Events

First Friday is a monthly social event open to anyone. These events are somewhere between the last meeting of the week and the first event of your weekend. You might meet an artist or an engineer, a school teacher or a city leader. It is a place to connect with someone you might not otherwise meet, and hear about stuff you didn’t already know. All are welcome - from inside and outside the city, online or in the Watershed building.

July 2024 Event

This First Friday event will take place both in Pervasive Media Studio on Fri 5 Jul 17:00-18:00.

People joining us will have the opportunity to have a look around Pervasive Media Studio and to find out more about some of the work that happens here. 

As well as the chance to socialise in the Studio, attendees joining the event will also get to see a selection of work by some of our Studio community. Artists participating in this event will share work that connects with Bristol Pride aims and vision. The hosted element of the event will finish at 6pm. After that, attendees are welcome to continue conversations in Watershed's cafe bar area.

Residents/Artists sharing work include:

Dr Francesco Bentivegna is an artist and researcher, working on voice, technology, theatre, and queerness. Fran will present their work with the collective Machine Streams (alongside Katy Dadacz and Harriet Horobin-Worley) and the series of events they’ve been organising around Queerness and Creative Technology. Their focus will mainly be on explaining Machine Stream’s latest project, Queering AI.

 “It ever was…” A project that brings real world gender non conforming women in Shakespearean times into three dimensions. Part documentary, part historical sources, part artist interpretation, Rosie Poebright & their company Splash & Ripple have been commissioned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to create a located audio piece to be experienced in the garden of Shakespeare’s, and later his sister Joan’s, house. The sharing is a rough scratch draft of the audio. While at our First Friday event you will have the opportunity to listen to these untold stories and understand how they still reverberate even today.

Chloe Meineck and Rosie Poebright  will be sharing information and films about Bristol Butch Bar  (founded in 2022). It’s a pop up pub takeover centred around butches and butch experience that is community run.  They meet up on the last Tuesday of the month with an aim to create solidarity and community for Butchness – ci women/ non binary/ trans/ and celebrate their joint gender non conforming histories together.

 Join Queer Vision Film Festival’s Film Producer and Studio Resident, Harriet Taylor, at the Events Space. Learn more about the festival, chat with Harriet and watch clips and trailers from the Festival. Queer Vision delivers a diverse programme of UK and International LGBT+ films including independently-made feature and short films. (15yrs +)

Join the First Friday mailing list here.

This event is supported by MyWorld and in collaboration with:

Booking info

There is no need to pre-book. Head to our main bar area, buy a drink if you want to, and then follow directions down to Pervasive Media Studio.

About Pervasive Media Studio

The Pervasive Media Studio hosts an international community of over 150 artists, companies, technologists, and academics exploring experience design and creative technology. We are a space for risk taking and early ideas; for the kind of projects and questions that inhabit the meeting points of art, technology, and society.

Our projects span play, robotics, location-based media, food, connected objects, interactive documentary, new forms of performance and more.

We have an open plan studio with a culture if generosity, curiosity, and interruptibility. We believe that by clustering people together from a broad range of backgrounds, with differing skills, experience, and opinions, all of our ideas become better.

Access

Pervasive Media Studio is wheelchair accessible and there is an accessible and gender neutral toilet. There is also a baby changing area.

We have a dedicated quiet room where there is low lighting, sofas, bean bags and space to lie down. This is away from the general open space of the Studio.

If drop in events aren't accessible for you, please email studio@watershed.co.uk to book in. When you book in, we will link you up with a member of our team who will reach out to find out where you would like them to meet you and what time you will arrive. That team member can also arrange a time for you to visit the Studio for a 1-2-1 tour so you can familiarise yourself with our space before attending.