Opening Weekend Walking Tours

The Bristol Photo Festival opens its latest edition on Saturday 17 October, and the curators are kicking things off by leading two guided walking tours across the city. This year's festival is called Time Machine, and it's built around how we inhabit layered time — overlooked histories, shared rituals and imagined futures. The curators describe it as a space where memory, fiction and possibility coexist, and the walking tours are a good way to see that play out across several different venues in one go.

There are two tours to choose from, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning one runs from 10am to 12.30pm, meeting in the foyer of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and walking from there to Bristol Cathedral and Arnolfini Gallery. It's a short route — about 0.9 miles, or 20 to 25 minutes of walking. The afternoon leg is longer, running from 2pm to 5pm; it meets at Centrespace Gallery and heads to Kit Form, IC Visual Lab, The Welcome Building and some surrounding venues, covering around two miles and taking about 45 to 50 minutes.

On both tours, the festival curators lead the way themselves, stopping at each venue to explore the exhibitions and talk through the shows. Some of the exhibiting artists will be there too, so you can hear them talk about their work and ask questions. It's a more social way to see the festival than just drifting between galleries on your own, and the curators' presence means you're getting the context straight from the people who put the whole thing together. The tours are supported by Lost And Grounded Brewers.

If you're just getting into the festival, the morning tour is a gentler start, while the afternoon one takes you through a larger cluster of venues. Both run on Saturday 17 October: the morning one from 10am to 12.30pm starting at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, and the afternoon one from 2pm to 5pm starting at Centrespace Gallery.