'Our history is being quietly erased': Bristol residents speak out over duplicate image replacement

Residents in at least three Bristol neighbourhoods have raised concerns this summer over what they describe as the systematic replacement of original photographs and archival images in community spaces, local authority displays, and council-commissioned heritage boards — with what many say are generic stock substitutes that bear little resemblance to the places they depict. The issue, which has surfaced most visibly in Stokes Croft, Easton, and along the Harbourside, is prompting growing frustration among people who say they were never consulted.

The complaints centre on a practice known in heritage and public art circles as duplicate image replacement — where original photographic prints, often sourced from local archives or community collections, are swapped out for visually similar but contextually different images, typically during refurbishment or cost-cutting exercises. For Bristol, a city with a particularly contested public memory around its built environment and history, the timing has landed badly.

Stokes Croft and Easton residents feel sidelined

The Stokes Croft Cultural Quarter, long home to grassroots arts organisations including Praxis and the Stokes Croft China project, has seen several heritage information boards updated in recent months as part of broader streetscape improvements along Cheltenham Road. Residents say the replacements arrived without public notice. A notice posted on the Easton Community Centre Facebook page in late June asked members whether anyone else had noticed changes to the photographic panels installed as part of the 2019 Easton Neighbourhood Plan rollout — a £340,000 project that involved months of community consultation.

Community organisers connected to the Malcolm X Community Centre on City Road say the issue matters beyond aesthetics. The original panels included images sourced specifically from the collections of Bristol's Black Archive, a project documenting African-Caribbean life in the city from the 1950s onwards. According to members of the group who attended a June 28 open meeting at the centre, at least two of those images have been replaced with photographs that show no identifiable Bristol location. The Daily Bristol could not independently verify which specific panels were changed, or confirm the council's formal position on the replacements.

Bristol City Council's planning and public realm team did not respond to a request for comment before publication. The council's current public realm strategy, adopted in 2023, includes a heritage sensitivity clause requiring consultation with ward members before alterations to community-funded street furniture or signage, though it is unclear whether that clause extends explicitly to photographic content within information boards.

What the archive data shows — and what happens next

The Bristol Record Office, based at 'B' Bond Warehouse on Smeaton Road, holds more than two million images in its photographic collections, many of which have been licensed for use in exactly these kinds of community display projects. Licencing fees for non-commercial community use are typically in the range of £30 to £80 per image, according to the office's published fee schedule. By contrast, commercially sourced stock photography can be obtained for as little as £5 per image through subscription services — a disparity that community advocates say creates an obvious financial incentive to substitute.

The Knowle West Media Centre, which has worked with Bristol City Council on several heritage documentation projects since 2017, has previously published guidance on best practice for community image use in public spaces. Whether that guidance was followed in the cases now being disputed is, as yet, unclear.

For those affected, the practical next step is to log formal objections through Bristol City Council's online public realm feedback portal, or to contact the relevant ward councillor directly. Residents can also submit image provenance queries to the Bristol Record Office, which can confirm whether specific photographs originated from its collections. Community groups with concerns about heritage boards installed under neighbourhood plan funding are advised to contact their local neighbourhood partnership — in the case of Easton, that is the East Bristol Neighbourhood Partnership, which meets next on July 22 at the Easton Community Centre on Kilburn Street.

The Bristol Archives Advocacy Group, formed in 2024, has said it plans to raise the issue at the next full meeting of the council's Communities Scrutiny Commission, scheduled for September.