A year after joining the House of Lords, former Bristol mayor Marvin Rees discusses his eight-year leadership in a new memoir and interview. He highlights achievements in housing, climate action, and community collaboration while addressing personal challenges from his upbringing. Rees emphasizes the role of cities in tackling global issues like climate change.
Marvin Rees served as Bristol's directly elected mayor from 2016 to 2024, the second and last to hold the position created in 2012 to enhance transparent leadership. The role was dissolved following a council vote after his re-election, leading to a public referendum. In his 2024 memoir, Let’s See What Happens: The Last Mayor of Bristol, published by Picador, Rees recounts his experiences, including a formative 1990 expedition to Svalbard, Norway, with the British Schools Exploring Society, where he faced a near-death fall into a crevasse at age 18.
Rees received an OBE in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to local government and became Lord Rees of Easton in the House of Lords in February 2025, a title honoring the Bristol area where he grew up. During his tenure, he took on the presidency of the British Explorers Society in 2019. He takes pride in initiatives like redeveloping a former care home in St Anne’s into 13 affordable homes and the 'Big Offer Big Ask' policy, which encouraged pledges from individuals and organizations in exchange for support from the mayor's office.
Through the 'One City' approach, Rees fostered collaborations among stakeholders, stating, 'I seem to be able to convene, I can get people around the table to work together.' His leadership extended to chairing the UK’s Core Cities Group and the Global Parliament of Mayors. In 2024, the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute appointed him an honorary industrial professor for work on cities and climate change. He spoke at the CoMotion Global summit in Riyadh in December 2025 as part of the Mayors in Motion delegation.
Raised in Bristol as the son of a Jamaican father and white single mother during the 1970s and 1980s, Rees faced racism and class snobbery, which he credits for shaping his perspective. In 2012, he founded The City Leadership Programme to equip high-aspiration teenagers with skills like public speaking. Reflecting on regrets, he noted, 'There are some things where we made a mistake, but we did what we could with the information we had,' adding that 'leadership’s not a solitary act.' Rees, who views cities as key to winning the climate battle, asserts, 'Once a mayor, always a mayor,' and questions national identities as inadequate for transnational issues like climate change.
