Meet the university architect students aiming to save Redfield’s hidden cinema

Architecture students from University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol have shared their vision for the under-threat Redfield Cinema. The art deco cinema is one of the oldest surviving in the country, built in 1912 and ran as a cinema until it became a bingo hall in 1961.

St George’s Hall on Church Road later became a Wetherspoon pub before closing its doors and the building’s owner, Bristol-based developers Landrose, submitted a planning application for a 44-bed HMO (houses in multiple occupation) at the former cinema - which was withdrawn after around 1,000 objections were made.

Now, Landrose has announced they’re about to submit another planning application for the same number of HMOs and held a hastily arranged public consultation in the foyer of the boarded up pub last week.

Over the weekend, a group of UWE MA Architectural students calling themselves ‘Revive Redfield Cinema’ held a series of meetings in Redfield to meet local people and show them detailed plans and models of how they think the former cinema should be developed.

The alternative proposals for St George’s Hall combine a variety of spaces that is accessible for all and aims to serve as a cultural hub for the local community. The design is inspired by a similar project at cultural venue Catford Mews in London, which combines a cinema, live music venue, bar, cafe, local food vendors and a flexible community space.

Revive Redfield Cinema has worked closely with the grassroots campaign Save Redfield Cinema after talking to local residents to see what they would like the building to become. The plans include a reduced number of flats in the floors above a food market, exhibition space and two cinema screens.

The students involved in the project are Krishnaj Krishnankutty, Ken Ho, Emma Ansell, Toby Grinwood-Snook and Stefan Ilisei, all of whom are MA architecture students at UWE. They have created the plans as part of a live project for their course after one of their tutors who lives in Redfield told them about the campaign to save the building for the community.

Toby Grinwood-Snook said: “As architects in training, part of what you have to do to make sure you have the best outcome is that you serve your community or ‘client’ as they are always intertwined.

“As long as you respect them both, you produce good architecture. If you ignore one or the other it never works and it can make or break communities. We have spent a lot of time engaging with people to understand what this community can benefit from.

“When this project started we worked closely with the campaign, they were our ‘clients’ and we listened to what they had to say because they’ve been doing this for three years and have done lots of on the ground research. They understand the brief and who will benefit from this project so we took that on and then ran with it.

“It’s a huge site and we want to have an active street frontage, revive that bit of the high street and the rest can be developed.

“We understand the need for housing because there’s a housing crisis, but the type of housing the developer is proposing is not sustainable, it does not create a sense of place, it doesn’t create a community that wants to stay there. It’s effectively a hostel and a transitional space, rather than somewhere people want to make a home.

Ken Ho added: “We have all these ideas and we have the communities on board but the developer owns the building and he has his own agenda. We’ve been trying to communicate with him but he doesn’t want to listen.

Toby said: “His focus is profit and he’d argue that the community needs housing but if you lower the standard of what’s acceptable everywhere will live like that, everyone will live in these expensive boxes and the quality of living will go down.

“He says it works in London but London is the most expensive city in Europe to live and a lot denser - do we want to model Bristol on that? It’s overdevelopment and it’s unnecessary.”

The meetings organised by the students attracted a lot of interest from locals and raised awareness of the issue. Toby said: “We’ve gathered a lot of momentum and highlighted the issue to a lot people in the area who weren’t necessarily as aware of it.

“We want to create a neutral community hub, one that doesn’t belong to a certain religion or a certain age, and somewhere everybody in what is quite a diverse area can experience, share and celebrate the area.”