‘Just as we have fought to save the whale, we may need to battle to save the bear’

When Bristol wins another award for being the best city to live in, how will you explain its enduring appeal? Most people would say it’s the lifestyle our creative and convivial city offers, and when they say that they are more likely to be thinking about the Bearpit than Cabot Circus.

Many of the people who celebrate the street art and independent businesses of Stokes Croft, and who value what the anarchic open space of the Bearpit has contributed to this part of the city over the years, know that the soul of Bristol is there and that this can be summed up in one word: freedom.

The proposal to rename the Bearpit as the slightly ominous ‘The Circle’ instantly suggests shutting down rather than opening up. It hints at an attempt to enclose the value of the space and to trade in the creativity; perhaps even on the iconic bear himself. As we lose our wild natural spaces, so we lose our free urban spaces, and just as we have fought to save the whale, we may need to battle to save the bear.

The Bearpit could be renamed ‘The Circle’ under redevelopment plans

There is a fear that the agenda for the redevelopment of the Bearpit is one of sanitising it, of driving out the homeless people and the street artists. Already we have seen the anarchic advertising cube torn down by those looking to ‘clean up’ the Bearpit. This is to ignore that human nature and human societies are not orderly and clean, but it is in the mess, confusion and diversity that creativity and joyful life emerge.

Nobody would deny that some of the homeless people who use the space in the Bearpit as a place of safety can behave in ways that others find challenging, but how many people in Bristol would want to have them erased from our view? And how many would support the decision to remove the plaque acknowledging the life of Punk Paul who died in the Bearpit?

This is a conflict as old as time: a conflict between order and control, a battle over resources, a fight over public versus private space. The forces of order use the idea of ‘sanitising’ to remove what they consider unsightly, hence the involvement of Bristol Waste in the removal of the cube, an artwork funded by the Arts Council that shares radical political messages with the thousands of commuters who traverse St James Barton roundabout daily.

Molly Scott Cato is campaigning to save the Bearpit from regeneration

Although the land the Bearpit stands on is technically owned by the Highways Agency, it has, in reality, been turned into a common: a space that is neither public nor private but belongs to us all. Traditionally, rural communities had access to common resources in woodlands or on grazing land but these were swept away as market forces came to dominate land and production. But there is a lively movement now to recreate and celebrate commons as an inclusive economic model on the ground and in cyberspace with Creative Commons licences.

When the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom studied commons she discovered that they were by no means lawless spaces; they were controlled by complex rules and norms. But importantly those rules were drawn up and enforced by the all the different people and interests who had a claim on the space and its resources, negotiated in a setting of equality and respect. This is the sort of process that the city needs to put in place to negotiate the future of the Bearpit.

There is a reason why ‘Take Back Control’ is the most successful political slogan of our time. It’s because the imagination and creativity that has enabled our species to survive and thrive has been crushed by bureaucracy and neoliberalism. Whatever the future holds for the Bearpit and its complex and diverse community, we must ensure that in this battle for the soul of Bristol, all voices are heard and the human spirit is served.

Molly Scott Cato is the Green Party’s MEP for the South West, and Jude English is the Green Party Councillor for Ashley ward.