About Us

What is Bristol Noise?

We are a charity that facilitates events and produces resources to encourage and equip Christians and churches to ‘show God’s love in practical ways’ to their communities. 

Bristol Noise’s first and longest running project has been ‘The Noise’, an annual event where Christians volunteer to serve their community through free family fun days, projects to tidy up the neighbourhood, serving tea to Seniors and more. 

We have recently started Noise 365, which takes the vision of showing God’s love in practical ways into every day of the year.


 
 
 

We also support other initiatives that inspire and equip Christians to show God’s love in practical ways and use our network to make connections across the city that enable more of this to happen.

Bristol Noise is made up of a very small team of paid staff, but we also have an incredible network of volunteers, churches and Christians throughout Bristol that help to make the vision a reality. 

Want to know more or get involved? Contact us - we would love to hear from you!

Our Vision & Values

  • We want to encourage Christians across Bristol to live out their faith through their actions; to get out and love others like Jesus did. We do this by inviting volunteers to share their time and skills to help others. 

    We believe that people catch vision by getting stuck in, and that inspiring volunteers to see how simple acts of kindness can change one person’s life, is key to seeing the reproduction of this vision across our city.

  • We want to encourage stronger neighbourhood connections; equipping churches to love their neighbours, as Jesus taught. We do this by facilitating connections between churches and the local community. 

    We work with community members, workers, organisations, and churches, to help meet real and local needs. 

  • We want to involve and engage all types of people, from all types of churches, to build unity within and across ‘the church’, because we see how this creates a better, positive impact in our city and results in stronger communities.

  • We want to be open-handed with our resources and follow Jesus’ example of sharing extravagantly. Therefore, our practical support is available at no cost to everyone in the community, regardless of belief or background, and our community events are free for all to enjoy.

  • We want to enable all ages to work together, in this mission, because we believe that we all have a role to play. We particularly want to inspire a younger generation to contribute and come alongside others to create a positive future for Bristol, and beyond.

Our History

 

Catching the vision

Back in August 2000, a group of young Christians from Bristol went up to Manchester to an event run by the churches there, called Message 2000.

  • This ambitious city-wide youth mission saw around 10,000 young Christians give up part of their summer holidays to volunteer on social, environmental and crime reduction projects across Manchester, with the aim of sharing God’s love and gospel message through these projects. The project was hailed as a massive success by the police and many others, and it was here that the group from Bristol caught the vision of showing God’s love in practical ways, putting social action and sharing the gospel hand in hand - and so the vision of Bristol Noise began.

Vision to reality

In 2001, the first version of ‘The Noise’ event took place, in Lockleaze with 30 volunteers, and also in Barton Hill with 100 volunteers. The teams of volunteers, which were mostly young people, took part in community projects to bless the local area. In 2002 two more Noise events took place, this time in Hartcliffe and Lockleaze.

The Noise gets louder

In the following years, ‘The Noise’ grew to different parts of Bristol. Bristol Noise offered an open hand to the city, inviting churches to get involved and facilitate local projects.

  • Hosted by local churches and carried out by volunteers, ‘The Noise’ annual event included free outdoor family fun afternoons, senior citizen events and practical community projects.

    In 2008, a small team of Christians, with a vision to do more to increase community engagement and social action across the country, formed HOPE Together, which acted as a catalyst in bringing churches together to transform communities. Bristol’s response to this was a vision to double the size of ‘The Noise’, aiming for 400 volunteers and to expand further across the city.

A growing sound

From 2008-2018, ‘The Noise’ continued to grow. Each year the number of volunteers, communities and churches involved increased, with activities soon spreading into East and South Bristol too.

  • The growth of ‘The Noise’ was at grassroots level, waiting to be invited into a neighbourhood by the local churches and community. Churches journeyed with us to support their communities, enabling ‘The Noise’ activities to grow into new areas. The vision for Bristol Noise is to build God’s kingdom, not an empire, so working with local churches and communities has always been important.

Hope Bristol 2018

In 2018, Bristol Noise partnered with Soul Survivor to put on HOPE Bristol. This 5-day event was focused on inspiring and releasing young people to get involved in their communities, and helped to recapture the original vision of ‘The Noise’ in young people.

  •  Young people from across the UK were invited to join in, and in total 1400 volunteers of all ages participated, including those from 93 different Bristol churches. Volunteers hosted 170 community projects, 25 events for kids, youth and senior citizens and 15 community fun afternoons, reaching into 25 neighbourhoods across Bristol.

The Noise in Recent Years

In 2019, ‘The Noise’ returned, and saw just under 1000 volunteers of all ages come together to put on a range of events and projects across the city.

Experience of ‘The Noise’ in Bristol has also inspired people in other parts of the UK to start their own version. The Bristol Noise team has given support to these other areas, in particular The Noise in Devizes and The Noise Lincoln.

  • Over the years, the activities of Bristol Noise have provided opportunities to connect with the council, charities, organisations and schools, allowing us to become a bridge between them and the church. Another connection enabled by Bristol Noise has been between larger, well-resourced churches and smaller, under-resourced churches. We want to see Bristol churches all working together.

Noise 365

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, ‘The Noise’, along with many other events, had to be cancelled. However, this enabled Bristol Noise to focus on another aspect of our vision: to see churches get involved in their communities 365 days a year.

  • ‘The Noise’ annual event was hoped to be a springboard for churches and individuals, to inspire them to continue volunteering and getting involved in their communities throughout the year. Noise 365 was born out of this vision, and has had space to grow in the past year. Read more about Noise 365 here.

    Our vision was captured over 20 years ago and still remains the same, while Bristol Noise has grown and evolved to better achieve that vision.

The Future of The Noise

After 24 years of The Noise, as trustees we have felt this season has come to an end,  so there is space for the growing impact of Noise 365 across the Bristol region. We had the video below commissioned to bring together a small glimpse of the last 24 years and looking forward to the future. See if you can spot a younger version of yourself or friends.

Thank You!

There are too many people to thank as we look back but special thanks to our paid event coordinators over the years (Sarah Witt, Esther Legg-Bagg, Rachel Varley and Beth Richardson) and other staff members over the years, trustees for holding the vision and strategy, key volunteers who gave their time behind the scenes sacrificially throughout the year and the 1000s of volunteers who have been involved on the Noise weekends. 

Please join us on this journey going forward as we move into this new season. Contact us if there are ways we can support your church or community organisation in your neighbourhood.

 24 Years of The Noise