A message to our visitors following ACORN protest and free entry demand

Statement in response to protest and free entry demand by ACORN - updated 24 July

On 19 July, We The Curious was disrupted by a protest led by ACORN Bristol. We’re deeply upset by these events.

Both our team and our visitors were made to feel unsafe and intimidated in a space that is meant to be welcoming to all. Our team responded with calm, professionalism and care and we want to thank them wholeheartedly.

This protest was in relation to a historic donation and a recent event in one of our venue hire spaces.

We want to address up front, that we’re not in receipt of any funding from any arms companies, and that we stand against genocide and harm to human life of any kind.

There’s currently some misinformation circulating which we’ll address in more detail with an updated statement next week.

For now, our priority is the safety, wellbeing, and support of everyone who was affected.

Statement in response to protest and free entry demand by ACORN - updated 19 July

We weren’t aware of the protest and free entry demand by ACORN, our ultimate priority is keeping our visitors and staff safe.

We closed our venue at 4pm for the rest of the day to ensure that everyone was kept safe.

Our Chief Executive, Donna Speed spoke with an ACORN representative to talk through their letter and demands, she’ll be meeting with them along with our Chair of Trustees to work through the conversation together.

To give more context, the funding in question relates to historic funding of the Tinkering Space exhibit area in 2016, which is when we last received funding from Leonardo.

Following questions around this subject in June through X by a few individuals, we removed the funder plaque referencing this company whilst we continued to conduct a review of our gift acceptance and ethics policy.

This policy has been in place since 2019 and is already currently under review with our staff and board, to make sure it’s up to date and takes into account the economic and geopolitical environment. Any future funding offers will be assessed with the current geopolitical landscape in mind, working alongside the ongoing review.

Any return of funding would need to be considered by our Board, in line with Charity Commission guidelines (especially as it was in 2016, so funds already spent in furthering our mission) – so this’d also form part of the wider gift acceptance policy review.

Following our August board meeting, we’ll publish our gift acceptance policy. We’ll publish more updates on this as we have them.

If you’ve got any questions or queries, drop us a line on info@wethecurious.org and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.