone agrees with this, noting the “chronic lack of rehearsal and performance space in Bristol”. Since the temporary lease on the building was signed in September 2016, the site has hosted various dance workshops, performances, consultation community days, children’s activities and artist residencies for Bristol artists to develop their creative research and development.

As well as local community work, the building is available for the public to hire. The cast of Bristol Hippodrome’s Billy Elliot recently rehearsed here and Impermanence Dance Theatre performed their contemporary dance show Sexbox, with the audience seated along all four sides of the main hall, around the edges of the old swimming pool.

Josh Ben-Tovim from Impermanence notes the history ingrained within the walls, saying that the building is home to “an old pile of bricks and dreams”.

But the future is still uncertain. In January, a few days before the family fun day organised by events company Short Stuff, an open meeting was held in the main hall, heaters and mugs of tea doing little to warm up the 30 members of the community who gathered to hear the results of Bone’s community consultancy.

Having engaged with almost 400 people, there was a clear view that the local community are keen for the building to be used once again for dance, but they are open to it being explored as a space for other uses too. Short term, Bone said that they hope Artspace Lifespace will be able to carry on the lease until at least September.

In the long term, the council must decide whether to lease or dispose of the building.

To kickstart the former option, the council is explore the possibility of a community asset transfer, which involves leasing out the building to an organisation who would have the community’s values at its heart, but work to improve the space and make it financially viable. Another of Bone’s long term recommendations is to look at dividing up the space.

There is, she says, “only so much money you can generate from the two lettable spaces, and then you’ve got the fabric of the building which is beautiful and extravagant and expensive to run”. This would involve looking at subdivisions of the spaces and exploring the potential of raising the floor, or creating mezzanine levels. 

“The baths were built initially to serve the local community of Hotwells,” Bone says. “In the future it can once again be an important space for the delivery of health and wellbeing activities for all ages. A place to meet, to celebrate.”

In this climate of funding cuts, takeovers and shut downs, where “the city has almost been consumed by a wave of development,” Artspace Lifespace creative director Doug Francis notes that it is more important than ever to retain something for the creative community Bristol is so famous for: “If we are not careful our identity will be consumed as a marketing brand and the real things that made Bristol so appealing will be gone for ever.”

It is not certain that this historic and much-loved community building will be able to be saved. But, Bone says, “we have a duty to have a go”.

Read more: Behind the scenes at Jacob’s Wells Road Baths