Cleo Lake
Government & Local Authorities
Also working within:
Policy Experts
Also working within:
Policy Experts
Based: Bristol
Organisation:
Black Art Moves
Cleo Lake is the former Lord Mayor of Bristol (2018-2019) and was more recently candidate for Police Crime Commissioner for Avon & Somerset securing almost 65,000 votes to finish 3rd. During her term as a Green Party Councillor she was instrumental in getting a Reparations and Atonement motion passed at Bristol City Council.
Involved within the arts and culture sector for almost two decades, Cleo’s experience includes being Chair of St Pauls Carnival, Radio producer and presenter on Ujima 98FM, an ADAD (Association of Dance of the African Diaspora) Trailblazer, writer in residence at the Arnolfini and a Bristol + Bath Creative R&D Inclusion fellow.
As a community engagement professional, Cleo was recently the lead researcher and consultant for the pioneering Bristol Legacy Steering Group commissioned, Project T.R.U.T.H. Cleo is a research associate at Bristol University on the UKRI funded ‘Decolonising Memory : Digital Bodies In Movement’ project.
“I welcome the attention that calling a climate emergency has brought, but in my heart, I feel that what we need is a global inequality emergency declaration with everyone fighting as hard for that as they are for this. Because inequality in the way resources are grabbed, in the way resources are consumed, life chances between those that have everything and those that have nothing. The way humanity has collapsed, values and ethics have been skewed, the way First Nation wisdom and care for the Earth has been sidelined. This constant and ongoing inequality propelled at least from the time of industrial revolution and enslavement and colonisation - underpins the climate emergency. Yet we see even in the climate movement itself that inequality is rife to the extent that activists of colour get cropped out of publicity.”