Mayor of Bristol

Marvin Johnathan Rees (born 1972/1973) is a British Labour Party politician. Since May 2016, he has served as Mayor of Bristol.

Marvin Rees was educated in Bristol before attending the University of Wales in Swansea. He also earned an M.S. in Economic Development at Eastern University (United States) and completed the World Fellows Program at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Rees is the Founder and Programme Lead at The Bristol Leadership Programme, a two-week program that will help a dozen people annually from impoverished backgrounds to reach their aspirations.He was also a member of the Bristol Legacy Commission which dispursed its funds and ceased operating in April, 2012. and a former Director of the Bristol Partnership whose goals are to make Bristol's prosperity sustainable, reduce health and wealth inequality, build stronger and safer communities, and raise the aspirations and achievements of young people and families.

Rees has worked in diverse areas throughout his career. He was a freelance journalist and radio presenter at BBC Radio Bristol. He was the Communications and Events Manager at Black Development Agency (now Phoenix Social Enterprise), an agency devoted to empowering individuals and communities through opportunities to work abroad.

Marvin Rees was employed in the city of Bristol as the Programme Manager for race equality in mental health issues at NHS Bristol. His experiences in the United States included work as an outreach assistant at the Sojourners Community and as a Youth Co-ordinator at Tearfund.

In 2012, selected by an individual ballot of Labour Party members in the city, Rees defeated four other candidates including the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour group in Bristol and a former Member of Parliament.

On 5 May 2016, Rees was elected Mayor of Bristol. He received 56,729 voted in the first round and 12,021 transfer votes in the second round, meaning that he received 68,750 votes overall.

Marvin Rees, who describes himself as the mixed-race son of a white single mother, is married with three children and lives in Easton in Bristol.





Bristol

Bristol, is a city, unitary authority area and county in South West England with an estimated population of 442,500 in 2015. It is England's sixth and the United Kingdom's eighth most populous city, and the most populous city in Southern England after London. People from Bristol are known as Bristolians. The city borders the Unitary Authority areas of North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, with the historic cities of Bath and Gloucester to the south-east and north-east, respectively.

Iron Age hill forts and Roman villas were built near the confluence of the rivers Frome and Avon, and around the beginning of the 11th century the settlement was known as Brycgstow (Old English "the place at the bridge"). Bristol received a royal charter in 1155 and was in Gloucestershire until 1373, when it became a county. From the 13th to the 18th century, Bristol was among the top three English cities after London (with York and Norwich) in tax receipts. Bristol was surpassed by the rapid rise of Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham during the Industrial Revolution.

Bristol was a starting place for early voyages of exploration to the New World. On a ship out of Bristol in 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian, became the first European since the Vikings to land on mainland North America. In 1499 William Weston, a Bristol merchant, was the first Englishman to lead an exploration to North America. The Port of Bristol has since moved from Bristol Harbour in the city centre to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Dock.

Bristol's modern economy is built on the creative media, electronics and aerospace industries, and the city-centre docks have been redeveloped as centres of heritage and culture. The city has two universities, the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol and a variety of artistic and sporting organisations and venues including the Royal West of England Academy, the Arnolfini, Spike Island, Ashton Gate and the Memorial Stadium. It is connected to London and other major UK cities by road, rail, sea and air by the M5 and M4 (which connects to the city centre by the M32), Bristol Temple Meads and Bristol Parkway mainline rail stations, and Bristol Airport. One of the UK's most popular tourist destinations, Bristol was selected in 2009 as one of the world's top ten cities by international travel publishers Dorling Kindersley in their Eyewitness guides for young adults. In 2014 The Sunday Times named it as the best city in Britain in which to live, and Bristol also won the EU's European Green Capital Award in 2015.