Community Hub - Sparks Bristol
Sparks Bristol, has one clear aim: to hand the high street back to the people actually trying to change things. The message is consistent and practical: the answers to big systemic problems often start with small, skilled, communal acts.
What if shopping could be an act of resistance? Tucked inside the old Marks & Spencer building on Broadmead, Sparks Bristol is doing exactly that - reimagining what a high street space can be, and who it can serve.
Created by Artspace Lifespace and the Global Goals Centre, Sparks brings together ethical retailers, creative studios, co-working desks, and affordable event hire across three floors.
Sparks has one clear aim: to hand the high street back to the people actually trying to change things.
Walk through its doors on any given week and you might find a free bike repair clinic run by Bristol City Council's active travel team, a sewing group welcoming migrants and refugees, a seminar on food waste from a UWE professor, or a Climate Café where anyone - regardless of their knowledge or activism - can sit down with a biscuit and talk honestly about the crisis we're in.
None of these things feels like a token gesture. They feel like bold acts and a great way to champion a different way of doing things!
The building is organised into departments - but these aren't retail categories. They're a map of the issues and an entry point to actions we can all take to make changes in these areas.
> Fashion
> Reuse
> Energy
> Nature
> Imagination
> Community
The Department of Energy Sparks Bristol, for instance, is where the CHEESE Project runs pop-ups helping people find the cold spots in their homes, and where Climate Cafés create space for solidarity and honest conversation.
The Department of Reuse hosts a weekly Repair Café, run by No Small Thing every Sunday, where broken things are fixed rather than binned.
The message is consistent and practical: the answers to big systemic problems often start with small, skilled, communal acts.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the Department of Fashion. Fashion at Sparks isn't about buying more. It's about wearing what you already have for longer, learning to fix it yourself, and understanding why that matters.
Brand new Slow Fashion Studio
This month (March 2026) sees the launch of the Slow Fashion Studio — a new workshop space and reclaimed fabric shop from Rethrindle CIC and Rebel Patch - joining a floor already home to visible mending workshops, a resident sustainable fashion stylist, and an LGBTQIA+ Little Free Library.
In April, Sparks is taking part in the Bristol BID Care and Repair Festival, with a packed programme of free workshops covering jewellery repair, Palestinian embroidery techniques, mosaic-making, cycling skills and clothing repair.
What Sparks understands is that activism doesn't only happen at protests and petition tables. It happens when a community shares skills, when a building refuses to be complicit in waste, when a high street space prioritises people over profit.
In a city centre increasingly shaped by the same chains and the same logic, Sparks Bristol is a stubborn, joyful, practical argument that things can be different.
You can find Sparks at 78 Broadmead, Bristol.
