If you know central Bristol you have probably walked on, travelled on or stared at something George Ferguson has fought for. Not necessarily as mayor. You know those cranes opposite the Ar-nolfini that mark out the dock from a distance? Ferguson helped buy them off the scrap merchant the city had sold them to. When the embarrassed city bought them back the money was invested in the Yellow Ferry Company. This saw the first of many such boat services to ply the waters of the docks and is now a community interest company with many small scale local shareholders. 'The seventies was a fight to save the docks from being stripped,' Ferguson explains. 'The eighties where when we really started trying to get to grips with the harbour.' He took on the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster as developer, and as an archi- tect with his practice Ferguson Mann, and turned it into a thriving arts venue and bar -and above it apartments, including his own. When he didn't like harbourside proposals at Canon's Marsh by Arup for Crest Nicholson he suggested Bristol Venice as a counter proposal. The experience of all these battles came together when Ferguson became Bristol's first directly elected mayor in 2012. He is now nearing the end of his first term.
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