Sheffield: A city on the up?
Sheffield: A city on the up?
Plus, city’s biggest mural takes shape in Pounds Park
Good morning readers — and welcome to our Monday briefing.
Sheffield is a city on the up — or so we keep being told. On one level, the phrase feels like fairly cringey political marketing; a way of trying to shift the dominant narrative about this city from one of decline to one of renewal, simply by willing it to be so. However, as the £470m Heart of the City development begins to open up, and after more than 70,000 people visited the new Cambridge Street Collective food hall in its first week, is it time to admit it’s finally coming true? That’s our big story today.
As well as that, former MP Nick Clegg is still trying to influence politics in the city and The Kite Runner opens at the Lyceum.
Catch up and coming up
For our weekend read, Victoria spoke to the host of a “true crime” show about their upcoming episode on the murder of Aseel Al-Essaie and asked whether turning a tragic death into television can ever be justified. You can read that piece here.
Last week, our readers also received a look at the new Crossed Wires festival, which aims to make Sheffield the podcast capital of the UK. Later in the week, Dan revisited his recent painful experience on Sheffield’s tram network to ask why, unlike every other major city in the country, Sheffield doesn’t yet have a city wide e-bike hire scheme. An extract from that second piece is below:
Just looking through the list of injuries I realise how lucky I’ve been. “Broken left femur that required emergency operation to insert titanium rod inside the full length of my femur,” read one. “In hospital for 14 days. Cost to NHS must be in the region of £50k.” Probably the worst is one cyclist who was unconscious for 37 days after having a craniectomy (an operation to remove part of the skull) to stop a bleed on the brain. “I was strongly expected to die as a result of the accident in the first five days,” they write. “I had a fractured skull, right sided ribs and right clavicle along with a subdural haematoma.” One Sheffield cycling campaigner wrote on Twitter that the continual cycling accidents on the city’s tram network were a “public health scandal”.
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Editor’s note: As we’re looking at in today’s piece, Sheffield is going through a lot of change. At The Tribune, our job is to chronicle that, looking at what it means for our culture, our economy, and most importantly the people who call Sheffield home. That means celebrating the successes and being willing to ask the uncomfortable questions. If you think Sheffield needs that kind of journalism, please sign up today, and receive two more in-depth pieces a week.
How can we reconnect with the wild?
From today’s sponsor: What does “wilderness” look like in Britain today? How can “rewilding” restore our connections with nature? Can we find the wild in our city centres?
A new exhibition, WILD, opening at Manchester Museum on Wednesday will look at how people are creating and repairing connections with nature, from post-industrial urban landscapes like Manchester to Aboriginal-led cultural revegetation projects in Western Australia and the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the US.
Find out more information here.
The big picture: Big bird 🐦
If you’ve been to Pounds Park recently you may have seen this magnificent new mural on the side of the Cubo co-working building. The artwork, which is by prolific street artist Peachzz, depicts a kingfisher and a heron and when complete will be the largest mural in Sheffield.
This week’s weather 🌥
Our weather forecast comes from dedicated Sheffield weather service Steel City Skies, who say it will gradually turn cooler this week, with a mix of sunshine and blustery showers from the west.
Monday 🌥 Mainly dry with bright spells, though it'll be cooler and cloudier than Sunday. Light W-NW breezes and highs of 18°C.
Tuesday 🌦 Thickening cloud with outbreaks of rain expected from the west during the afternoon, clearing to showers by the evening. Windy from the SW with highs of 17°C.
Wednesday 🌦 A lot of dry and bright weather, although expect a scattering of blustery showers at times from the west. Cool with highs of just 14°C.
Thursday 🌦 Very similar, with some places staying dry and fine. Otherwise another mix of sunshine and showers. Still windy from the west with highs of 15°C.
Friday 🌦 Another day of bright or sunny spells and a scattering of showers. Moderate to fresh breezes from the west, gusty in showers. Highs of 15°C.
Outlook: Little change with temperatures below average for early June. Sunny spells by day, cool and clear nights with a few blustery showers impacting from the west.
To see the full forecast and keep up to date with any changes to the outlook, follow Steel City Skies on Facebook.
The big story: Sheffield — A city on the up?
Top line: Spend any time listening to Sheffield’s leading politicians and you’re likely to hear them say we are “a city on the up”. When your job is to follow politics, political messaging can sound like a broken record. But with the new Cambridge Street Collective food hall opening to huge crowds and rave reviews last week, as well as more big city centre developments to come later this year, is this slogan coming true?
Much of their optimism is based on Heart of the City. The ambitious £470 million council-funded development has been decades in the making and is a key part of the council’s vision of turning the city centre into a place people want to visit — not just to shop, but to socialise and live.
The newly-opened food hall Cambridge Street Collective (the biggest purpose-built food hall in Europe, in case you hadn’t heard) announced last week that 73,435 people had visited in the first week of opening, the equivalent of over 10% of Sheffield’s total population (though we expect some of the visits are people who have returned multiple times, perhaps trying to tick of all of the dozens of outlets).
Just up the road, Leah’s Yard will also be opening in just a few months’ time. The former “little mesters” workshop has been transformed into a space for modern makers, with artists and creatives (including Sheffield’s Pete McKee) due to move in later this year.
And opposite both, Urban Splash (the same developer behind the hugely successful renovation of Park Hill flats) are now moving ahead with their plans to transform the former Cole Brothers/John Lewis department store into offices, shops and cafés.
But it can’t just be about bricks and mortar; the city has to be culturally vibrant as well. Sheffield Council’s chief executive recently described the city as a “creative powerhouse”, but there is a sense that too often it has punched below its weight. The Sheffield Culture Collective — a body which brings together local government, the creative industries, the voluntary sector, higher education and the private sector to bang the drum for the city’s cultural contributions — is an attempt to change this.
Sheffield Council is currently consulting on a new culture strategy, which hopes to bring together all the disparate strands of creativity going on in Sheffield under one umbrella. Just recently, there is a sense that this work is beginning to bear fruit, with last weekend’s successful Crossed Wires podcast festival and the return of a Pride festival in Kelham. We also have the Tramlines, No Bounds and Sensoria festivals to come later this year.
None of this is to say there aren't still problems, however. The renewal of Fargate is still a long way from completion and work on Event Central — a new mixed-use cultural hub, including performance spaces and coworking — hasn’t even started yet. Two plots within the Heart of the City development failed to sell and have now been withdrawn from the market (although we have picked up some talk about extending the hugely popular Pound’s Park into one of them, which would be less lucrative for the council but popular with citizens).
There are also several buildings that we don’t seem to know what to do with. The Salvation Army Citadel on Cross Burgess Street is a case in point – the crumbling building is currently for sale again and is thought to need millions spending on it.
Debenhams on The Moor has also struggled to find a new use since the department store folded in 2021. And, while some of the Heart of the City units have already been filled (Fjallraven, Yards Store, The Cream Store, Savills), many are still waiting for tenants.
And there are still reminders of how difficult major development in Sheffield can prove to be. The stalled Vista building on Pond Street still hasn't found a buyer and the empty plot where Midcity House used to be is about to become a pop-up bar called Thor’s Tipi.
Our take: When you hear a phrase bandied about so often, it’s a natural journalistic tendency to want to burst the bubble a bit, but we don’t want to be overly cynical. Sheffield does have a lot going for it and the new Heart of the City development looks amazing. The huge success of the Cambridge Street Collective so far shows people will come to the city centre if you give them something worth coming for. When we covered Heart of the City last year we concluded it could be transformative for Sheffield. It’s probably too soon for everyone to be patting themselves on the back just yet, and there is a lot of hard work still to be done, but we’ve made a good start.
So, what do you think? Is Sheffield a city on the up, or are our elected representatives guilty of overoptimism? As always, paying Tribune members can join the debate in the comments.
The Weekly Whitworth ✍️
Our cartoonist James Whitworth with his own take on this week’s big story.
Our media picks 🔗
Former MP bankrolls Lib Dem in old Sheffield seat 💰 Former Sheffield Hallam MP Nick Clegg has been bankrolling his local party to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds ever since he lost the seat in 2017, the Financial Times reveal. The former Deputy Prime Minister now works as head of global affairs for Facebook owner Meta, but over the last seven years has given up to £30,000 to the local party in an attempt to win the former Lib Dem seat back from Labour.
The meteoric rise of Louie Hinchliffe 🎽 Have you heard of the 21-year-old Sheffield sprinter who can run the 100m in 9.84 seconds? No, nor had we. This piece in the Yorkshire Post lifts the lid on the story of the former Notre Dame pupil, who initially hoped to become a pro-golfer. However, after going to study at the University of Washington, he came under the tutelage of legendary US sprinter Carl Lewis, and now has high hopes of running in this year’s Olympics.
‘If I stopped what I’m doing the songs would still come’ 🎸 Since our last Monday briefing, Sheffield legend Richard Hawley’s eighth studio album has been released to rave reviews. In this interview/beer fuelled tour of Sheffield in The Observer, he discusses the “strange magic” of his home city and how Standing at the Sky’s Edge hit a nerve in austerity-ravaged Britain. The piece also includes the amazing line: “As long as I’ve got a hole in my arse, I’ll love this city.”
Home of the week 🏡
This beautifully-presented five bedroom Victorian semi facing Norfolk Park has a host of period features and is within easy walking distance of the city centre. It is on the market for £385,000.
Tribune Tips: If you want to tell us about a story or give us some information, please email editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first poll instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity.
Things to do 📆
Theatre 🪁 On from Tuesday at the Lyceum is The Kite Runner, a stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling novel. Set in an Afghanistan on the verge of war, this haunting story of friendship spans cultures and continents and follows one man’s journey to confront his past and find redemption. Since 2017 the play has had two hugely successful West End runs and in 2022 transferred to Broadway. Tickets are priced £15-£45 and the show runs until Saturday, 8 June.
Environment ♻️ Flod was founded by three Sheffield Hallam graduates and specialise in recycling litter from Sheffield's waterways to repurpose it into household products. Join them on Wednesday at Weston Park Museum as they take a look into the detrimental impacts of litter on wildlife and the environment. They will offer a glimpse into their unique recycling methods and give advice on how you can get involved too. The free talk lasts 45 minutes and starts at 1pm.
Art 🖼️ On Thursday, join Sheffield Museums for a free tour of the Graves Gallery’s exhibition A Passion for Prints: A Sheffield Collection. The exhibition tells the story of a father and son from Sheffield whose passion led them to develop an outstanding collection of prints, including works by Jacques Callot, Rembrandt, Edouard Manet, Odilon Redon and more. This first of three talks focuses on colour lithography in 1890s France. The talk will begin at 1pm and lasts 45 minutes.
I’m a Sheffield lad. But work takes me regularly to Leeds and Manchester. I can finds bits of those cities that are amazing and bits that aren’t. What seems to be most different in those two is the air of positivity. So in that sense I don’t mind a bit of spin, if it breaks the more negative cycle.
I was in Sheffield on Saturday night with the family and it was genuinely buzzing and it seems to me that many of the people who complain about it either a) haven’t been in the city centre for a while and so are a year or 2 out of date and/or b) haven’t been to other equivalent cities in a while and think some of the challenges are unique to Sheffield rather than being a general issue with investment and infrastructure accross the north. Work sometimes takes me to London too - and that is clearly in another league.
A city on the ey’up?