Archived Website

About Us

The Choc Box 2.0 group was a Comunity Association, with the specific purpose to represent the views of local reisdents on the developoment of the site known as the Elizabeth Shaw Chocolate Factory. Membership was open to anyone interested, and the subscription was a one-off payment of £1.

Street Reps

During the Spring and Summer of 2013, some volunteers went knocking on all their neighbours’ doors to let them know that a development company was in the early stages of making plans for the factory. Since then, activity amongst the developers appears to have ground to a halt, but when it picks up again, if you'd like to join the band of volunteers, please let us know.

Why Chocbox 2.0?

What happened to the website for ChocBox 1.0?

Back in 2006, when Persimmon put in a proposal to redevelop the site, a community group ran a campaign, which we now refer to as ChocBox1.0. At that time we ran a wiki (a website that anyone could contribute to). It cost money to keep going, and when the subscription ended it just... stopped. You may be able to find discussion in the easton_bristol yahoo group archives.

Original campaign group members helped newcomers reestablish the group, which is why we now refer to ChocBox 2.0 and ChocBox 1.0. The original ChocBox people involved with ChocBox 2.0 had great insight into the history of the Chocolate Factory and the ways of two previous developers and knowledge and experience of the issues and relevant organisations, government bodies and procedures. The majority of ChocBox 2.0, was made up by people who either lived locally at the time of ChocBox 1.0 but for various reasons were not active, or who have moved into the neighbourhood since the Squarepeg plan was approved by the council in April 2009. (You can read our brief account of ChocBox 2.0’s origins and the previous Chocolate Factory campaigns on our History page.)

So ChocBox 2.0 represents a mix of spontaneity and a firm connection with past success, a combination of new energy and experience. But importantly, as a grass-roots community group, it’s an open group - anyone who lives in the area, whether close to the factory or a bit further away, is welcome to come to the meetings.

Wasn’t there a councillor involved in this?

During March and April 2013, one of the candidates standing for election to the City Council on Thursday 2nd May dropped leaflets through letterboxes inviting local people to meetings about the Chocolate Factory and its future. At one point it looked as if there were two separate community groups. This was sorted out very early on - the electoral candidate in question has since passed over to ChocBox all the contact information from those who came along to his meetings, and he emailed those people to let them know he’d done so.

Contact details: there is still an email address Greenchoc2  (at.... guess)  which is monitored occasionally. Emails from local groups working on this history of the site are welcomed.