The fight to save Jubilee Pool and Gym from closure has been ongoing since 2017 when Bristol City Council decided the community did not need a local pool. Enter pool campaigner, Jules Laming.
She has stood with banners, spoken with eloquence and passion at full Council meetings, gathered a group of community activists that grew in numbers. She became the Chair of the Friends of Jubilee Pool, which morphed into a company limited by guarantee and recently achieved charitable status. She has delivered thousands of leaflets encouraging the local community to stand with her and the pool. She was key in producing a survey which was sent out to over 40,000 homes, gathering evidence of the desperate need to keep this pool open.
This passion forced the Council to put up the pool as a Community Asset Transfer which has never been done in Bristol before. Jules assembled her army of pro bono support, professional reports were submitted, solicitors engaged, a business plan formed, an operator sourced and in a crazy nine-month timeframe leases were signed (it was so close the Council had materials ready to board the building up). But Jules and her fellow army of volunteers did it and the pool came into the ownership of the community. Jules has a young family, she owns her own business and yet she doggedly refused to allow this pool to close, spending hours of her own time planning the fight. She is crazily passionate; this mammoth achievement certainly would never have happened without her determination and absolute belief that the pool would stay open for the whole community of South Bristol and beyond. There is now a huge task ahead with the financial chaos currently battering our country and Jules is feeling worn down by it all.
To win this prize would be such a boost for her and the amazing South Bristol community.
