Understanding our history

When historian David Olusoga and the team behind BBC2’s Finding Britain’s Slave Traders approached us, we were keen to open our doors and support their exploration of the Theatre’s history. 

We believe it’s important to be open and honest about our past, and the documentary gave us an opportunity to look again at the Theatre’s origins in the light of new research, bring that history to a wider audience and continue the conversation with communities across Bristol.

Bristol Old Vic is the custodian of the oldest continuously operating theatre in the English-speaking world. Caring for this remarkable building means telling its whole history – including the circumstances in which it was founded.

The Theatre opened in Bristol in 1766. Among its original investors were merchants directly involved in the transatlantic slave trade, while others were part of a wider economy in which wealth was connected to slavery. These connections belong in any truthful account of Bristol Old Vic. They are not an incidental footnote, but an integral part of the institution’s history.

Bristol’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and the legacies of that history continue to shape the city and the experiences of its communities today. For Bristol Old Vic, understanding this history is not about assigning guilt to people today for the actions of previous generations. Nor is it about diminishing the extraordinary artistic contribution the theatre has made over 260 years. It is about being truthful about where we have come from, understanding who benefited from the systems that shaped our institution, and recognising that history has consequences.

This history matters particularly in Bristol, a city whose relationship with the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy continues to shape the experiences of its communities. We have a responsibility to listen, to learn and to engage openly with those for whom this history is not distant or abstract.

Since 2016, this has been an important part of our heritage and engagement work. We have undertaken extensive archival research and developed community-led approaches to interpreting the Theatre’s history, helping to make the story of this building more visible and accessible.

Our history also informs how we think about Bristol Old Vic today. As a theatre serving a diverse city and region, we want the work we present, the artists we support and the experiences we create to reflect the breadth of the communities around us.

We cannot change the circumstances in which the Theatre was founded, but we can choose how we understand and interpret that history, and how it informs the institution we are today.

Our ambition is for Bristol Old Vic to be a place where people feel invited, welcomed and respected; an organisation that continues to learn from its past while contributing to a more open, inclusive and equitable future.

The history of Bristol Old Vic is complex and, like the history of Bristol itself, continues to be explored. We believe that being open about that history is an important part of caring for this extraordinary building and ensuring that its story can be understood by generations to come.