A beginner’s guide to Bristol’s gentrification problem
Responding to Clifford by Corinne Walker
Clifford opens with a theme song that reminds me of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air intro; it gives us a catchy explanation of how our 70-year old Jamaican protagonist, who the film is named after, ended up strolling through these streets. Clifford makes his way home cheerfully moving through the world, a mood that is not necessarily reciprocated by those around him - until he gets home.
After 50 years of living and working in Bristol, Clifford was ousted from his home by gentrification, but he refuses to let it win. So, you guessed it, he moves into a house of twenty-somethings: vegan influencer Sade, well-meaning Guy and hyper-organised Rochelle. Everyone plays their part in this jovial dynamic. Their house meeting is a stage for Clifford’s defence of his loud music and Guy’s surprise at his own less-than-clean habits – all diligently managed by Rochelle’s meeting agenda and keenly captured by Sade.
In Clifford, filmmaker Corinne Walker asks whether Clifford can co-exist with his younger housemates as they face the crisis of finding an affordable home in their desired area. It soon becomes clear that their united aim of making a home in their area of Bristol far outweighs the classic house-share peeves of ‘borrowed’ tea bags, over-friendly housemates and unwelcome noises from the other side of the bedroom wall.
If this film were extended into a full-length feature, it would be interesting to see where Clifford’s new house is situated compared to his previous home, and where each of the housemates stands in the greater scheme of gentrification in Bristol. Many residents, including the mayor, are resisting the ongoing issue that is uprooting people from their homes. In 2019, Bristolian Henry Palmer wrote the book Voices of Bristol: Gentrification and Us to shed light on what long standing residents are facing across the city. What struck him about gentrification in Bristol was the “lack of social integration, local insecurity and student audacity”. Where, then, do Clifford and his housemates come into this? Is this intergenerational cohabitation a step towards social integration, or a last resort to survive in the latest wave of evictions?
These questions wouldn’t be answered within the 8 minutes of this film, but that’s not the point of Clifford: Walker does well to show a lighter, tongue-in-cheek approach to the housing crisis that residents of Bristol are facing. They have all been living together for almost a year, and Clifford’s biggest gripe is one that everyone has had at some point in their life: cleanliness and fridge space.
It is funny to think about how one of my Jamaican parents would address these gripes in a household like Clifford’s, and how they’d settle into life there. The regular, unprompted anecdotes about what this city was like 50 years ago are guaranteed; I can almost hear my dad or uncle’s voice in Clifford’s as he reflects on how he’s ended up there after living, working and playing in the area for the best part of his life. Similarly, in London there is a high street that my mum, who has lived in the same area since she was a child, hasn’t been to for at least 20 years because she can’t stand what it has become.
Witnessing the grips of gentrification take hold is not only about the personal sadness, but no longer having a family friend as a neighbour or needing to go further out to go to a grocery store that isn’t a supermarket. These longer-term effects are, unsurprisingly, lost on Clifford’s younger housemates: Sade briefly finds Clifford’s reflective tangent “mad deep” as the others continue on with the matters of the house meeting. Perhaps it won’t be until this group is shifted from their homes that they start to have their own deep stories about the home that once was. This is how the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, describes the evolution of the crisis, noting that “the people that get gentrified first are the voiceless people, and then people move in and then they run campaigns on gentrification when the next wave of people comes in and impacts on them.” The next chapter in Clifford’s story, then, could see him vindicated by his housemates’ realisation that the gentrification crisis is more than a sole event that landed him on a new doorstep.
This film is a lighthearted account of how Clifford has settled into life in a new, cosy abode. Clifford invites us to consider housing arrangements that we wouldn’t otherwise think of, in order to resolve an issue that more and more of us are having to face. A humorous account of this household’s experience sheds more light than a matter-of-fact report on what people across the city are having to resort to, as it invites us to think about whether it is, in fact, an advantageous way to approach the circumstances. Otherwise, we might be watching a film about a lonely Clifford who is the only one out of his local friends to hold onto his home.
I want to know how the housemates would get on in the coming months. Perhaps Clifford will host a special edition of his nightly blues parties to celebrate one year in his new home; or, they will come together to prevent a further shift at the hands of gentrification. Clifford leaves room for either to be possible, focusing on the joys of their unusual domestic setup in the meantime.
