Sheffield blog

What you can do to support culture in our city

Weston Park Museum: jobs and exhibitions are under threat

As you may have heard Museums Sheffield (which runs Millennium Gallery, Graves Gallery and Weston Park Museum) was dealt a devastating funding blow this week when it failed to get Renaissance funding from the Arts Council.

Not getting this funding means a 30% cut in Museums Sheffield’s annual budget which in turn means redundancies, a reduction of learning activity and none of the high profile collaborations with Tate, V&A and the British Museum which have resulted in a first-class exhibition programme over the last few years rather than the sort of municipal displays you can often find in regional museums and galleries.

Clearly it’s a major blow to Sheffield if our museums service degenerates in this way and will have a damaging ripple effect on the rest of the cultural scene.

If you feel moved to, it would be great if you could register your displeasure at this decision and persuade the powers that be to think about other means of supporting Museums Sheffield:

Museums Sheffield: make the case for culture in Sheffield

This amounts to interrogating the Arts Council on their decision. Email ACE Yorkshire at enquiries@artscouncil.org.uk marking it for the attention of the Yorkshire Office. You can also email Alan Davey the head of the Arts Council chief.executive@artscouncil.org.uk.

I’m sure you can compose your own email but good points to cover might be:

• Museums Sheffield provides an excellent and museums service which will now be compromised – you might want to include your favourite exhibitions of the past few years.
• Museums Sheffield serves a diverse and large audience – ‘Great Art for Everyone’ in the words of the Arts Council.
• A decimated museums service will have a degenerative effect on the wider arts scene in Sheffield.
• Why were York and Leeds chosen over Sheffield when both cities have a stronger tourist economy, more robust arts infrastructure and greater investment from the Arts Council already – surely Sheffield needs this support most.
• ACE’s allocation of Renaissance funding is unbalanced – central England inc. Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby and Leicester all unsuccessful in their bids. London, Oxford and Cambridge all successful – rich cities and services getting richer and poor ones getting poorer.
• Finally a call to reverse the decision/ find other ways of supporting Museums Sheffield.

If you’re a Sheffield resident its also worth contacting your local councillors and MPs imploring for local government to support Museums Sheffield in the absence of Arts Council funding.

You can find contact the relevant contacts on the Sheffield city council website and councillors.sheffield.gov.uk.

Again, good points to make might be:

• Museums Sheffield provides an excellent and museums service which will now be compromised – you might want to include your favourite exhibitions of the past few years.
• The people who will suffer from this are Sheffield residents from all areas and backgrounds.
• A decimated museums service will have a degenerative effect on the wider arts scene in Sheffield.
• Despite difficult budgeting decisions it’s time for Sheffield City Council to invest in culture in Sheffield in order to enjoy economic and social returns.
• Finally entreat them to protest at the Arts Councils decision and support Museums Sheffield via local government funding.

Thanks for standing up for culture in Sheffield.

You can also follow @Ruskins_Ghost on Twitter for more on the #saveSheffieldmuseums campaign.

The text in this post is used with permission by the author. Please use it and pass the message round to any friends and colleagues you think would be interested.

Park Up S1 parking app

Parking for motorists and cyclists

A free iOS app has just been launched that shows the closest car parks, number of blue badge bays and cycle parking available round the city.

The app by Chris Mainprize displays your location on the map to help you find the nearest place to park.

It doesn’t currently give you a live update of how many spaces are available in each parking area, but if like me you tend to stick with the same two or three car parks in town regardless of where you’re heading, it could be useful.

Park Up S1 in iTunes

…and so does the Sheffield Telegraph

Sheffield city council on Twitter

The council’s approach to Twitter has come a long since its fledgling first steps where #almost #every #word #was #inexplicably #hashtagged. They seem to have got the hang of it now and have certainly discovered its value, particularly during times of crisis such as our occasional floods.

I was thinking about how they might further improve what they are doing and for me the username they have chosen, ‘SCCPressOffice‘, is not very good. You might hope that after being on Twitter for a year or two, they would realise that the could change it to a name which would work for them much more effectively.

Here’s why Sheffield city council needs to change their SCCPressOffice Twitter username:

• It doesn’t contain the name of the organisation that it is supposed to represent
  Sheffield city council is called Sheffield city council, and none of those words are included in the name. Instead, they have chosen to use an abbreviation that no member of the public would really choose of using (SCC) and also the name of the department providing the tweets. To me, this seems quite inward-looking: why base your name on meaningless local government internal jargon and the name of an internal department? By all means use your Twitter biography to explain who is running the account on behalf of the organisation, but not your username
• It doesn’t contain the name of the city it is supposed to represent
  The council’s primary interest, and the reason it exists, is the city of Sheffield. Although it may not always be demonstrated with swagger, the people who live here love their city and have plenty of civic pride. Why wouldn’t the council choose to include the word Sheffield when representing itself online?
• It doesn’t help search engine optimisation
  When choosing names for things like this, it is good to pick a name that is also the kind of thing that people will put into Google or the Twitter search box to look for it. Who on earth would search for SCCPressOffice? Perhaps someone wanting to get in touch with the press office. But everyone else would type ‘Sheffield council’ or ‘Sheffield city council’
• It doesn’t read very well
  I’ve got used to it now, but to someone unfamiliar with the name, SCCPressOffice doesn’t scan very well and isn’t particularly easy to read. Their Twitter biography also doesn’t make sense: “Sheffield City Council, Sheffield where everyone matters”
• It isn’t really on-brand
  I’m guessing that the council doesn’t have a very developed set of brand guidelines. If it did, referring to itself externally as SCC would surely not be encouraged

It seems to me that when setting up this Twitter account the council has made the classic mistake of naming it based on the internal set-up of the organisation, instead of their audience’s needs. As I said, few people call the council ‘SCC’ and no-one really cares that the press office update it. To the outside world, that Twitter account is Sheffield city council and the name should reflect that.

I’m not out to slag off the council or the people running the account, I just want to see the prominent users of digital services like Twitter in Sheffield use them to their maximum potential. They offer an opportunity to engage with hard-to-reach people and are a great way for the public to feed back on council services. Getting the name right is a good start and a platform on which to build.

As a footnote, the Sheffield Telegraph has also not chosen a very good Twitter username in ‘shftelegraph‘. It isn’t easy to remember what it is (I should know, as I type it every week), it doesn’t mention Sheffield or Telegraph and their Twitter name (different to username) is Sheffield Newspapers. When looking for the paper on Twitter, who would type the name of the parent group instead of the newspaper title?

Come on council and the Sheffield Telegraph: no matter how much red tape is in your organisation, the power is in your hands to make this easy change. You won’t lose any users and it can be done in two minutes. What do you say?

More seventies Sheffield

This fly-on-the-wall-style documentary shows a day in the life of Sheffield in September 1973. There is no commentary, and the only real narrative is the progression of events, with the cameras returning to certain stories – such as a birth, a death and a marriage – throughout the day.

In terms of visual change, there is plenty to look out for. The cooling towers form part of the backdrop; Bramall Lane still has tall floodlights on the corners of the ground; the Peace gardens are the old layout; people are still using outdoor loos; the Black swan (aka the Mucky duck) was still open; and at one point I think you can spot the now-demolished Kelvin flats.

The local media also feature quite prominently. An audio clip announces that it is ‘Radio Sheffield breakfast magazine edition one’, although with the station going live six years previously, it presumably wasn’t the first incarnation of the breakfast show.

We also get to see behind the scenes at an editorial meeting at Sheffield Newspapers, where the front-page news is that the corporation is to halt council house building and a bread delivery lorry’s brakes have failed, causing it to crash into a Walkley house.

Some of the seventies background music makes scenes from All in a day reminiscent of City on the move. And I couldn’t help being reminded a little bit of the beginning part of Threads. Obviously, the turn of events in All in a day isn’t so tragic, but to a viewer who wasn’t born in 1973 and who was only young in 1984, they both have a similar old-Sheffield feel.

Oh and look out for the bizarre, symbolic juxtaposition of a priest leading communion, ‘This is my blood…shed for you and for many for the remission of sins’, which then cuts to a pig being slaughtered.

You can watch the All in a day documentary below.

Where is there room for improvement?

Were you one of the 250,000 people that visited the Peace gardens over the festive season for Sheffield Christmas market?

I’ve been asked to gather some opinions of the Christmas market on behalf of the people behind it. What did you think? I’ve put a few thoughts here – feel free to add your own by commenting below.

Last year’s Christmas market felt a bit underwhelming but this year’s was a definite improvement. There were better quality stalls and the ice rink made it feel more like a destination as opposed to just another market.

When passing, the ice rink never looked that busy and felt a bit expensive for Sheffield at £8 for an adult. The price was slashed to £6 for the final few days so perhaps this is a more realistic price to aim for.

It would be great if there were more Christmassy stalls. This would help further differentiate it from some of the other markets we have in Sheffield through the year.

It would also benefit from more local suppliers selling more local products. Sheffield people love buying Sheffield stuff, so to get some of our local food, arts, crafts on sale would be great. It would also make it more uniquely Sheffield instead of a generic Christmas market that you could find a bigger and currently better version of elsewhere, for example in Manchester and Leeds.

One problem with these events in Sheffield is that we don’t seem to have a perfect location for them. The Peace gardens is very prominent, but it does seem a bit cramped in there. The same goes for Fargate – probably our busiest shopping street, but gets horrible bottlenecks when the continental market is on.

One thought would be to host it in the big area they have just flattened where the fire station was. This may a better use of space than another car park until Sevenstone arrives.

There’s no doubt that the current market can be improved. A great Christmas market for Sheffield will take time to establish; we obviously aren’t going to go from nothing to one rivalling others in a couple of years.

What do you think? Has it been a success? Is it the sort of place you would take visitors? And what is it missing? Comment below and your thoughts will be fed back to the organisers.

Not such a perfect day for the leader of Sheffield city council

The original of this video was hastily removed this morning, although Sheffield politics has preserved a copy and uploaded it again:

Paul explained on Twitter that it is an internal training video.

Does this pave the way for excavated Sheffield castle ruins and park? Or just Leeds-style crap office blocks?

This morning it was announced that the Minister for tourism and heritage has decided not to list Castle market building.

This news means that in theory the major stumbling block to the Castlegate part of the 2008 city centre masterplan has been removed.

The masterplan outlined a vision for the excavation of Sheffield castle ruins, which are under the present market building, and the creation of a park in the vicinity. This would be an important part of of the regeneration of the Castlegate and Victoria quays area.

The debate about whether or not it should be listed has gone on for a few months now. Some people see the old markets as a eyesore in an already run down area and would be glad to see it gone.

Others see the 1960s building as an example of what makes Sheffield different to other northern cities. They argue that it is a unique place where working class people come to shop that has been neglected over the years, which should be kept in the heart of the city.

On the radio tonight a councillor said that archaeologists would be given time to investigate the ruins of the castle to see what can be made of them. But in a recession is it possible that the masterplan proposals would never be realised anyway?

The author of the blog posts linked to above, Owen Hatherley, has said in reaction to the announcement that the remains of the market are dull and that ‘there will be no park, just a wasteland that will eventually be filled, in the extremely unlikely event the economy picks up, with Leeds-style crap office blocks.’

What do you think? Should we demolish the market building now it will not be listed and hope that the masterplan comes to fruition? Or does it have a social value and architectural merit that we need to retain?

An outdoor amphitheatre for Sheffield

It seems that work has started on Sheaf valley park on the hill behind the station.

Possible plans for the park include the design below, which shows an amphitheatre carved out of the hillside.

The project will be completed in phases as and when the money becomes available. The good news is that it seems the amphitheatre is included in the first phase:

Earth will be moved to form a level space for events, with a series of seating terraces above where people can enjoy views of Sheffield city centre and beyond

I really like the idea of an outdoor performance area and seating that looks back across the city skyline. It could look spectacular on a summer evening with the sun setting over the hills opposite and provide a perfect backdrop for live theatre or musical performances…just as long as the trains aren’t too noisy.

Sheaf valley park - image from mp4-interreg.eu

A vision for the next 10 years

Politicians and city leaders are meeting tomorrow to debate Sheffield’s future:

The Sheffield First Partnership Leadership Summit will take place on 3rd September at the city centre St Paul’s Mercure Hotel, and will be attended by a coalition government minister, Council Leader Paul Scriven and Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council, John Mothersole, and the Rt Hon David Blunkett MP.

A broad reaching public consultation undertaken earlier this year revealed how the people of Sheffield viewed their city and will directly inform the debate to determine the 2010-20 city strategy.

Early research into the findings suggests that improving public transport, the positive cultural diversity, maintaining the ‘green city’ reputation and continuing the ongoing regeneration are among the recurring topics and these will be the among the issues that will be discussed.

Does anyone remember taking part in the consultation?

It’ll be interesting to see what they’ve got in store for Sheffield and find out what the priorities are for improving the city over the next decade.

Tramlines 2010

23-25 July 2010

Our biggest musical weekend of the year, Sheffield music city, will soon be upon us. And the main part of that weekend will once again be the Tramlines festival.

Last year’s Tramlines was really good. The atmosphere around town was pretty special and even if you aren’t a music fan, it is worth popping down the the city centre over the weekend just to get a feel for what is going on.

As well as the big acts on the main stage, there are lots of smaller events happening at venues all over the city. The great thing is that it is a free festival and you do not need tickets for  events. You may have to queue up to get in to some venues or areas, but I think the plan is to have a one-in-one-out policy this year.

There have been various announcements regarding the line-up, and apparently there will be more news about who is playing on Monday.

For now, I’ve listed some of the information sources for the latest festival information:

www.tramlines.org.uk
Tramlines website. Should include full listings

www.facebook.com/Tramlines
Facebook page for Tramlines festival

twitter.com/tramlines
Twitter feed for main Tramlines festival

www.hallamfm.co.uk/article.asp?id=1812447
Hallam FM Tramlines page. Hallam FM is helping organise acts for the main stage

http://twitter.com/hallamfm
Hallam FM Twitter account

www.myspace.com/tramlines
Tramlines MySpace page

www.last.fm/user/tramlines
Tramlines Last.fm page

www.youtube.com/tramlinesfestival
Tramlines YouTube channel

www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=83262808158
Sheffield music city Facebook group – doesn’t seem to be updated much though

www.eventsheffield.co.uk
Sheffield music city/Tramlines listing on Event Sheffield website

Anyone know if they are producing a paper brochure/programme this year?

A reminder of last year’s festival: