A surprising new partner in the fight against health inequality: IKEA

Good afternoon readers — and welcome to our Monday briefing.

Wow, what a great weekend! The sun shone, Hillsborough Park was thronging, and the whole city centre was filled with music for the Tramlines Fringe. Whatever you got up to, we hope you had a great time. 

On Sunday I woke up (with a bit of a sore head, having been at Fagan’s until the early hours for their Snuglines event) to the happy news that we were in a national newspaper. A few weeks ago Observer journalist and born and bred Sheffielder Rachel Cooke came up to speak to us about The Tribune and met with our Manchester colleagues at The Mill. In the piece I talk about what inspired me to set up The Tribune, and Victoria spoke about the benefits of being given time to do proper in-depth investigations. To read the piece click here.

In today’s briefing, major retailer IKEA have been sweet-talked into a much-needed act of charity in Gleadless Valley, and the wider South Yorkshire region. The company is one of a number of organisations partnering with South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard to ensure our most deprived babies and toddlers have somewhere safe to sleep.

As well as that we have the start of the Abbeydale Road Beer Festival, and a beautiful three-bed townhouse in the Heart of the City.

Catch up

For our weekend read, Daniel Dylan Wray spoke to Désirée Reynolds about the Dig Where You Stand Biennial 2024, a new exhibition based on an “archival justice project” about the people of colour who are hidden in the Sheffield City Archives. Read it here. The exhibition lasts until 18 August.

Last week we sent out two great newsletters to our 2,209 paying members. In the first, Victoria spoke to Sheffield snapper (and Rutland Arms chef) Karl Hurst about why he takes his photos like he rolls his cigarettes — without a filter. And in the second, Dan asked who the Sheffield city centre is for: the bottomless brunchers and late night revellers of West Street, or sleep-deprived residents who just want a decent night’s shut-eye.

Editor’s note: Being in The Observer feels like a big honour for what is still a small, local title with just two full-time writers. And I particularly loved how Cooke finished her piece:

“And when I leave them [i.e. us] to get on with their day — the council has responded to their claims about Park Hill and they’re good to publish at last — I can’t help but look at the city centre with fresh eyes. What’s that ugly, new building? Who uses this strange, new park? Every street has a story and I want to read them all.”

The 24-hour news cycle ingrains a shallow view of the world where, if something isn’t immediately breaking, it’s irrelevant. But we go for a slower, more deliberate approach, that doesn’t just look at what happened, but also what it means — asking the kinds of questions Cooke does. Like our recent piece on millstone grit, which was arguably 320 million years in the making, and was called “lyrical”, “evocative” and “wonderful” in the comments. We believe this approach gives you, the reader, a much richer connection to Sheffield and the stories behind its many streets.

But only about half of our journalism is free to read, so if you don’t yet subscribe you’re missing a lot of it — some of our best slow pieces go out to members only on Tuesdays. Join us today to read them, and to help us keep digging into this city’s stories.

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The big picture: Made in Sheffield 🥉

The Paris Olympics are now well underway and Team GB are already riding high in the medals table. Their first medal (indeed the first medal awarded in this year’s games) came on Saturday when Yasmin Harper (left) and Scarlett Mew Jensen took bronze in the women’s synchronised 3m springboard. 24-year-old Harper is a former pupil at High Storrs School and trains with Sheffield Diving Club at Ponds Forge. Photo: Sebastian Bozon/AFP via Getty Images.

The big story: A surprising new partner in the fight against health inequality: IKEA

Top line: In Sheffield, many children don’t get the best start in life due to poverty and substandard accommodation. That can echo across the rest of their life, with a recent government review stating that the first 1,001 days of a child’s life set “the foundations for lifelong emotional and physical wellbeing”. It’s a huge policy challenge. But Mayor Oliver Coppard thinks he may have found an answer (in flat-pack form).

The wonderful everyday: One of the most basic things a newborn baby needs is a safe place to sleep. Major retailer IKEA has been sweet-talked into donating £50,000 worth of beds and bedding to South Yorkshire’s most deprived families, as part of a project to tackle child poverty and reduce infant deaths. The furniture giant also renovated a community centre in Gleadless Valley, one of Sheffield’s most deprived estates.

Babies in bathtubs: In Sheffield, one out of every nine newborn babies leaves hospital for a home where they will have no safe place to sleep. Sheffield-based charity Baby Basics UK recently told the BBC they hear regular “horror stories” of babies sleeping in bouncy chairs, in bathtubs or on mattresses on the floor. “Some parents can't afford beds, their home isn't big enough to accommodate one or there is mould or damp which has destroyed the bed they have,” explained the charity’s chief executive Cat Ross. 

‘I refuse to let that stand in South Yorkshire’: In March, South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard launched the Beds for Babies project, committing £2.2 million of funding over four years. “We have some of the worst health inequalities in the UK,” he said, but acknowledged that the South Yorkshire Combined Mayoral Authority “can’t solve bed poverty alone”. Support from partners like IKEA — as well as Sheffield Hallam University, Shelter and Baby Basics UK — was needed to make the project a success. 

Hundreds helped: IKEA donated 2,150 items in total, including cots, toddler beds and bedding — enough to help 243 children and their families. The items will be distributed to impoverished families across South Yorkshire, who have been referred to Baby Basics UK by other charities and organisations. 

Scandi Sheff: While the kit is coming from the Swedish furniture manufacturer, the idea here is actually Finnish. The Finns have been giving mothers “bed boxes” along with other useful materials, since the 1930s. That’s been credited with reducing infant mortality in Finland and supporting new mothers through what can be a very challenging period.

Gleadless Valley guinea pigs: When the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority launched the Beds for Babies programme in March, Gleadless was selected as one of four pilot areas in South Yorkshire (alongside Goldthorpe, Mexborough and Swinton). An SYMCA report said the “test and learn pilots” would allow the authority to work out how best to get local residents to trust the services and build “stronger working relationships between statutory and non-statutory services”.

Community hub plays peekaboo: It’s been just over a year since the Gleadless Valley Community Hub in Callow Place reopened (for the first time), as part of the much-delayed regeneration of the estate. But it’s not been plain sailing. In September, the hub was forced to close for “urgent maintenance work,” and didn’t open its doors again until December.

Grand re-re-reopening: Last Thursday, after a lick of paint from 19 IKEA Sheffield staff, a whole new kitchen and some new furniture, the “previously under-utilised council-owned space” reopened once more. It’s explicitly aimed at the estate’s families — somewhere they could play with their children, meet other parents and attend classes on baby weaning. However, the hub will also provide much-needed services that residents might not access unless they’re already at the hub for a coffee morning — including legal advice, help into employment or sessions to inform them about their housing rights. Housing charity Shelter, which has also received a donation from IKEA, will have staff based in the hub.

Cllr Dawn Dale, chair of the council’s Education, Children’s and Families Committee, said: “In all we do we want children and young people — and their family members too — to feel loved, accepted and safe. Having safe spaces like this available to go and nurture those feelings and play and learn together is vital for everyone’s positive development.”

Bottom line: In an ideal world, South Yorkshire’s political leaders would be able to fund projects like this on their own. However, as has surely escaped no one at this point, we don’t live in an ideal world. Even if the amounts being spent are fairly small beer for the likes of IKEA, it’s likely to do huge amounts of good for the families in Gleadless Valley and beyond.

The Weekly Whitworth ✍️

Cartoonist James Whitworth with his own take on Tramlines as fine and dry weather made for excellent festival-going conditions — and Sheffield Council breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Coming up

This week we’ll send out two more members-only pieces including a piece about Crone Club, a Sheffield group who are trying to destigmatise ageing for women. And on Thursday we’ll have a piece by Victoria about the shortage of GP appointments in Sheffield — and a similar shortage of GP jobs. To read both of those, you’ll have to become a subscriber. It costs just £1.71 a week or 24p a day if you pay for 12 months up front (£89).

This week’s weather 🌥

Our weather forecast comes from dedicated Sheffield weather service Steel City Skies, who say there will be heat to begin the week, with increasing humidity providing a risk of a thundery breakdown after midweek.

Monday 🌤 Very warm to hot with moderate southwesterly breezes. Sunny spells and patchy afternoon cloud. Dry with highs of 27°C.

Tuesday ⛅ Further spells of hot sunshine and dry for all. Light northerly winds and highs of 28°C.

Wednesday ⛅ Very warm again with hazy spells of sunshine. Low risk of an evening downpour. Highs of 27°C with easterly breezes.

Thursday ⛅⚡ A breakdown threatens from the south with showers and thunderstorms possible. Muggy with highs of 23°C.

Friday ⛅ Warm and largely dry with breezy winds from the southwest. Can't rule out a shower at this range, though! Highs of 24°C.

Weekend: Unsettled further NW, drier further SE. Sheffield in the middle with a few showers but a good deal of fine weather too. Temperatures around average.

To see the full forecast and keep up to date with any changes to the outlook, follow Steel City Skies on social media.

Our media picks 🔗

‘I’ve tried 50,000 beers’ 🍻 “A life well lived” was my reaction to this piece about beer lover Andy Morton in The Guardian. Andy first got the taste for real ale as a student, but it was only when he returned to Sheffield that he got into the hobby properly. Since 1985 he has been a so-called “beer ticker”, marking down the name, date, venue, price, brewery and alcohol percentage over every ale he drinks in his notebooks. He currently averages around 2,000 new beers every year.

Award-winning podcast studio announced as tenants for former little mesters’ yard 📻 The opening date for Leah’s Yard has been announced, with the retail and creative hub due to welcome people in for this first time on Saturday, 24 August. The courtyard will feature businesses including Pete McKee’s new gallery, bookshop La Biblioteka, and the Hop Hideout bottle shop, while last week the top podcast studio Persephonica was revealed as a tenant.

I caught the open top tourist bus through Derbyshire and hated it — at first 🚌 A nice piece by The Star’s David Walsh recounts his experience on the Peak Sightseer, the open top double decker bus which takes passengers on a tour of the Peak District. Despite a rocky start where he was forced to sit downstairs, when he finally got onto the upper deck the views more than made up for it. All day tickets are £9.50 for adults and £5.50 for under 19s. More information is here.

Home of the week 🏡

If our piece about city centre noise hasn’t put you off, this lovely three-bed townhouse in the Heart of the City development overlooks the Peace Gardens and is on the market for £279,500.

Things to do 📆

Jazz 🎹 Recently featured in Jazzwise magazine and returning to The Lescar on Wednesday after an appearance on the Manchester Jazz Festival main stage is Birmingham-based pianist and composer David Austin Grey. Bringing a wide range of influences including Thundercat, Miles Davis and A Tribe called Quest, his “truly distinctive sound” has been described as "powerfully emotive and exciting”. Tickets are priced £10 (£7 NUS) and doors open at 8pm.

Walk 🥾 On Thursday, join the Canal and River Trust on a free guided walk to discover over 200 years of history at Victoria Quays on the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal. Constructed between 1816 and 1819, the canal connected Sheffield to the waterway network for the first time and operated until 1970 when it was closed to cargo. The walk will start at 11am and lasts around 1 hour and 30 mins. The meeting point is in the foyer of the Best Western Hotel at Victoria Quays.

Beer 🍻 Returning on Thursday to 12 pubs in Nether Edge is the Abbeydale Road Beer Festival, bringing over 100 craft beers over four days from August 1-4. Complete your stamp card (available at any of the 12 bars: The Bear, Dead Donkey, Turner’s Bottleshop and Tap, Over the Yardarm, Glass Frog, Abbeydale Tap, Picture House Social, Barrowboy, Two Thirds Beer Co, The Teller, The Gin Bar and The Broadfield) and exchange it for a limited edition print.