HELP – A War Child UK Benefit Concert

HELP – A War Child UK Benefit Concert

DLES, Portishead, Billy Nomates, Katy J Pearson, Heavy Lungs and Wilderman will play a one-off benefit gig for War Child.

The HELP! concert will feature an extraordinary bill of uniquely Bristolian artists – both up and coming and globally renowned – coming together to celebrate the music of the city and to raise much needed funds for Ukraine.

IDLES will be joined on the night by Portishead, unarguably one of the city’s most revered and inspirational groups. This one-off HELP! show will be their first live performance since 2015 and their only show of 2022.

Also performing on the night will be Billy Nomates, Katy J Pearson , Heavy Lungs, Willie J Healey, Wilderman and DJ Boca 45.

Proceeds raised prior to and during the six-hour special will go to War Child UK, helping them to continue their work supporting children affected by war and conflict around the world.

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience

https://propyard.co.uk/

Take an unforgettable trip into the art and life of Vincent Van Gogh, in a way you’ve never experienced before. Proudly brought to Bristol by Propyard, Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience brings his masterpieces to life in a 360º light and sound spectacular, featuring a sound experience unique to Bristol. Join us for the internationally acclaimed experience that looks, sounds and feels like nothing else.

FROM 9 APRIL 2022

 

Nightclub appeals for support as sound complaints increase

One of Bristol’s most famous nightclubs has written an open letter to the city asking for its support.

It comes after an increase in sound complaints over the summer aimed at Motion, following buildings in the near vicinity being developed and sound travelling in new directions.

The open letter from the St Philip’s club also calls out the Green Party, claiming that they have helped to “make us the target”.

Motion hosted a number of outdoor events during the summer – photo: Motion

Here is the open letter in full:

Dear Bristol⁣

We love you dearly as a City and are proud to call you our home for the last 18 years.⁣

In recent years we have campaigned for measures that protect our venue and that of thousands of businesses across the UK.⁣

Over the last few months it would now seem we have forgotten why we live in a City and Bristol’s creative cultural importance in the UK being a side thought. ⁣

We have received some complaints regarding sound disturbance over the Summer period. ⁣

Covid has crippled us, many buildings in the area have been taken down in readiness for new developments, making the sound travel in directions unknown to us. ⁣

City centres are both noisy and vibrant, sound complaints will hinder our culture, we hope we can live together as have done for nearly 20 years.⁣

@bristolgreenparty rather than make us the target, help protect hundreds of jobs, help support Culture and please spread the Bristol vibe⁣.

Team Motion x

During the outdoor shows at Motion over the summer, Totterdown residents often took to social media to complain about the music from the club being able to be clearly heard in their homes.

The problem with noise is not just confined to the immediate vicinity, with people in Bedminster also being able to hear the club and the sound travelling as far as Hanham.

Writing on Instagram, Bristol DJ Eats Everything said: “If you decide to live in a city centre area and you buy a dwelling near a night time venue & then have the audacity to complain about noise you seriously are a fucking salad and you need to fuck off rapidly. Cities are noisy places, there is gonna be noise etc. These lame cunts are gonna be the death of us.”

Streetwear brand Concrete Junglists added: “They are the people that buy the watered down version of culture that comes out concentrated at places like this. Motion should have living cultural heritage status not have to worry about noise complaints or being shut down. They are enjoying the leaves whilst killing the roots.”

Bristol awarded £3.3 million to support vulnerable citizens

Bristol awarded £3.3 million to support vulnerable citizens: City Hall

22 Jul 2021

Bristol awarded £3.3 million to support vulnerable citizens

Changing Futures’ funding from government will boost adult support

Bristol has secured a £3.3 million grant to help adults in the city facing disadvantages such as homelessness, mental health problems, substance issues, domestic abuse and in the criminal justice system, after a successful bid to government.

Working with community partnership Golden Key Bristol, the partnership landed the funding through the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) new three-year ‘Changing Futures’ scheme.

The funding will build on the existing ‘Change For Good’ programme, which was set up last year by Golden Key Bristol, Bristol City Council and the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group.

The grant will develop the partnership’s ‘My Team Around Me’ multi-agency team concept. This will provide long-term wrap-around support to a person with multiple needs to ensure consistent relationships and better, sustainable outcomes.

It will also support the evolution of Golden Key’s Independent Futures group, an advisory group of people with lived experience, to develop a Learning Academy offer, so that people can have a life beyond services, building on people’s strengths and assets.

They are one of only 15 successful bids to receive a share of £64 million, out of 97 applicants since the scheme opened last year.

Councillor Helen Holland, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, said: “We are thrilled to have successfully secured the ‘Changing Futures’ grant. This substantial funding will enable us to further support some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, building on lessons learned in recent times.

“Bristol has a high, and growing, proportion of people who are affected by mental ill-health, substance misuse, homelessness and domestic abuse, and we know that some people do not fare well in traditional services due to their multiple disadvantages, and sometimes their previous experiences. This extra funding will support our collective commitment and ambition to tackle citywide problems and reduce inequalities together.”

Bristol City Council’s Executive Director for People, Hugh Evans, said: “Thanks to the National Lottery and MHCLG, we received the funding that will further enable us to meet our vision – to ensure people with multiple disadvantage are valued and empowered, and that they inspire and are inspired to have a life beyond service.

“Working directly with people with lived experience has been, and will continue to be, at the heart of Bristol’s approach. The bid has been co-designed with lived experience groups and includes deep listening exercises to fully understand the system change needed. 

“We have selected three main groups to work with in Bristol with the view that learning from these will be applied to wider populations with multiple disadvantage. The cohorts include: young people from minority ethnic communities experiencing multiple disadvantage compounded by discrimination, women experiencing domestic abuse and people experiencing complex/compound trauma, behavioural challenges and chronic homelessness.

“Our delivery plan sets out what we aim to achieve over the next three years, and we will work rigorously, in partnership with Golden Key Bristol and the MHCLG, to advance our systems and services, putting the wellbeing of our city’s vulnerable citizens at the heart of our work.”

John Simpson, Independent Chair of the Golden Key Partnership Board, said: “Over the past seven years, Golden Key has worked collaboratively with statutory services, the voluntary sector and people with lived experience to improve services for adults in Bristol facing multiple disadvantage. We have worked with our external evaluators to develop a strong evidenced based view of what works at individual, service and system levels.

“We are delighted to pass these insights to the ‘Changing Futures’ project. Our established partnership has given us the advantage in securing this funding and I’m really committed to building on, and developing, existing relationships. We know that for our clients to lead fulfilling lives, we need to reach across organisational boundaries and work together.”

Julia Ross, CEO of the NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “We are delighted that Bristol has been selected to receive the ‘Changing Futures’ funding. Many people in our communities face multiple disadvantage. Equally, every individual has strengths they can build on, and that is what our partnership does so well – works with people to understand their unique context and aspirations for the future.

 “As well as supporting individuals to change their own futures, the learning will go on to shape wider health and care services; improving the way we support people with the most complex needs in all our settings. Reducing health inequalities is a key priority for our health and care system. Working with Bristol City Council, Golden Key and all our partners, we are determined to ensure services are proactive, personalised and designed in partnership with our population.”

Of the £3.3 million grant, £523,000 will be invested in Lived Experience assets, working with the Independent Futures group to conduct listening exercises with people experiencing multiple disadvantage, and the development of a Lived Experience Learning Academy. 

£861,000 will be invested in ‘My Team Around Me’, piloting and scaling the partnership’s new multi-agency team concept, while £460k will be invested in system change leadership development and action across the partnership.

A further £392,000 will be invested in data systems, to improve the availability and use of data, and £342,000 will be used to develop specialist approaches including mental health support and a community engagement approach with young people from minority ethnic communities. The remaining money will fund programme management and governance. 

The MHCLG launched the £64 million Changing Futures programme in December 2020 to help improve the way that systems and services work to support individuals experiencing multiple disadvantage, with local organisations were invited to form partnerships and bid for a share of the funding.

The programme is a joint initiative by the MHCLG and The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK.

The programme seeks to test new ways of bringing together the public sector and community sector to address cross-cutting issues and to drive the modernisation of public services for people experiencing multiple disadvantage, with local organisations were invited to form partnerships and bid for a share of the funding.

City Hall: City Hall in Bristol

City Hall

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Strict Covid protocols in Bristol allowed Pursuit of Love filming

Cast of The Pursuit of Love on set at The Bottle Yard Studios
The drama series features many period sets constructed at the studios in Hartcliffe

Strict Covid-19 protocols have made Bristol “one of the strongest centres in the UK” for television production, according to a senior film manager.

Bristol facility the Bottle Yard Studios provided the location for many of the large period sets used in the new BBC drama The Pursuit of Love.

Laura Aviles said the adaptability of crews enabled the West of England to be at the “forefront of shoots resuming”.

The drama was one of the first to start filming during the pandemic in June.

The three-part romantic comedy, filmed in Bristol and Bath, will be broadcast on Sunday.

Ms Aviles, senior Bristol film manager at Bristol City Council, which manages the studios, said their team quickly got to work building operating procedures, such as one way systems and on-site testing, that meant the studios could be declared “Covid-secure” and permission could be given by the government for filming to resume.

Laura Aviles
Laura Aviles said that once the green light was given Open Book and Moonage Pictures “did an excellent job” getting the shoot up and running

Ms Aviles said that once the green light was given Open Book and Moonage Pictures “did an excellent job” getting the shoot up and running.

“It was the hard work and adaptability of crews and companies in Bristol and Bath that enabled the West of England to be at the forefront of shoots like this resuming in the UK,” she said.

She added that the pause in production caused by the pandemic had a massive impact on local companies and freelance crews, many of whom “fell through the gaps of financial support”.

The Pursuit of Love features stars Lily James, Dominic West, Emily Beecham and Andrew Scott, and is directed by award-winning actor Emily Mortimer.

Actor Mr Scott said despite Covid, testing of everyone on set made him feel very safe.

“Everyone was so thrilled to be back working. We were so lucky that we were one of the first back after the first lockdown,” he said.

The first episode of The Pursuit of Love will air on BBC One on 9 May at 21:00 BST.

Actress Emily Beecham filming The Pursuit of Love at The Bottle Yard Studios
Executive producer at Moonage Pictures, Frith Tiplady, said being one of the first shows to film with Covid procedures in place was a challenge but “everything run very smoothly”.

Westbury Wildlife Park site reopens after nearly 30 years

Park
Westbury Wildlife Park is open to the public for the first time since 1992

An abandoned wildlife park on the edge of Bristol is reopening for the first time since the 1990s.

Westbury Wildlife Park was once home to birds of prey, a seal, rare sheep breeds, deer and one of the few wildcats in captivity.

A new board of trustees raised £8,000 in eight months and worked with volunteers to restore the site.

The park will no longer exhibit animals, but it is hoped it will become a popular green space.

Features include wildlife ponds, a forest play area, picnic tables, woodland walk pathways, a café and a community workshop for education.

Kira Emslie and Jonathan Ashby
Kira Emslie and Jonathan Ashby have worked together on reopening the park

Manager Kira Emslie and her partner Jonathan Ashby – who is a Trustee – have been the driving force behind the project in Westbury-on-Trym.

“We’ve sold out eight days straight away, and people are signing up to a waiting list to come, so we’re really excited.” she said.

“It’s been a spectacular effort from the community. They’ve been so invested in it, raised so much money, and we’ve had people down here through wind, rain, shine and snow all through the lockdown period giving us a hand and doing hard graft.”

Westbury Wildlife Park
The park and garden is in Westbury-on-Trym
Building
There will be a centre for environmental education, crafts, and nurturing creativity

Massive Attack: ‘I have total faith in the next generation’

‘I felt that [with] Mezzanine, the procedure had to be ripped up, the rulebook had to be changed’: Robert del Naja, right, and Grant Marshall.

‘I felt that [with] Mezzanine, the procedure had to be ripped up, the rulebook had to be changed’: Robert del Naja, right, and Grant Marshall. Photograph: Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton/Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones

Twenty-one years since the release of Mezzanine, their most successful album, Massive Attack are taking it on tour – with films. The band and their visuals director, Adam Curtis, tell us why

“I don’t think I’ve got a problem with nostalgia, because a lot of the time things are self-referential. When you’re working in the way we do, taking things from the past and making them new, making collages…” He pauses. “I stopped feeling nostalgia for the moment because I imagine myself looking back on it from the future, which really freaks me out. I get this vertigo where I’m not thinking about the past, I’m thinking about how I’m going to feel in 10 years’ time.” Nostalgia isn’t as good as it used to be, I joke. Del Naja rubs a hand forwards through his hair.

Mezzanine was supposed to spell the end of Massive Attack. By the time it was finally released, months late, in the spring of 98, the group – Del Naja (aka 3D), Grant Marshall (Daddy G) and Andrew Vowles (Mushroom) – had been fighting for a year and were barely speaking to one another. They recorded individually, gave interviews separately. The album, their third and moodiest, was a distinct, post-punk swerve away from the hip-hop and breakbeat culture they had championed in Bristol. It came slickly packaged in a Nick Knight sleeve with an acid orange disc, and was released to mixed reviews, but, in true Massive fashion, it came to be belatedly revered as a masterpiece by critics everywhere from Pitchfork to the Paris Review.

It also became their biggest commercial success, gifting the singles charts (and countless film and TV directors) Teardrop, Angel and Inertia Creeps. Despite their ubiquity, the songs still very much stand up. Live, they’re menacing, resonant, moving. Nonetheless, after multiple furious rows about the new direction, soon after the album’s release, Mushroom left the band.

Massive Attack’s Mezzanine XXI tour in Amsterdam, with projections of Adam Curtis’s collaboratively made films.

Images from Massive Attack’s Mezzanine XXI tour in Amsterdam, February 2019, with projections of Adam Curtis’s collaboratively made films.

Does it still feel raw? Marshall has entered the dressing room and leans against the wall, languid and softly spoken. “Raw. Yeah, it is to a certain extent. [Mezzanine] was the end of our trio but… it projected us to greater things, I suppose. We’ve been through different things which have made us a bit raw, but we’ve managed to patch it up.”

What is Marshall’s abiding memory of making the album? “It’s fraught with bad memories, but it was a departure from what we were used to and so, yeah, that’s kind of where all the heartaches came in.” Del Naja’s main memory “is probably the fight really. It wasn’t as simple as it used to be, because Blue Lines [their debut] was based on our collective history. Culturally and musically it was a big jam together. And then the second album [Protection] we’d become something, so we had a kind of routine and procedure. I felt that [with] Mezzanine, the procedure had to be ripped up, the rulebook had to be changed.”

The fight was about Teardrop, still their biggest-selling single; Del Naja and Marshall wanted former Cocteau Twins frontwoman Liz Fraser on vocals. Mushroom secretly sent the track to Madonna, who loved it and called, keen to record it. Having already worked with her in 1995 on a cover of Marvin Gaye’s I Want You – at the time, to Mushroom’s fury – Del Naja was incandescent and turned her down. He won’t comment on it now. “It was hard,” he shrugs. “I guess that is what I remember of Mezzanine: it was a proper struggle.”

On stage earlier, tension is redirected into the technicalities. Soundchecks are, in my experience, routinely boring. A band stops, starts, stops, repeats the same riff over and over while someone is asked to check the lights and a sound engineer perfects the levels of a hi-hat. Naturally, Massive Attack do things a little differently: the venue in which they are due to play two sold-out shows is bathed in red light and, as their PR and I creep towards the stalls for a seat, they deliver a full, seemingly note-perfect run-through of Teardrop. A life-affirming, butterflies-in-stomach exclusive for an audience of two.

Films by acclaimed documentary-maker Adam Curtis, collaboratively made with Del Naja for what seems to be Massive Attack’s most ambitious show yet, are projected on giant screens. It’s a mind melt. Curtis’s signature aesthetic reels through a potted history of the past two decades – from trash pop culture to devastating scenes of war. They play out against a deconstructed Mezzanine 21st anniversary set that later often stuns the Dutch audience into reverent silence. It’s not how album shows – usually rowdy, indulgent, faithful playbacks – generally work. But then, Massive Attack’s 2016 tour was devoted to the urgency of the refugee crisis; shows in 2010 brought political consciousness via LED screens made by United Visual Artists. Now Bauhaus, Gang of Four and the Cure covers slip in alongside Avicii, while a YouTube mashup of fan videos is both wry and moving.

The whole performance is meticulous; the band never say a word. It’s a stunning statement, a live visual art experience designed to provoke rather than straightforwardly Massive Attack’s acclaimed video for Teardrop.

The next night, backstage at the venue, both Curtis (who has flown over specially) and Del Naja cautiously wonder whether it worked. Was it heavy-handed? Did the audience get what they were trying to achieve? Did it make them curious or really think about war, data, control, feedback loops, political idealism and the rest?

The short answer, from watching the audience shush each other and vox-popping fans afterwards, is yes. Johanna is gutted that she “was not stoned to appreciate it on a bigger level”. One woman, wearing red lipstick and bovver boots, says she is overwhelmed. “It was really good, they took you along on their story.”

“I’m happy for it to be unpredictable,” says Del Naja. “That’s the point. There’s no sort of bants, no chatting because you kind of felt… Well, you wouldn’t go to a play and the actors turn around and say: ‘Are you all right?’ And there has to be some personal creative risk attached where you don’t know what’s going to happen. It should be disorienting for us and the audience otherwise…” It’s boring? He grins.

“Gigs have become very formulaic these days,” adds Curtis. “Not just gigs but all of culture – and that’s the challenge. The way you make people look again is by finding a different sort of image. And so the overall aim is to show how over the past 20 years, we’ve gone into a very static, repetitive world that surrounds us with the same images that keep us from really looking.”

The two, who first worked together on a one-off commission for Manchester international festival in 2013, make an outwardly unlikely pairing. Del Naja retains a resolutely boyish energy and is dressed in black, off-duty streetwear; Curtis, just landed from London, is in a jacket and crisp white shirt. I ask how they considered some of the more sensitive, emotional material shown – a dead body, grieving relatives – and Curtis becomes exasperated.

“We were very careful about which images we used. They had to be powerful.

“Everything is not only cliched, it’s knowing these days. It’s about time idealism came back. Really, I’m being serious about that.” He explains how he tried to make an idealistic film to go with Massive’s cover of anti-war folk song Where Have All the Flowers Gone? “Because that’s the way you connect with people, pull them out of their bubble and make them realise what’s happening in their name. Which I don’t think we have quite realised yet. We’re still fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, you know.”

I do.

“I’m not accusing you. I just get quite shocked by how insulated we have become in the face of these big wars which we’re really involved in. Rant over. Sorry.”

More projections from Massive Attack and Adam Curtis’s collaborative films in Amsterdam.

One of projections in Massive Attack’s Mezzanine XX1 tour, Amsterdam.

Del Naja starts giggling, Curtis gives him a sideways Laurel and Hardy-esque sigh. The show is very much a product of their particular push and pull. It’s a long way from the romantic spirit of Massive Attack’s early days, when as part of the Wild Bunch, the collective operated a collaborative process.

“We’ve found our own sort of niches now, in a creative sense, which is a lot more comfortable, working together, because we can express ourselves the way we want to,” explains Marshall, the evening before. “Back then, we were trying to pretend that we were in this big pot, all drinking soup out of the same pot when that wasn’t really the case. We really all had our own little bowls and–” he mimics stirring a tiny bowl – “and were trying to take it away and do something.” He stops, deadpan. “You like that analogy?”

“I think you can forget the soup analogy,” says Del Naja, meaning it. I laugh. I like the soup analogy. I ask what their worst row has been over, then apologise for asking such a horrible question. Del Naja jumps in.

“We don’t. We have the kind of insidious things that just get under your skin over time, as opposed to big flare-ups. You know what I mean?”

Del Naja and Marshall still look, dress and sound as they ever did. It’s an utter shock to learn they are 54 and 59.

“I think we’ve remedied that,” adds Marshall, “by the fact that we don’t really work together as such any more. We’ve known each other like brothers this whole time. So you know, you get this brotherly thing when you go: ‘Right, slightly sick of you now.’”

“What I find scary,” chips in Del Naja, “is that everyone remembers everything differently, everyone has selective memory, and when you realise that [when] the brain has to remember something, it has to recreate the whole thought to remember it, and does that multiple times in its life, it’s so unreliable.”

This is a very Del Naja sentence: he is a master of the sort of 3am chat – the post-party and pre-dawn mezzanine – where at least one brilliant point gets made. Thoughts bounce together at speed; he uses algorithms to explain the studio dynamic of making music, and politics to make sense of art.

“That’s why this gig is as much ‘an album moment’ as an album was,” he says. “Because everything has changed – the way we present ourselves, the way we share everything we do, the social experiment, the social experience. All that stuff is very different from when we put Mezzanine out. [Now,] you put a record out to justify a tour and that’s what a lot of people do. So the album just seems irrelevant as a foremost product.”

“I still do like the concept of an album,” says Marshall. “You know, in a communal fashion…”

Massive Attack’s Mezzanine XX1 in Amsterdam.

Massive Attack on stage; Mezzanine XX1, Amsterdam.

“They’re two different things now for artists and consumers,” says Del Naja. What was the last one he bought? “I mean, I love buying albums, I’m obsessed, but now you just click ‘add’, don’t you? And when do you actually listen to anything? You know, unless you’re in the car or you’ve got time to do that, it’s just not the same world any more in terms of concentration. Attention span’s the biggest commodity of all now. Data is the new oil. It’s inside your head. That’s where the value is and so is the tension. I mean, trying to get anyone to concentrate on anything when people get excited if the audience swipes down a page. If you actually stop and click, fuck me, that’s gold.”

“It’s true,” agrees Marshall. “I haven’t listened to a record, a whole album, in five years.” He makes a move to leave. “I only like about three tracks on this album, anyway,” he says, by way of goodbye.

I’m not sure if he was ribbing Del Naja, or whether he really would like to make an album together in the old fashioned-way. I ask if he’s off for a pre-show ritual. “Yeah, get pissed. That’s what I’m going to do now.”

Freed from rose-tinting the band’s history, Del Naja chats warmly and intensely – about physics, artificial intelligence, the robot in his studio that he’s training to paint. “I have total faith in the next generation. Looking at their response to climate change is really interesting and, again, that’s the power of social media at its best, to mobilise people. I think that’s a real positive. I think the negative is our generation and the generation above us that are still the problem because they don’t want to change.

“We haven’t evolved that much as human beings,” he adds. “We still fall into the same patterns and traps and it’s easy to turn ourselves against each other tribally. It seems too easy and it’s scary.”

We chat some more, about pilates vs Bikram yoga, Brexit – “predictable and sad” – and his tongue-in-cheek preparation for the apocalypse. “I got a breadmaker, because everyone’s going to ramp up the hysteria before Leave. Everyone will be going, “Oh right, everything’s fucked, medicine and food, and you’re not going to get bread anywhere, right? Or water or petrol. That’s the first things.”

Elizabeth Fraser with Massive Attack at the Hydro, Glasgow, last month.

Elizabeth Fraser with Massive Attack at the Hydro, Glasgow, last month.

Del Naja doesn’t think he’s changed much in the last 20 years. “You never do think you’re going to grow up, because your brain stays the same and your personality hasn’t really changed. It’s your physical self that tells you.” For what it’s worth, Del Naja and Marshall still look, dress and sound as they ever did. It’s an utter shock to learn later, looking it up on my phone, that they are 54 and 59. “You cannot actually physically manage to be that hedonistic any more,” says Del Naja. “There’s been a major slow down. If I have a big night out, that’s my week gone. It’s like, you know what? Forget it, I’m done.”

At the aftershow, in a small room of a dozen people backstage, Dave, the band’s weary tour manager of 20 years, mixes up rounds of dark and stormys. A huddle of friends linger by the table football. Curtis describes his friend as “a very smart boy” and admits that the only “battle” they had in creating the show was that “Robert, being an artist, always wants to be slightly enigmatic, whereas I’m a journalist and believe in clarity.”

Buoyed by the show, both are amped and giddy. Del Naja talks me through some of the more bonkers Massive Attack trivia. Like the time they said no to signing Air. Or to working with Amy Winehouse. He remembers that they also turned down Sam Mendes when he asked to use Teardrop for the title song of American Beauty – “We would have been No 1 in America, haha” – and a plea from Radiohead to remix OK Computer. “We were just too busy for it at the time.”

A superfan, Richard Coffey from Ireland, graciously referred to as the band’s unofficial historian, joins the party and spends some time analysing the current arrangements of Teardrop, which he explains to Del Naja “are probably at their best at the moment”. Coffey’s obsession translates to an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the interviews Massive Attack have ever given. How did he discover them? “I heard them on The Matrix,” he says, earnestly. “Dissolved Girl [from Mezzanine] was on the soundtrack.” Del Naja starts giggling again.

Given how long they’ve been at it and how embedded they have become in the fabric of British culture, it’s easy to forget just how good and visionary Massive Attack are. How influential they’ve been. How they pioneered a sound that managed to glide between teenage bedrooms, parties and fuzzy Sunday evenings. One which, even now, despite the more low-key impact of 100th Window (2003) and Heligoland (2010), you could draw a contemporary line through the evolution of British pop, through dubstep, to The Weeknd, Lana Del Ray and beyond.

“Most people just look at me like I’m fucking mad,” laughs Del Naja. To be fair, he’s spent 10 minutes talking to me about the complexities of internet-alternative the mesh, a conversation about tech that will no doubt soon become mainstream. “What are you talking about, they’ll say. You’re off your head!” He grins again. “I’ve become a prophet of doom, but I’m an optimist, really.”

Massive Attack Mezzanine XX1 is at O2, London, 22 Feb; Dublin’s 3Arena, 24 Feb; Bristol Steel Yard, 1 & 2 March. A Mezzanine special edition box set will be released in April.

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Happiness course ‘improves student well-being’

Happiness course ‘improves student well-being’

Lara Czernecki
Lara Czernecki arrived in Bristol from Hungary last September and enrolled in the course

A study has found that university students who had lessons in “happiness” had improved mental health.

The University of Bristol’s Science of Happiness course teaches lectures and seminars on what is scientifically proven to make people happier.

Research found that three cohorts who completed the course had better mental health than those who had not.

Professor Bruce Hood, who runs it, said it proves “learning about happiness can improve your mental well-being”.

The course, the first of its kind in the UK, has been completed by 1,000 students who learn what science reveals about the brain as well as practices to achieve a more fulfilling life.

It studies the impact of loneliness on the immune system, how optimism can extend life expectancy and how the act of giving activates the reward centre in the brain.

‘Drained and tired’

Lara Czernecki, 18, arrived in Bristol last September from Hungary, a move amid the pandemic which took a toll on her mental health, along with having Covid-19 in December.

The first year film and television student at the university said: “I am someone who has struggled with panic attacks which got worse when I arrived in Bristol to start university.

“I was drained and tired and it really had an impact on my mental health, especially being away from home and family.”

Lara Czernecki
Lara said she “doesn’t feel lost anymore”

Attracted by the science and theory, soon after she started the three-month Science of Happiness course.

“The words science and happiness struck me as I am so interested in finding happiness, in going deeper scientifically and theoretically about what happiness actually is,” Lara said.

“I’ve always thought about happiness as an unreachable entity that no one can really explain, it’s something everyone is running towards in their lives and only some lucky people reach it but most do not.”

She also learnt about mediation and now practices daily.

Ms Czernecki added: “Research shows that if you’re happy you’re more likely to be successful and not the other way around – that really hit me.

“I don’t feel I can reach full happiness by taking a course, but I can start to work towards it because I’m conscious about what it is now and I don’t feel lost any more.”

The course, which began in 2018, also involves peer-reviewed studies in psychology and neuroscience.

Students also look at the impact of sleep deprivation and how a countryside walk deactivates part of the brain associated with depression.

Izabella Fernandez
Isabella Fernandez said she had time to reflect because of lockdown

Isabella Fernandez, 20, is in her first year of a psychology degree.

“To me studying is not just about passing exams but how you relate your studies to life,” she said.

“Initially the word happiness struck me, the idea that there is a science behind it and are we really in touch with what it means to be happy?

“Our group discussions felt like a safe space to talk about things that make us unhappy.

“It came at such a good time because of lockdown I had the time to reflect.”

The course does not involve exams or coursework but students who enrol are given credits towards their degree for engagement in weekly activities called “happiness hacks” and “happiness hubs”, led by senior student mentors.

‘Higher wellbeing’

Ms Fernandez said acts of kindness and gratitude resonated with her.

She said: “Just having this internal core of being grateful for the small things, that’s what drives me now.

“I now have tools in my tool-kit I can draw on when I am not feeling good.”

The research paper was published in the Health Psychology Open journal last week.

In the first study, researchers found significantly higher mental wellbeing among first year students who took the course compared to a control group.

A second revealed students taking the course when Covid-19 restrictions began had higher wellbeing than a control group, while a third study found the online course increased wellbeing in students and staff during lockdown.