From ROCO to ruin: A buzzy arts co-op raised £1.2m from local investors and left them with nothing

Back in 2014, according to a glowing article in the Guardian, Glossop Road in Broomhill was poised to become the “centre for Sheffield’s next wave of creative talent”. Two business partners, Chris Hill and Andrea Burns, emerged from relative obscurity and raised over £1 million from investors and the Sheffield public, needed to turn seven Grade II-listed buildings into a sprawling arts complex. “Too often social enterprise gets stuck in the ideological mud of public service delivery,” founder Chris Hill told the Guardian back then. “We’re just about inspiring people to do great things in an enjoyable way.”

But there’s a good chance many readers have never heard of The ROCO. Just three years after it opened its doors to the public, this 17,000 sq ft space —  home to office space, art studios, a venue, a bookshop, a deli, a cafe-bar and a roof terrace — went the way of the dodo. Almost 150 local people and organisations who had poured hundreds of thousands into the project, and were promised an annual return on their investment, were abruptly left high and dry. 

“I was very angry at the end,” says investor Peter Marsh, a sociology professor at the University of Sheffield, adding that its collapse felt like “a huge missed opportunity” for Sheffield. “People put quite high hopes into a project that promised to do interesting things for the city, which turned out to be run by people with awful business skills or who were overly optimistic, to the point of being irresponsible.” Though he only lost a couple hundred quid, he never understood why those who contributed larger sums “weren’t jumping up and down” when their money went down the drain. 

It’s not worth writing about, ROCO co-founder Chris suggests, after agreeing to speak over the phone. He wasn’t too involved in the day-to-day running of the space, having taken a large step back once the renovation was complete, but seems nervous about my desire to discuss its demise with his former business partner Andrea, given how “overworked and devastated” she was by the end. Andrea is initially reluctant to drudge up the past but, in the end, concludes it might be cathartic to hash it all out.

Which is good, given she played a key role in a development that Peter still finds a bit galling, even all these years later. In November 2018, just a month after The ROCO’s demise, a new tenant moved into the lavishly renovated buildings on Glossop Road, a company created only a few months earlier. According to its Facebook page, Nice Neighbourhood offered food and drink, a gallery and event space, plus creative workspaces — pretty much the same offer as The ROCO. However, where The ROCO had been a co-op theoretically accountable to “member-owners” like Peter, Nice Neighbourhood was a typical private business. And one of its two directors was none other than Andrea Burns.