Daniel’s community-building and creative facilitation encouraged him to begin his work with Coexist whilst living in Bristol. Coexist creates spaces where people can grow, share, collaborate, and work together to build a community.
By bringing buildings and spaces into community ownership, Coexist is shifting power to the local community. This, coupled with their policy work and campaigns, protect the arts and other cultural projects from property developers in Bristol and promote cultural and community spaces. These spaces are vital not just for the rich arts scene in Bristol, but for the health and wellbeing of the community at large.
In 2018 Coexist were evicted from Hamilton House - a previously disused space in Bristol that the project had been using as an arts facilitation hub. The eviction forced Coexist to reimagine its role in the community. The organisation created a new strategy that was built around one core ethos: the importance of community spaces for local people. This ethos can be seen in many of the projects the organisation runs. Through Coexist, Daniel runs The Bristol Commons - a community-building initiative that brings people from diverse backgrounds together through a cultural programme of events and community conversations. The programme seeks to inspire and revitalise local people to collaborate with one another and explore a huge variety of social issues from isolation, to youth violence, to refugee and asylum seeker connection, to food poverty to long-standing systems of oppression.
Through Coexist, Daniel’s focus is to bring people from different communities and experiences together to bridge cultural divides. He does this by organising activities, events and discussions including cooking, dance classes, theatre and drumming.
“My experience as a creative facilitator has always focused on human relationships - with the world and with one another.”
Daniel
Daniel has worked with Coexist since 2011, and is dedicated to exploring strategies for systemic change in Bristol. One of the reasons we picked Daniel to take part in The Multiplier was because of the unique ways that Coexist create collaboration and action in and across communities. They are currently launching a new project called the WREN ideas Exchange (‘Wellbeing and Resilience European Network’). WREN fosters wellbeing and resilience across Europe through online conferences and an open workshop space that will feature a variety of talks, workshops and creative experiments. Coexist also launched a cookery school in 2012 as a vehicle to work with people who have experienced social marginalisation and to ensure everyone has the same access to spaces where they can share food together, learn and connect.
Daniel applied to be part of The Multiplier programme to help rebuild Coexist as an important landmark in the Bristolian community, Prior to their eviction from Hamilton House, Coexist had a team of 17 people. Now, they are down to just three. Daniel wants to continue to grow the team and achieve his vision to meet the needs of local people and build community resilience.