This week we welcome back to Unpacked Paul Smith. Last time we had him on the show, in 2020, he was in the local news every week as the councillor in charge of Bristol's housing. For most of the last six years he's been out of the public spotlight, but in the last few weeks has been selected to help locals decide how to spend millions of pounds of government money in the place he grew up – Hartcliffe.

While he's not lived there for more than 25 years, it’s a place he remains passionate about – enough to have written a book, Hartcliffe Betrayed, about how the neighbourhood has been failed by people in power, ever since it was planned after the Second World War.

Paul, himself a former local Labour councillor for Hartcliffe, and more recently the CEO of a housing association, now finds himself trying to ensure Hartcliffe doesn’t get betrayed again. The programme he'll be leading, Pride in Place, will see £20m invested in the area over 10 years.

So why is Paul the right man for the job? How will he ensure that local people get a proper say in how that money – less than it sounds – is put to work? And what would success look like?

Sit down and find out, in a hard-hitting and sometimes humorous edition of Bristol Unpacked…

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Welcome back after a short break to Bristol Unpacked, and the start of our new season running through until summer.

For the first episode we welcome Yassin Mohamud, a Green councillor for Lawrence Hill, the ward that includes Barton Hill, which as well as sitting within the controversion East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood scheme was the scene of the disastrous Barton House tower block evacuation in 2023. It's a busy, diverse inner-city area where there is always plenty to keep local politicians on their toes.

In the week this episode goes live Yassin will be sworn in as Bristol’s Lord Mayor – the first in our city to come from the Somali community. While it’s mostly a ceremonial role, he’s pledged to use to bring people back together and ensure everyone feels listened to.

We’re keen to hear more about how his background in community work and dealing with difficult issues might help him do that. We’ll also get into the importance of his identity, and how his new platform can help challenge anti-immigrant attitudes – which were amplified last year by Reform’s West of England mayoral candidate Arron Banks, who accused Bristol’s Somalis of being at the forefront of crime. Hope you enjoy, we'll be back again in two weeks.

The Bristol Cable is Bristol's community-owned cooperative newsroom – fiercely independent journalism that puts people before profit. Since 2014, we've been holding power to account through investigative reporting, community campaigns, and democratic media ownership. Because when journalism serves the community, not shareholders, real change becomes possible.

Support independent journalism and help us bring more vital conversations to Bristol: become a Bristol Cable member.

This week we welcome Lewis Wedlock to discuss his work as a ‘masculinities educator’ with young people in schools in Bristol and across the country. In our age of controversial 'hypermasculine' online influencers – perhaps most famously, Andrew Tate – this can be an eye-opening experience, to put it mildly.

Of course the ‘manosphere’ of which Tate is part has broken massively into the wider consciousness recently. Last year the hard-hitting Netflix drama Adolescence went viral, followed just a few weeks ago by Louis Theroux’ documentary Inside the Manosphere. Many people – including Lewis – questioned whether that film should have done more to challenge the men making a fortune out of packaging idealised, unobtainable and sometimes toxic versions of masculinity on social media and podcasts.

People outside of that world – and especially parents of boys – can find it both terrifying and bewildering, in terms of its appeal.

So this week we’re seeking to get into why it’s so attractive and what its impact is. We’ll ask be exploring what Lewis – who has a book out, called Masculinity in Schools – believes a more positive vision of masculinity can look like.

The Bristol Cable is Bristol's community-owned cooperative newsroom – fiercely independent journalism that puts people before profit. Since 2014, we've been holding power to account through investigative reporting, community campaigns, and democratic media ownership. Because when journalism serves the community, not shareholders, real change becomes possible.

Support independent journalism and help us bring more vital conversations to Bristol: become a Bristol Cable member.