Bristol facts

• The Sunday Times chose Bristol as the best city to live in Britain. The paper praised Bristol for it's buzzy culture, nightlife and access to fantastic countryside.

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• Bristol was recently ranked as one of the easiest cities in Britain to live in without a car.

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• British graffiti artist 'Banksy' was (allegedly) born and raised in Bristol. Some of his creations can be seen around the city.

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• Over 25% of the world's natural history films are made in Bristol, with the majority of these at the BBC's Natural History Unit.

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• Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run and Creature Comforts were all made in Bristol, home of the Oscar award winning Aardman. Creature Comforts was inspired by Nick Park's visits to Bristol Zoo Gardens and features the voices of local Bristolians.

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• E4's Skins is filmed in Bristol, as was Channel 4's Teachers. Our own campuses have even got in the act, providing the locations for numerous programmes including BBC's Mistresses and Casualty.

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• Bristol is home to trip hop, famous for spawning groups such as Massive Attack, Tricky, Roni Size, Portishead and Kosheen. No wonder it was named most musical city in March 2010.

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• Bristol is home to a number of renowned comedians: including Stephen Merchant, Russell Howard and Miranda Hart, who also studied at UWE (then Bristol Polytechnic). Bill Bailey and Richard Herring fly the comedy flag for neighbouring Somerset.

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• Bristol has been awarded the prestigious Purple Flag Award for three years running, acknowledging the work done to make the City Centre a safer, cleaner and a more pleasant place to be in the evenings and at night.

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• Bristol has many awards and accolades including the 'UK's Most Sustainable City', the 'UK's First Cycling City', 'European City of the Year' and was named as one of the world's 'Top 10 Cities for 2009' by DK Eyewitness.

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• Bristol is the eighth largest city in the UK, the largest city in the south west and is home to many large businesses and employers including Airbus, AXA, BBC, Environment Agency, Hewlett Packard, Lloyds TSB, Ministry of Defence and Rolls-Royce.

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• The HTML web language was partly developed at the Hewlett Packard research centre, just next door to our Frenchay Campus.

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• An influential European Cities and Regions of the Future 2012 report has named Bristol as the continent's best small city, beating rivals including Zurich, Antwerp, Lyon and Manchester.

• Bristol Zoo's 'Wow! Gorillas' public art event hit the streets and parks of Bristol over the summer of 2011 raising over £400,000 for gorilla conservation work and for local Bristol charity Wallace and Gromit's Grand Appeal.

• Gromit Unleashed, a public art event featuring Gromit, the long suffering sidekick of Wallace, took place in 2013. During the summer months over 1.18 million people visited the Gromit Unleashed trail and exhibition, directly contributing more than £77 million to the Bristol economy. The giant Gromit sculptures were sold at auction raising over £2million for Wallace and Gromit's Grand Appeal to support children and their families at Bristol Children's Hospital.

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Page last updated 19 December 2014

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