Bristol City Council In Court To Evict Kuumba Project Board Sister Nwanyi w Ex Mayor George Ferguson

Kuumba Centre supporters vow to block council eviction of community 'lifeline'
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/kuumba-centre-supporters-vow-block-8786590

Today, Bristol City Council is ordering the people who have run a 'lifeline' community centre in St Pauls to leave. Last night, there was standing room only at a public meeting where the community said 'no'

https://politicsthisweek.wordpress.com/2023/11/30/not-the-bcfm-politics-show-presented-by-tony-gosling-168/

Kuumba is situated on Hepburn Road and has been a community space in St Pauls for almost 50 years. (Image: Yvonne Deeney)

A packed eleventh-hour public meeting in St Pauls last night voted to back the board members who have been running a ‘lifeline’ community centre, and pledged to physically block any attempts by council officials to take over the building. Supporters of the Kuumba Centre said they have 'soldiers ready to sleep here' to 'safeguard' the space.

Board members who have been running the arts and community centre in Hepburn Road for the past 12 years have been told they have to hand over possession of the building to Bristol City Council today (Thursday, September 28). But more than 100 members of the St Pauls and Stokes Croft communities came together last night, Wednesday, to express support for them, and pledge defiance against what one community activist called ‘an attempted coup by the council’.

A legal notice was last night placed on the doors of the Kuumba Centre by the board warning the council that its attempt to take back control of the building was being challenged, and that legal challenge will be presented to the courts in the morning, asking for a pause on whatever action the council has planned to take over the centre. Bristol City Council has told Bristol Live that the Kuumba Project Ltd board are occupying the council-owned centre ‘without a valid lease and without the express consent of the local authority’.

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There was standing room only at an often emotional and passionate public meeting at the Kuumba Centre on Wednesday night. Three board members, Sister Nwanyi, Deborah Benjamin and Rachel Barclay outlined how the current board had taken over the running of the centre back in 2011 when the previous Kuumba charity organisation collapsed.

They told the community members that they had paid an annual £100 peppercorn lease and their premises licence fee to Bristol City Council for more than a decade, and never taken any funding from the city council. Since then the Kuumba Centre had evolved into a flexible space with units rented by local artists and creative people, with spaces hired for a wide range of community events.

Sister Nwanyi said the centre had originally been given to Bristol’s Rastafari community way back in the mid-1970s, and the current board were running it as volunteers for the whole community. But back in November 2022, the city council sent a letter telling the board that their lease was no longer valid, they weren’t allowed to have a premises licence - which enabled them to stage events later than 11pm - and even worse, they had to vacate the Kuumba Centre.

In May this year, Bristol Live revealed how the council confirmed the board would have to ‘hand back’ the centre, and said the board were effectively trespassing or squatting in the building they had run and maintained with no help from the council, for the community, for the past 12 years.

“We’ve been here, unpaid, for more than ten years,” said Sister Nwanyi. “We’re about empowering people to have a space they can all use. I find it insulting that they want to come here and get us out. They want to put us out and get someone else in, so the first question for everyone here is whether you want the present board to remain,” she said.

“We’ve been told the council will put the running of this place out to tender, and they will choose who will run it. We’ve already been told that if we apply to run it, we won’t be successful. We’re feeling bullied. We’ve been told we are not the bona fide organisation that runs this place, and we have no rights. After 12 years, this is an insult.”