In many ways Inside the Circle of Fire is a very personal map: this is a route through Sheffield decided on by Chris and which, along the way, exposes his own loves – most notably for rivers and for birdsong. ‘From the periphery of Sheffield up on Blackamoor, with the birds and the wind and the rain, the piece follows the rivers – an important aspect of Sheffield – down through the hills, valleys, and woodland, and ends up underneath Sheffield Station in the Megatron. Along the way it weaves all over the place – into Forgemasters, Kelham Island, Hillsborough, Bramall Lane, and Fargate’.
Chris’s own recordings are mixed in with around twenty clips submitted by people across Sheffield, of journeys to work, children playing, and – creating a particularly memorable moment of serenity – chanting at Sheffield Buddhist Centre. In this way, the map becomes personal to a lot of people. Its the map’s ‘key signature sounds’, as Chris calls them, that really make it feel as though its something the whole of Sheffield can share: that’s our town hall’s clock striking, and those are the voices from our market.
Day-to-day, it can be easy to become immune to some degree to the sounds of the city; that previously mentioned one o’clock siren probably gets away with barely being questioned, or even noticed, on most days. By composing a track out of such sounds, Chris enables certain features that make Sheffield distinct to become more discernible, and lays the paths to these features open for a more perceptive exploration. ‘Once you strip away much of the traffic noise, which is the homogenous element that makes most European cities sound the same, and once you go to a place and you don’t just hear but you actively listen – which is quite a creative function – then you can start to hear the real voice of the city’.
Chris Watson will give an illustrated talk on Inside the Circle of Fire at SensoriaPro (Friday 27 September, 10am, Electric Works).
Also in the festival’s programme is a screening of the silent film Underground (1928) with a new score by Watson (Sunday 29 September, 2pm, Showroom Cinema) – blown away at a young age by the potential he discovered in ‘musique concrète’ (musical compositions built from found sounds), in particular by Pierre Schaeffer’s ‘Etude aux Chemins de Fer’, Watson delighted in this opportunity to soundtrack a story set in the Underground: ‘There’s clearly music in the sound of the railways, in the rhythm of the rails’.
Inside the Circle of Fire runs at Millennium Gallery until 23 February 2014.
www.chriswatson.net
In one of Tom J. Newell’s comic strips, dating back a few years now, an illustrated incarnation of Stevie Nicks makes one simple demand: she wants some fun superhero action, and she wants it delivered in short comicstrip format. Tom’s pen responds, with a series of quick, four-frame tales, whose heroes include Carol Vorderman – at a time when she still reigned supreme at Countdown – and an envisioning of a teenage Jesus. With its musical and popular culture reference points, and a good smattering of both the surreal and the absurd, perhaps the description of this retrospective example of Tom’s work may offer some indication of the way in which his imagination works…
In the late 2000s, Tom made a name for himself in Sheffield, Leeds, and London, with his poster illustrations for gigs by the likes of Slow Club, Jeffrey Lewis, MF Doom, and Daniel Johnston. Tom’s work took a nautical direction for some time, with his ‘Good Ship Sheffield’ print in 2009, his work as part of the Dead Sea Mob collective, and his large-scale murals for Kraken Rum, with their writhing and menacing tentacled creatures from the deep.
Whether human or animal, or a bit of both, it’s Tom’s twisted take on characterisation that makes his work so distinct: living skulls, freakish hybrid creatures, piercing third eyes, intricately-patterned bodies – drawn, for the most part, in black, with white backdrop and texturing.
For the duration of Doc/Fest this June, Tom set up his easel in the Showroom bar, where passers-by watched his unflinching focus and unwavering precision turn canvases into pink, black and white, almost stained glass window-style portraits, for the films Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, The Act of Killing, and The Big Melt. Other recent work has seen Tom make a return to gig posters, with an ace – if utterly terrifying – illustration for Shonen Knife at Queens Social Club in September, and collaborate on the first issue of Pick ‘n’ Mix, a zine produced by The Old Sweet Shop.
Sweet Demons, an exhibition of Tom’s drawings, paintings, and prints – both old and new – has been covering the walls of The Old Sweet Shop since the beginning of June. It will be relaunched – pop ‘n’ crisps party-style! – on Saturday 1st August, and extended to incorporate work produced by kids at ‘Make Your Own Monster’ workshops, held by Tom and Artfelt for patients at Sheffield Children’s Hospital.
How would you describe your work?
Awkwardly and with a distinct lack of eloquence.. but I think it may have been described by others as ‘low-brow’ at one time or another. I’ve done comic book stuff, gig posters, gallery shows, large-scale murals, and drawings that have been used by tattoo artists, but it’s sort of a bit of all these things and none of them from day-to-day, depending on the project.
What inspires you?
Getting out of the studio, cycling around and going to record shops, book shops, and taking in some of the details in between. I just saw a window frame on the church near my house that is going to form the basic composition of something I’m working on.
What are you currently working on?
Today, I’m drawing something for The North and Yorkshire Tee that will be used for a new t-shirt for the Japanese restaurant, WasabiSabi. Nick Deakin drew the last one for them, which was great, so it’s good to have to rise to the challenge.
I’m also doing some art workshops with patients of Sheffield Children’s Hospital, making ‘Monster Magnets’ inspired by the work I did recently for mySweet Demons show at The Old Sweet Shop. We’re going to relaunch the show on Saturday 3rd August with the kids’ work exhibited alongside mine.
Oh, and I’m continuing to slowly work on a flipbook, frame-by-frame, for one of my favourite musicians…
What’s your desk or workspace like?
It’s great! For a long time I used to just work on the kitchen table, but since we moved back to Sheffield I’ve got a whole spare room to myself with a big drawing board, surrounded by stuff.
What do you love about Sheffield?
The novelty of feeling like you’re travelling in front of an infinite-looped Scooby-Doo background made up of Greggs and Subways soon wears pretty thin, so anything and anyone who break up that monotonous landscape are going to ensure the city’s personality shines through.
What would you do to improve the city?
I’m not sure how much of an improvement it’ll make, but I’ll just continue to draw things, exhibit work, play records to people, and support and promote all of the other creative stuff that my friends are doing.
Sweet Demons will be relaunched with Monster Magnets, an exhibition of children’s work produced with Tom, at The Old Sweet Shop, Nether Edge, on Saturday 3rd August, 1 – 3pm. Both exhibitions run until 31st August.
Pick ‘n’ Mix Issue One, a 32-page, full-colour zine is on sale at The Old Sweet Shop, Rare ‘n’ Racy, and online (limited to 1000 copies).
tomjnewell.com
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
It took a year for Ezra Pound to write the above poem, ‘In a Station of the Metro’ (1912-1913). That makes it twenty-six days for each word. Of course, nobody writes at so consistent a pace. Pound started off with thirty lines, and it was by repeatedly returning to his original idea, editing, and starting over, that he came to the two-line, fourteen-word piece.
Inspired by and in collaboration with the poets H.D. and Richard Aldington, Pound founded the Imagist movement. Its manifesto declared that every word should count towards creating a single image, without any excess of language: the aim was to capture images, through words, with the precision of a painter.
The Imagist approach to creativity loosely inspired (we’re told that the operative word here is ‘loosely’) 65daysofstatic in a new audio-visual project, to be held at the Millennium Gallery over the Tramlines weekend.
The Stars Band released their first album, We Are Stars – We Think Differently, this May. Its title nicely sums up the band’s positive ethos: with a range of learning difficulties, each of its members really does think differently, but together they accept this difference and celebrate their sparkling individuality.
Most of the Stars’ fourteen members were newcomers to making music when they started out playing together a few years ago. Through workshops held byUnder the Stars, who also put on popular club nights across South Yorkshire for people with learning difficulties and their friends, they’ve built on their musical abilities as well as, crucially, their confidence.
Many adults are in a position to take for granted the ease with which they can exert control over their identities and actions, and their ability to freely exercise self-expression. The same opportunities aren’t always open to people with learning difficulties. As well as being fun, that’s where a social enterprise like Under the Stars holds such value: by putting each member in a position of control, whether it be assisting in organising club nights, DJing, or writing songs for an album, they go some way towards removing barriers. Under the Stars creates space for self-expression, communication, and collaboration, so that everyone may be given the chance to develop on their own terms, and reach their potential according to their own standards.
The Stars Band haven’t been short of backing from fellow musicians in Sheffield. We Are Stars – We Think Differently was supported by Toddla T,Warp, and music industry accountants Brown McLeod, while DJs at its launch party included Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware, I Monster, and Pipes. The album was put together with the band’s teachers, Chris Morris and Mooney Wainwright, acting as producers. Limited edition CDs, with a beautiful sleeve designed by Peter & Paul, are on sale at Balance on Division Street, and the album can be downloaded from iTunes. Among its original tracks, it includes covers of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ and Heaven 17’s ‘Fascist Groove Thang’.
Ahead of their performance at Tramlines, we spoke to the Stars’ keyboardist, Carl Worth, and Under the Stars staff, Ruth and Mooney.
How did The Stars first come together?
The band formed two and a half years ago, having met through the weekly music workshops that Under the Stars run.
What inspires the band?
Fame and Glory! To make great music. And to stick together.
With so many band members, how do you keep everyone happy?
Negotiation, meeting in the middle, and agreeing to differ at times.
The workshops are organised so that we can give everyone a chance to express themselves, and to try out and play different instruments. The latest thing we are working on is an electronic music workshop project. The band are loving experimenting with iPads and all the different sounds and noises.
What do you love about Sheffield?
Heaven 17! I love living here and being in a band.
The band’s favourite things about Sheffield are the people, the creativity, and the music.
What would you do to improve the city?
I’d change things for people with disabilities we’d have a big venue and music studio of our own.
After your Tramlines performance, what do you plan on doing next?
Start writing new songs and working on new material. We want to promote the album nationally and play a real big gig in London.
www.underthestars.org.uk
www.soundcloud.com/thestarsband
Tiny black specks on vast white expanses, swirling together around empty focal points or arranged in concentrated clusters, scattering out towards the edges. In her monochrome embroideries, the artist Roanna Wells substitutes people with stitches and, in doing so, offers us stunning, and often dramatic, new perspectives on human gatherings.
Using aerial photographs of large-scale gatherings as her starting point, Roanna then deconstructs these images, doing away with everything – the built environment as well as natural structures – except the human.
To look at Roanna’s embroideries is to be left in a state of wonder, at how relatively tiny and indistinguishable we each are when seen from the air, as well as at the impact we may have on our landscape – politically, socially, and aesthetically – by connecting with others.
How would you describe your work?
I describe myself as a fine artist using graphical stitch. I’ve always been reluctant to use the phrase ‘textile artist’ as I feel this brings up so many preconceived ideas about the medium, so I definitely place myself within the fine art world and the context of contemporary drawing. My work uses the mark-making quality of hand embroidery to depict detailed aspects of imagery and pattern.
What inspires you?
I’m both technically and conceptually inspired as an artist, having produced work which is either purely process led and abstract and that which has a deeper sense of context either socially or politically. My most recent series of works, entitled ‘Interpersonal Spatial Arrangements’, depict abstract representations of individual human forms within crowds as seen from above. Inspiration for these are not only taken from the geographical context and current topical relevance of the image, but also the aesthetic composition of the emerging patterns.
What are you currently working on?
I am currently working on a huge embroidery which will be part of the Jerwood Makers Open 2013, a funding opportunity to produce new work for an exhibition at the Jerwood Space in London in July.
This financial support allowed me to travel to India and commission specific aerial photography over the Kumbh Mela religious gathering in February this year. It is the world’s largest gathering of people and attracted over 60 million pilgrims to bathe in the Ganges over the month-long festival. My work for the Jerwood Makers will depict the crowd that gathered on the most auspicious bathing day.
What’s your desk or workspace like?
I have a studio at S1 Artspace and it is on the side of the building that receives the most wonderful afternoon and evening sunlight. It’s a beautiful space that provides me a little creative haven to mix with other artists and make work. My process is very time consuming, so the light and comfort of my studio space is very important.
What do you love about Sheffield?
Apart from my three years at Manchester School of Art, I have lived in Sheffield all my life and I feel so content and inspired here. The geographic nature of the city means that, even in the middle of the town centre, you feel constantly connected to the beautiful surrounding countryside just over the hill.
There is a reassuring sense of space, distance, and possibility here. I thrive on variety, and I feel that Sheffield provides a brilliant combination of vibrant ‘goings-on’, accessibility to cultural nourishment, and the space and sense of community to feel settled and at home.
What would you do to improve the city?
More places to sit and have a drink that get the evening sun in the summer. A rooftop bar for all day round sunshine would be perfect!
www.roannawells.co.uk
(Originally published on Our Favourite Places)
When Harmony Korine promoted Spring Breakers, his recent film of teenage rebellion, with an image of a young woman in a bright pink balaclava (setting aside the bikini…) he called the parallels it drew to Pussy Riot an ‘awesome coincidence’. Nonetheless, it’s an image that had come to have a particular resonance, in the space of a year, as a symbol of resistance to repression.
In February 2012, five members of Pussy Riot performed their ‘Punk Prayer’ in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Their lyrics urged the Virgin Mary to embrace a feminist attitude, drive Putin – and all the gender and social inequality he stands for – out of Russia, and cut the harmful ties between his political system and the Russian Orthodox Church. Three of the women – Katia, Masha, and Nadia – were convicted of ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’ and given two-year sentences in penal colonies, though Katia was released on probation last October.
Their trial and subsequent unjust treatment received worldwide attention, with Pussy Riot finding vocal supporters in the music community – notably Patti Smith, Björk, and Jarvis Cocker. Meanwhile, their look became so iconographic that a ten-year-old in the UK can point at a picture of a woman in a luminous balaclava and say ‘Pussy Riot’. No mean feat for a Russian dissident, feminist art group.
Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin, co-directors of Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer, spent six months putting together their profile of the group. The film offers an insight into the troubling interconnection between the Russian Church and state, which motivated the women and at the same time gave rise to their condemnation in their own country by those who misconstrued their aims and took offence to their actions.
We spoke to Mike ahead of the film’s opening night slot at Doc/Fest this Wednesday.
What does it mean to you to open this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest with the UK premiere of A Punk Prayer?
I have spent many happy years at Sheff Doc/Fest – which as everyone knows is the best documentary festival in the world. It has always been an ambition of mine to have the opening film here so, as you can imagine, Wednesday is going to be a big night for us all at Roast Beef Productions.
Your film includes footage from within the courtroom and interviews with the group and their families. Did you face any obstacles bringing this film into being?
It was easier than you might think. We had journalistic accreditation so we could film everything we wanted. And we had Max [who is Russian-American] schmoozing the parents, so they soon decided to help us and contribute to the film. Pussy Riot themselves were very keen to work with us from the start, and I think understood that we were serious about telling their story to the world.
Do you think Pussy Riot could have foreseen the outcome when they entered the Cathedral, and has all that ensued become incorporated into the political performance first started there?
I don’t think anyone could have predicted what happened once Pussy Riot were drawn into this incredible and surreal story of their trial, conviction and imprisonment for the performance of a 40-second musical number in the Cathedral. However, once they found themselves in such a position, they very cleverly and bravely used the situation to further their political and artistic ambitions. They certainly did not intend to offend any religious people – in fact their act and their protest is very much pro-religion; they are trying to point out the moral inconsistencies and gender inequalities that the Orthodox Church represents, in order to encourage it to be a much fairer and morally just institution.
How intrinsic to their work is their instantly-recognisable ‘pop’ image? Did anything change when their image became humanised during the trial?
Pussy Riot are artists, so their image and the imagery they create is central to their revolutionary technique. It’s also central to their ideals that Pussy Riot is a non-hierarchical and anonymous group, so once Nadia, Masha and Katya were ‘revealed’ it’s arguable that they are no longer technically members of Pussy Riot – of course they are, but I don’t know how they would describe their membership now.
Pussy Riot have held firmly to not being a commercial venture, saying they’ve no desire to perform legal concerts alongside famous musicians who’ve supported them. Are they being capitalised on by others nonetheless?
It’s certainly true that many others have attempted to cash in on what Pussy Riot have achieved. But I don’t think that affects their own ambitions in any way. They are still totally committed to the non-commercial exploitation of their work and strongly defend their political independence. I think the exploitation of their work by others is evidence of how successful their artistic and political vision has been.
They’ve made reference to Riot Grrrl, quoted from past Russian dissidents… which other movements do Pussy Riot’s ideas align with?
They are supportive of all feminists and anyone who is striving to make Russia, and indeed anywhere else in the world, a more equal and morally just place for women and members of the LGBT community. And they certainly do identify very strongly with the many dissidents and artists who have also attempted to challenge the state and argue for justice.
Nadia has said she hopes Pussy Riot will inspire other groups to rise up in similar ways. Has what they started gained any momentum in Russia?
The impact of Pussy Riot on Russian society is huge. But it is subconscious. Many are afraid of following their lead, with the risk it has of imprisonment and harassment (indeed new blasphemy laws were introduced a couple of weeks ago which will make this form of protest even more risky). But in the long term they have changed the consciousness of an entire generation of young Russians – many of whom I am certain will be inspired to find new ways to bring social justice and greater gender equality to their society. Mark my words, Masha will be president of Russia one day!
Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer will be screened on Wednesday 12th June at 20:30, and Saturday 15th at 18:15. Following Wednesday’s screening there’ll be a live Q&A with Mike, Maxim, and – over Skype – Katia.
http://sheffdocfest.com/films/show/5333
(interview written for the Our Favourite Places Doc/Fest Special: www.ourfaveplaces.co.uk)
Emptying the Skies, 15th June, 20.30 and 16th June 15.30
Ambelopoulia is Cypriot a dish made of tiny, pickled songbirds. Just the thought of seeing that on a plate is repellent enough, but the poaching of migratory songbirds is criminal offence in Europe. The American author Jonathan Franzen wrote an essay about the issue for the New Yorker in 2010, and here it forms the basis for a film following the work of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter in Cyprus and Malta.
Jonathan Franzen will, quite amazingly, be in Sheffield for a Q&A after each screening.
http://sheffdocfest.com/films/show/5503
The Man Whose Mind Exploded, 13th June, 15.45 (with Q&A) and 15th June, 10.30
Drako Zarhazar doesn’t remember that there’s a documentary being filmed about him. He struggles to remember exactly who Toby Amies – the director who, over the course of filming, became his friend – is. Amies’ film gives an insight into the realities of living with anterograde amnesia, as well as the life of Drako, a distinctive and good-humoured character.
http://sheffdocfest.com/films/show/5461
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (screened with Burden of Dreams), 13th June, 22.00
Werner Herzog’s not one to shy away from making setting challenges for himself and others. In 1974 he started walking from Paris to Munich with the aim that, by doing so, he could keep his seriously ill friend, the film historian Lotte Eisner, from dying ( – beautifully recounted in his book Of Walking in Ice). And in 1970, after two actors’ lucky escapes from accidents during filming for Even Dwarfs Started Small, he promised to jump into a cactus patch if everyone made it through alive.
In the short film, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Les Blank documents the fulfilment of another of Herzog’s promises: that, should Errol Morris ever complete his film, he would eat his shoe. Like some of the best of Herzog’s work, it’s ludicrous but inspirational stuff.
http://sheffdocfest.com/events/view/3061
(written for the Our Favourite Places Doc/Fest Special)
The Devil’s Arse. Based on name alone, it’s not exactly the most inviting of destinations. But an aversion to potty humour shouldn’t put anyone off. Just approach the entrance to the cave, formally named Peak Cavern, and any inklings of bad taste will quickly dissolve.
The cave gets its flatulent nickname thanks to the noise of drainage that can be heard emanating from within at certain times. The name was supposedly primmed up in 1880 when Queen Victoria was coming to town, with Peak Cavern being thought more suitable for a regal port of call.
Locals once used the cave as a shelter to make ropes for the local lead mines, and outlaws used it as a hideout, but the Devil’s Arse has recently assumed a modern purpose – as a live music venue. To date, it’s most notable for having hosted Richard Hawley’s 2008 Christmas gig. And on Doc/Fest’s opening night, the cave will act as cinema for a one-off screening of The Summit.
The Summit, screened in association with Sheffield Adventure Film Festival, tells the story of one day’s events on K2 – ‘the world’s most dangerous mountain’. On 1st August 2008, eleven people, from different international expeditions, died while attempting to tackle the arduous climb to the top of what is often referred to as the Savage Mountain.
The Devil’s Arse will provide the backdrop to a film about an outdoors pursuit of the most extreme kind, its rocky and chilly surroundings a fitting local location to marvel at nature in all its beauty, as well as its potential savagery.
The film screening will start at 9pm on Wednesday 12th June, with tours around the cave being carried out beforehand. It’s recommended that anyone coming wraps up warm!
www.sheffdocfest.com/view/screeninginacave
www.peakcavern.co.uk
(written for the Our Favourite Places Doc/Fest Special)
Sheffield Doc/Fest has reached twenty! It’s old enough to now legally drink in Iceland, Japan, and Paraguay! Here’s to Doc/Fest!
Over the past twenty years, a whole lot has changed both in the world and in the means available to us to document it. Sheffield International Documentary Festival has been there at each step: showcasing innovative storytelling, bringing remarkable characters and international affairs to the screen, and leading the debate on new media and technology. From the rise of docu-soaps and controversies over fakery in the late ‘90s, through the dawn and decline of Big Brother, and the advent of broadband in the early ‘00s, and on into today’s proliferation of mobile apps and phone-made films – there’s been no shortage of topics for discussion around the state of documentary filmmaking in these twenty years.
At that time, it was the only documentary festival in the UK. Now, it’s one of the most important in the world and yet, with delegate numbers reaching around 3,000, Doc/Fest has managed to keep a friendly feel and its film programme continues to attract a local audience. Doc/Fest board member and film producer Colin Pons has been involved since the first festival. He puts much of its recent growth down to its director, Heather Croall – who he says gave Doc/Fest a ‘shot in the arm’ when she started in 2006 – and its programmer, Hussain Currimbhoy. Since 2006, the MeetMarket initiative has offered filmmakers unique access to funders, whilst the festival has become known for its fun side, throwing after-parties for delegates to toast to new deals or screening sellouts. Doc/Fest has handled its swelling capacity by seeking venues beyond the Showroom Workstation – including the Library Theatre, Queens Social Club, and, this year, even a cave – and, in doing so, offered something a little different to its attendees.
Colin has some great tales to tell about Doc/Fest’s past – one about a certain director’s stipulation that someone find him a particular brand of chewing gum before he’d take to the stage, for example; and another about a famous boxer who turned up with a whole entourage for a Muhammad Ali documentary. But Doc/Fest is all about looking to the future: anticipating what’s around the corner, shedding light on pertinent issues, reflecting the society and politics of the age whilst, at the same time, pushing back the frontiers of filmmaking.
To mark Doc/Fest Twenty – running this Wednesday to Sunday – we’re dedicating OFP’s first online special to the festival. So have a look through all our recommendations for films, food, and associated fun this week.
And here’s to another twenty years of Doc/Fest!
www.sheffdocfest.com
(written for the Our Favourite Places Doc/Fest Special)
‘Imagine global co-operation for a global problem. Imagine corals as the barometer of climate change. Imagine we are the pivot point. Imagine rekindling Venus’.
Some of the world’s most powerful nations are at odds with one another, scientists the world over are looking beyond Earth for answers, and intellectuals are questioning abuses of power they see around them; this all holds true today, but it applied a few hundred years ago, too. And Lynette Wallworth, creator of the video installation Coral: Rekindling Venus, hopes we can learn a lesson or two from drawing parallels with the past – specifically, by looking back to one event in particular: the transit of Venus in 1761.
In 1761, at the peak of the Age of Enlightenment and in the midst of the Seven Years War, scientists everywhere were looking to the sky in anticipation of this rarest of occurrences. The British astronomer Edmond Halley had proposed the ambitious theory that by timing the transit of Venus from various points on Earth, it may be possible to calculate our distance from the Sun, and from that determine the scale of the whole solar system. Halley would not live to see the 1761 transit, and so his theory would have to be taken up by the next generation of astronomers and would, crucially, require global cooperation if it was to prove at all constructive. Conflicting nations put aside their disputes to make way for scientists, with their latest telescopic gadgets, to observe the event from prime locations. Data from the respective expeditions was combined and, though not as precise as Halley had hoped, allowed for far more informed estimations to be made with regards to figuring out our place in the universe.
This precedent for unity in the international scientific community is what Lynette alludes to in Coral: Rekindling Venus. Just as Venus was used as a planetary measuring device three hundred years ago, so too can the evolution of the world’s endangered corals be gauged today, to teach us about the impact humans and climate change are having on the natural environment. Like the planets and stars are interconnected in our Solar System, the corals are part of a balanced and complex structure. Their well-being affects that of surrounding finned and shelled creatures, as well as our shorelines and sources of our food and medicine. The corals can also, critically, act as a sort of living museum, their markings exhibiting the effects of the oceans’ increased acidity and the changes in their condition over long expanses of time.
We’re used to seeing fulldome screens in planetariums, where it’s easy to lose ourselves in the countless glinting arrangements of stars and the dance of distant planets. Lynette chose to produce her film in fulldome format and, in doing so, has reconfigured the purpose of this type of screen, with just as immersive a result. She directs our attention not outwards, but down, deep, deep into the darkest and most curious reaches of our own planet where – with psychedelic patterns, neon-lit stripes, and waving tentacular growths – life can, in fact, often give the impression of belonging to another world entirely. By surrounding the audience with the unique colours and beauty of the corals in a frameless expanse, the film’s impact has the potential to go far beyond any that could be afforded within the rectangular confines of conventional nature documentary. The emotive level of the film’s visuals – captured with cinematographer David Hannan – is matched by its soundtrack, featuring Max Richter, Antony and the Johnsons, Tanya Tagaq Gillis (known for her collaborations with Björk), and Fennesz & Sakamoto.
If the worldwide community of astronomers uniting to take on Halley’s work in the 18th century was a ‘pivot point’ in the progress of knowledge, then Lynette Wallworth hopes that, by together looking at climate change, today can be another. Coral: Rekindling Venus is here to offer us a perspective, and to help us appreciate and care about the depths of our natural world.
Coral: Rekindling Venus is 25 minutes long and will run continuously from 10:00 to 17:00 on a fulldome screen set up in the Winter Gardens, 12th-16th June. Screenings are free, though tickets with allocated slots will be issued at times of high demand.
www.coralrekindlingvenus.com
www.sheffdocfest.com/films/show/5541
(written for Our Favourite Places Doc/Fest Special - www.ourfaveplaces.co.uk)
A whole lot’s changed since the folk about town spoke of Harry Brearley in so jeering a manner.
From unremarkable beginnings – starting out at the steelworks at the age of twelve, one of several siblings from a fairly poor family – Harry Brearley went on to produce what is widely accepted to have been the first ever batch of stainless steel. And it all happened in an electric furnace, in Sheffield, some time in August 1913. Now, a hundred years on, the Sheffielder behind the discovery is being celebrated in a large scale public art commission.
It was whilst working in the research laboratories for Firth & Brown Steels, carrying out tests for non-corrosive metals to use in armaments, that Brearley made the discovery of what, at first, he called ‘rustless steel’. Elsewhere, others were also making headway, with speculation and research into the beneficial properties of chromium-containing steel. The crucial and lasting significance of Bearley’s breakthrough, however, is that he was unwavering in his conviction of stainless steel’s practical potential in the mass production of cutlery and domestic implements.
Brearley’s bosses at the labs were less convinced. Somewhat ignorantly and half-heartedly they commissioned tests but, getting the temperature or the procedure slightly off, found stainless steel too hard to forge knife edges out of (hence Brearley being given the above epithet). Ernest Stuart, at R. F. Mosley’s cutlery company in Portland Works, however, was a man furnished with more foresight: together, he and Brearley adapted the process, made test batches of knives that successfully cut, and in 1914 – under the charming moniker ‘Rusnorstain’ – became the world’s first manufacturer of stainless steel cutlery.
It barely needs pointing out that the ongoing impact of Brearley’s discovery can be seen daily: from the saucepans that boil breakfast eggs, to the razorblades that keep beards kempt – stainless steel products are integral to the lives of many of us. At a grander scale, it has made for such aesthetic structural feats as holding up the glass panelling of the Louvre pyramid. The countless ways we put to use the strength, durability, and shining beauty of stainless steel are currently being celebrated across Sheffield, with a series of events throughout its centenary year.
To acknowledge the contribution he made to forming the mark Sheffield has made on the world, Marketing Sheffield and the 100 Club commissioned a fittingly vast portrait of Harry Brearley: a whole 42 feet of tribute. On the side of the Howard Hotel, the mural was painted by local street artist, Faunagraphic, known for turning street-side walls around the city into her canvas, with organic and colourful scenes of birds and bloom. Faunagraphic has created an icon out of Brearley, putting a face to a name that is now getting a well-deserved celebration. Video producer and artist Richard Bolam spent the week with his tripod set up in front of the painting in action. His fantastic timelapse video brings into motion the long and careful process of creating such large-scale, public works of art.
Anyone heading from the town centre to catch a train will see the mural just before leaving the city. Hopefully, if you pass by it, you’ll take with you an appreciation both for a discovery that, in many ways, changed the way we live, and for the underdog who brought it to us.
‘There are only so many cups of coffee you can drink waiting for a 12 hour operation to end. I read the same page of a book again and again. And in that moment you just exist. It’s a very tough time.’
These words accompany a portrait of parents Rachel and Andy Marriott, taken at Sheffield Children’s Hospital by Shaun Bloodworth. What they recount is just one of a multitude of experiences of the hospital documented in You’re Not Alone, currently on the walls of the Workstation and the waiting rooms at Sheffield train station. Originally displayed in the hospital’s Long Gallery, the exhibition is the work of local photographers Shaun Bloodworth, Andy Brown and Richard Hanson. In the autumn of 2011 they were given full access to the hospital – its wards, prep rooms, record offices, and reception desks – and took on the task of illuminating aspects of its operation that, more often than not, go unobserved.
In his series, ‘The Waiting Room’, Shaun Bloodworth endeavours to capture that moment of ‘just existing’ that the Marriotts describe: the in-between time, at the point that separates the child’s sickness and health. Expressionless and preoccupied with their thoughts, siblings patiently sit on hospital chairs and parents gaze out of windows, whilst others distract themselves at vending machines or with cups of tea. With their overwhelming impression of silence and stillness – as time is suspended and all of life’s other concerns temporarily on hiatus – they’re a beautiful, and arresting, collection of portraits. And, being positioned in the railway station, they naturally provoke reflection by those passing time in a whole other kind of waiting.
In some contrast to the calmness of ‘The Waiting Room’, Richard Hanson’s projects are full of motion. The non-stop bustle of A&E – stretchers coming and going and attentive crowds gathering and dispersing – is captured in a 24-hour timelapse, while his photographs of staff – blue washes of hospital uniforms against clean white backdrops – bring to life their tireless pride and dedication. At the same time, he allows patients to speak for themselves by handing the camera over to Eden, a teenager at the Becton Centre for Children and Young People, whose pictures offer a heartwarming glimpse into another sense of community shared in the hospital.
Dwarfed by monitors and the grown-ups around them, human life rarely looked so delicate as in the shots of newborns taken by Andy Brown in the neonatal surgical unit. Somewhere between the tubes of life support machines and the fittings of over-sized incubator beds, the odd teddy bear is propped amidst the starkness of this black and white series. They’re a reminder of the state of reliance of these miniature people, who we’re used to seeing photographed in simpler, more homely surroundings. Andy’s endearing series of tooth extraction before-and-after shots similarly show kids in conditions of vulnerability, though at an age where they’re able to put on a brave face, despite being spaced-out on anesthesics.
Over the past few years Artfelt, with funding from the Children’s Hospital Charity, have commissioned artists to add a little colour and liveliness to the walls of Sheffield Children’s Hospital. Through exhibitions in the hospital’s Long Gallery, they’ve offered visitors something on which to direct their attention at a time when they’re perhaps most in need of a distraction and some degree of respite. In doing so, they raise the experience of the hospital out of the confines of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, and, by now bringingYou’re Not Alone to the public, they’ll no doubt extend that shared sense of hope and reassurance to others.
You’re Not Alone is at The Workstation (Monday to Friday) and Sheffield Station’s waiting rooms until 1st June.
Edwardian DJ; Edison enthusiast; entertainer; storyteller; and niche record label proprietor. Meet Duncan Miller, your host for an evening of mind expansion and imagination aerobics.
Since we’re talking science and invention, it seems only right to introduce Duncan in the language of the laboratory: he’s a test tube overspilling with ideas; an electric dynamo whirring enthusiastically for all things innovation. His shows and storytelling sessions with Random Acts events company bring bygone times and scientific curiosities to life, and his interactive exhibits can be found in museums the world over - from Eureka! to Bangkok Science Centre. Meanwhile, Duncan’s record label, Vulcan Records, is one of just two existent companies to produce wax cylinder records. Wax cylinders marked the beginnings of the record industry when they were created in the 1880s for that newfangled sound device, the mechanical phonograph - according to Duncan, Edison’s favourite amongst his inventions. An original phonograph and a host of other props will assist Duncan in demonstrating the secrets behind well-known creations - and hopefully ignite some ‘lightbulb moments’ amongst the audience.
To be an inventor requires more than a certain level of genius: it takes the right combination of intelligence, experiment, dedication, and the requisite conditions - plus, in many cases, a fortuitous helping of serendipity. Accident; necessity; design - open the book of invention and you’ll find a history made up largely of these three processes. Some inventors have sought answers to particular questions only to inadvertently happen upon something else new, with an altogether different use. A specific context - like war or an epidemic – has, at times, necessitated efforts to find an innovative solution to an arising problem and created circumstances favourable to invention. Human intuition, in other cases, has led an individual to identify a need or desire, imagine a way of fulfilling it, and set out with a sense of purpose to bring that into being. As these three case studies show, however, any one invention may be seen to comprise a certain degree of each accident, necessity, and design.
ACCIDENT: Perkin’s Purple and the democratisation of the fashion industry
The year was 1856. British troops in India were suffering from exposure to malaria. Quinine was known for its remedial effect on the tropical disease, and since that was only found in the Cinchona tree of South America and Indonesia, research into artificially producing it was a priority. In an East London lab, 18-year-old chemistry student William Perkin was carrying out an experiment to that end; something went wrong, and his shirt ended up covered in muck. That muck stained his shirt purple, and thus Perkin inadvertently discovered the world’s first synthetic dye, in a shade he called mauveine - or mauve, for short. Prior to Perkin’s discovery, achieving this shade was only possible by extracting it from hauls of Mediterranean shellfish - unsurprisingly, then, it was restricted to being worn only by those with aristocratic bags full of riches.
Factories could churn out this artificial colour - and the many others that were soon to follow - on a scale of mass production never before seen in the fashion industry. As a result, everyday clothes became cheaper and, perhaps for the first time, people from any class of society could afford to be fashionable. In 1859 Charles Dickens wrote in his All The Year Round journal, ‘As I look out of my window, the apotheosis of Perkins's purple seems at hand – purple hands wave from open carriages – purple hands shake each other at street doors – purple hands threaten each other from opposite sides of the street; purple-striped gowns cram barouches, jam up cabs, throng steamers, fill railway stations: all flying countryward, like so many migrating birds of purple Paradise’.
Now, all these years later, Perkin’s legacy of artificial dyes is being put to use in his original field of research, towards finding a vaccine against malaria.
NECESSITY: Synthetic Rubber - helping drive the U.S. to victory in 1945
In the run-up to their involvement in World War II, the United States recognised that rubber would be crucial to their efforts to engage in modern warfare - from the wheels of their tanks to the soles of their squadron’s shoes, this material was a necessity to their army. Embargoes and Axis blockades meant, however, that natural rubber - up to that point sourced largely from Asia - was inaccessible to much of Europe and the United States. The U.S. had to find a way of quickly and cost-effectively synthesising their own rubber, in mass quantities - something that, though possible, had not been necessitated up to that point.
The U.S. government launched a major - and largely secret - programme, working with private enterprises and academic experts towards the shared objective of producing a general purpose synthetic rubber for the benefit of nation. By the end of the war, over fifty factories were producing synthetic rubber in the United States, to a scale twice as large as that of pre-war natural rubber production.
DESIGN: The Electric Starter - doing its bit for drivers’ equality since 1912
Henry Ford was responsible, in the early 1900s, for bringing the motor car out of the domain of the rich and making it affordable to the masses, thanks to his famous assembly line production of the Ford Model T. He was also, inadvertently, the namesake responsible for the the proliferation of the ‘Ford Fracture’; cars were started by applying a great deal of muscle to a hand crank, a volatile device that frequently kicked back to cause broken arms, or worse. Henry Leland - founder of Cadillac - was prompted to prioritise making cars easier and safer for everyone to use when a close friend was killed by a backfiring crank. He enlisted innovative engineer Charles Kettering to invent an electric engine starter that worked smoothly at the push of a button. Debuting with the 1912 Cadillac Touring Edition, by 1920 the electric starter had became standard.
Cadillac’s innovative spirit transferred into its advertising. Before the electric starter, the driver’s seat was considered off limits to anyone without a certain degree of brawn – including those with some physical handicap, as well as, in most cases, women. Cadillac’s new adverts featured images of fashionable young women commanding their brilliant machines with ease, no longer merely passengers or bystanders in a man’s world of motoring.
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From a young age people are taught how to carry out empirical testing and analysis, both of which are important to invention. But Duncan sees a lack of room in our education system for the kind of creative thinking that primes the mind to see inventive responses to unforeseen circumstances. ‘Chance favours the prepared mind’ is how the great - and at times accidental - innovator and founder of microbiology Louis Pasteur put it in the late nineteenth century; it’s through thinking differently and being receptive to a little deviation from expectation that so many new creations are brought into being.
‘I don't know what the next big thing is, but perhaps somebody in the audience is about to invent it - with a little nudge from us!’ says Duncan - adding, with a wink as well as a nudge, the stipulation that ‘all royalties and patent proceeds will be split equally’. Even if the next Edison doesn’t raise their hand and reveal themselves perched in the lecture theatre, by the time Duncan has finished everyone will leave with a deeper understanding of the history and processes of invention, and an imagination primed to turn problems into innovations.
Duncan Miller’s ‘Invention by Accident, Necessity, or Design?’ is free and suitable for all ages. It will take place at 7pm on Thursday 21st March in the Peak Lecture Theatre in Sheffield Hallam University’s City Campus. To reserve a seat, email [email protected] or call 0114 225 4870.
From SE, a free publication produced by Article Works in association with the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University’s Festival of Science and Engineering, March 2013. SE can be found across the city in cafes, libraries, and university buildings.
Sports engineering isn’t a topic that crops up with particular frequency in general conversation. But in any instance when it does get mentioned, a common response is one of ignorance - albeit mixed with curiosity - as to what the discipline actually is.
There’s a huge sporting culture - fairly obviously - in this country; from the roars rebounding off the roof of Hillsborough Stadium’s Kop on a Saturday afternoon to the adrenalised hordes awaiting the next round at a Sheffield Steel Rollergirls bout, there’s testament enough to that just at local level. But the extent of public knowledge and interest is disproportionate when it comes to the research, technology and innovation behind the sporty scenes. Interest in athletes and the high-achievers of various games is spurred on by media coverage, but since developments and innovations in sports engineering less regularly enter public discourse at large, many people have little or no concept of what it may mean to be a sports engineer.
Centre for Sports Engineering Research
The weighting of a golf training putter; the aerodynamics of a swimsuit; the nuances in design of shuttlecocks optimised for indoor or for outdoor use; the interactions between tennis shoe and playing surface; the software of elite sports coaching tools. These are some of the areas of meticulous analysis and experimentation that the team of specialist engineers and researchers at Sheffield Hallam University’s Centre for Sports Engineering Research (CSER) dedicate their energies to.
Coming from a range of backgrounds - mechanical engineering, biomechanics, physics, or even mathematics - these academics bring their respective skills to bear specifically on the world of sport. Whilst sports scientists focus on muscle contractions, blood flow and oxygen intake, sports engineers are more concerned with how an athlete interacts with the external: their equipment, environment, and their fellow competitor.
Now world-renowned for its expertise, the CSER was first established in 1996 by Professor Steve Haake as a research group at the University of Sheffield. The Centre moved to Hallam in 2006, becoming formalised as a research centre in 2010. The CSER works in close consultation with sports bodies, like UK Sport and such distinguished international clients as Adidas, to develop knowledge and increase understanding of the sports environment, and to push the boundaries of technology, equipment, and performance.
Just as important as research and consultation to the CSER is education, and the Centre is a great advocate for public engagement. In 2011 the team brought art and science together with the interactive Sports Lab exhibition, installed at Weston Park Museum and subsequently the V&A Museum of Childhood. Further, through its work with schools and colleges, the CSER opens discussions on the ethics of their work and aims to challenge negative preconceptions about engineering and science.
Challenging preconceptions
Representing the CSER is Christina King. Behind her lengthy job title - Business Development and Commercialisation Manager - Christina’s work involves developing opportunities for research and consultancy across the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing.
Even Christina didn’t exactly know what sports engineering was before she came to work in what she describes as this ‘quite niche field’. Her background lies in mechanical engineering; in some contrast to the image of an oil-smeared man sweating away in a garage - an old stereotype that she says still often endures - Christina first paved a career in defence, batch-testing Challenger 2 tanks, before turning her hand to consultancy. The skills she developed in the broad subject of mechanical engineering are transferable from one sector to another and, after completing an MBA, helped her land her current role at the CSER. Christina is keen to demonstrate that a career in technology doesn’t have to be on the pure engineering side. ‘I want to encourage people to think about different paths and to not limit their options. Just because you study engineering, you can go on to do something more business-orientated like I did; you still need to have that technology background’.
Knowledge revolution
As far as a field that only officially became recognised in the late-1990s can be attributed a tradition, in recent years the more ‘traditional’ areas of sports engineering - like product design, biomechanics - have been superseded by research into performance analysis systems.
In the past it has been more about the materials. The 1980s saw innovations in the use of aluminium and carbon-fibre composites in areas such as aerospace and construction being adopted by the world of sport in improving equipment design. There’ll always be new research to be conducted when it comes to manipulating materials, but in some recent cases ingenuity and understanding has got to such a level that the innovation has overtaken the sport. The Speedo LZR Racer is a prime example of science and technology eclipsing human endeavour; Michael Phelps even claimed it made him 'feel like a rocket', and Ryan Lochte admitted to delusions of superherodom whilst wearing it. This intimidating little number was of such hi-tech construction that those wearing it broke an overwhelming number of records at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games: it was subsequently banned on the grounds that it made the competition less about the athletes' physical performance.
So, if the training apparatus is in place to prime the athlete’s physique, and the equipment and attire optimised to the highest permissible level, what’s the next frontier in competitive sports? The answer: knowledge.
In the run-up to London 2012, sports engineers at the CSER pioneered integrated systems that allow for the automated collection and analysis of performance data. Working with elite sports coaches to understand exactly what kind of information is useful, they developed database software that allows the athlete to gain greater understanding of their own game as well as that of their opponent. These innovations bring about a new side to the athlete’s training: that of the intelligence, rather than the purely physical.
iBoxer
Developed by Steve Haake and Simon Goodwill and funded by UK Sport and Sheffield Hallam University, iBoxer is one such development in the domain of knowledge. The software was used by GB Boxing (the team that brought home three golds, one silver, and one bronze medal) in preparing for London 2012, and works thus:
Cameras and 3D sensors are set up around the boxing training ring, a birds-eye camera above. The coach can instantly access and review footage on a ringside touchscreen monitor. Information relating to over 20,000 international boxers and data from their bouts - including judges’ scores, the number of punches thrown, the distances travelled around the ring - are all stored on a database. Both coach and boxer can access, compare, and share this data and footage through a simple app interface on their smartphone or tablet.
Video equipment, apps...it all seems fairly accessible and relatively simple in terms of technology. But the innovation lies in its use. Certainly, video analysis has long been utilised across countless sports, but this development is about making the information more readily and easily obtainable. This way, the coach can concentrate on applying it to their job, and the boxer can immediately receive and interact with feedback on their performance while it’s fresh in their mind.
Achieving podium potential is a holistic process; it requires the right combination of genes, access to equipment, proper nutrition, requisite funding, and unwavering dedication to the sweat and toil of physical training. But by incorporating such performance analysis software into their routine, an athlete can aim to learn faster than their opposition and, by reaching a deeper understanding of both themselves and their opponents in specific conditions, gain an advantage. Put simply, that advantage is the ability to enter a competition with the confidence of a prepared mind as well as a prepared body.
Ethical questions
Is technology akin to ‘doping’ in giving our teams an unfair advantage? Or is innovation necessary to drive others forward? Can state-funded research into sports ever be justified if not every country competing can afford the same? Is there such a thing as ‘natural’ sporting talent these days? Should teams be allowed to create technology purely for their own use, or should equipment be standardised?
These are just some of the questions that abound when it comes to the ethics behind modern sports engineering. The UK has the infrastructure and systems in place to fund and support sport at both community and professional level, and with that arises debate over its responsibilities to poorer countries when it comes to international games. As technological and biomedical advancements make the 'bionic athlete' a less fantastical notion, consideration has to be taken with regards to where the boundaries lie.
The team at the CSER don't shy away from engaging with these discussions, and their role as sports engineers comes with the responsibility of anticipating the consequences of their innovations. Though technology is extremely important, ultimately sport is about the spectacle of humans achieving magnificent feats; and in their work they never want to undermine that.
The future
Following the CSER's successes with Team GB in 2012, Christina hopes to see the engineers upholding that momentum. Much of their current work is confidential, but she points out that they expect a demand to rise for bespoke performance analysis software in the run-up to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
‘We need to continue pushing boundaries, keep the excitement going. At the end of the day, people want to see records broken'.
Christina King’s ‘The Engineering Behind the Medals’ will take place at 10am on 15th March, at Adsetts Lecture Theatre Room 6619 in Sheffield Hallam University’s City Campus. The talk is free. To reserve a seat, email [email protected] or call 0114 225 4870.
From SE, a free publication produced by Article Works in association with the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University’s Festival of Science and Engineering, March 2013.
As well as researching and writing content, I was Copyeditor for this publication.
Without so much as a treasure map to hand or an 'X-marks-the-spot' in sight, in 1994 a pair of construction workers uncovered a veritable trove of twentieth century filmic jewels, tucked away in the cellar of a demolition site in Blackburn. What they'd chanced upon were over 800 actuality (early non-fiction) film negatives from the very early twentieth century, shot around the industrial north of England by motion picture pioneers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon.
The British Film Institute have since preserved the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection, working alongside the University of Sheffield's National Fairground Archive to research and catalogue the films. Well-known for their rescores of silent cinema, Klive and Nigel Humberstone of Sheffield-based electronic band In The Nursery were brought in to compose music to accompany the collection. The films display unprecedented footage of Edwardian England going about its everyday activities: common folk crowding down city centre pavements - women in broad brimmed hats, men in flat caps or bowlers, giving the occasional wave to the camera - working in collieries, or catching the trams. A film of the latter particularly captured the interest of Klive and Nigel - specifically, of an electric tram ride through Sheffield from 1902, a time when it appears trams were only a very marginally faster alternative to walking.
In the Tracks of Memory sees the two brothers working in collaboration with Brendan Stone, leader of the University's Storying Sheffield project, David Forrest, his colleague from the School of English, and Alex Keegan, a filmmaker and recent graduate of the University. It’s a unique audio-visual piece, in which shots from the Mitchell and Kenyon film are intercut with ones of Sheffield tramway journeys from the 1950s and 60s, and with Alex's footage of the current Supertram network. The film is overlaid with their original atmospheric musical compositions and fragments of collected oral accounts of the areas covered by the trams and the journeys taken, to make for an abstract historical document of this city's public transport.
Having left behind an unequalled amount of footage of Edwardian northern towns, Mitchell and Kenyon, though first and foremost commercial filmmakers, were great social documentarists of their time. Upon watching an early programme of similar actuality shorts by the Lumière brothers, the Russian author Maxim Gorky in 1896 disdainfully said of film that 'It is not life but its shadow, it is not motion but its soundless spectre.' But, if anything, such films have ensured that the lives and stories on screen aren't left to fade in the shadows of memory; far from spectral, people of a world so distant in time appear human, while places rarely recollected come to life.
From such social documentation can be assembled histories of specific places, lives can be contextualised. The work of the School of English’s Storying Sheffield project has, for the past two years, produced a similar effect, creating pieces of art, writing and film that help bring about greater coherence of present selves and circumstances in relation to their environment. By reaching out to the wider community, accessing its stories and considering the spaces in which they play out, the project's students create honest representations of everyday lives, in some way inextricably bound up with their being in Sheffield. Brendan and David's involvement in In The Tracks of Memory thus expands on their project, forming links with creative minds in the city in order to retrieve and innovatively document certain of its stories.
Footage of Sheffield’s trams up to 1960, when the original network was closed, reveals much about the changes to the face of the city over time. Trams then were beautifully sculpted double-deckers, glossed in cream and with strips of azure blue, that glided along the city and out into its seven hills. They’d pass in front of the Town Hall, by where is now the Peace Gardens, head down a pre Greggs-lined Moor, and straight on into London Road. This was before the Moorfoot Building, that red brick pyramid formation that looks less like it was built and more as if it landed there, blocked the Moor from London Road. The fortress of a structure incorporates a walkway between the two streets, but it’s gates are always locked; essentially it cuts London Road off from being a part of the city centre.
Plenty more can be read objectively of the changes to the Sheffield’s physical identity from the footage of tram journeys incorporated in the project. But by arranging these in interaction with anecdotal recordings of the same areas, it becomes clear the extent to which our concepts of specific areas are formed through memory and individual experience. Though they’re mostly brief and understated, the accounts collectively make for a profound, fragmented narrative of a place - recollections of Sharrow Festival, an immigrant’s feeling of being welcomed by the city, a local shopkeeper’s hopes for the economy to pick up.
This Festival of the Mind project reveals the power of memory, the potential to bring something to bear on the present purely through the act of honest recollection. The Mitchell and Kenyon films have shown that there’s a real joy to be found in the past of our cities being made visible within a contemporary frame of reference. Based on this, it seems only right that to strive to capture a multitude of present experiences, places, and lives - in both their immediacy and their memories - and find unique ways to represent their stories that will enlighten, educate, and entertain the future.
From Misc., a publication produced by Article in association with the University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind, September 2012.
As well as researching and writing content, I was Copyeditor for this publication.
There's something a little sad about the general town or city's tourism information office today. Lonesome they often sit, perhaps an annex within a public library or transport station, just waiting, wide-eyed in anticipation. There's no doubt that they're fully capable of carrying out their worthy task - replete as they are with bus timetables, local hard-boiled sweets, and leaflets containing hyphen-bordered coupons to be snipped out and taken to the nearest dungeons/otter sanctuary/ruined fortress in return for a third off entrance fee. The thing is, despite being this patient and prepared, for the large part tourism offices are so easy to overlook these days that they're often just plain empty of people. Chances are if you're planning a day trip you'll scout for offers for the standard attractions online beforehand, and trust the smartdevice in the palm of your hand to navigate you there.
Particularly in a place like Sheffield, that lacks such mainstays of larger tourist industries as waxwork celebs and amateur dramatic reconfigurations of Viking life, the tourism office is ripe for a reimagining. And there's nobody more capable of taking on that task than Sheffield Publicity Department, a 'dream tourist agency’ for the city, who for the past three years have existed with the sole purpose of showing people in Sheffield - visitors and residents alike - the real attractions of the city. They're interested in the countless places worth discovering divorced from notions of a grand day out, the things that make Sheffield really unique. Whether they be breathtaking views into the leafy distances beyond the high-rises that are met by following their free maps to places like Pye Bank, or the building (then a nightclub, now a bank) in which Phil Oakey recruited two dancing school-girls for his band the Human League, pictured in their recent Sheffield Music City guidebook - Sheffield Publicity Department bloody love this city, in ways at the same time both straightforward and complex, and are here quite simply to pass on the affection.
Working with the School of Architecture, Sheffield Publicity Department have built a temporary tourism information office to encourage us to rethink how a city represents itself; this kiosk isn't a building in stasis, but is a changeable construction that across the festival's ten days will deliver free talks and walks, and showcase the cream of Sheffield's musicians, artists, writers, and food producers. The base of the structure is a shipping container, remarkable enough in itself; but what's really special is that everything that folds and spills out, every beam that props up produce or panel that frames information, is made out of reclaimed material gathered across Sheffield by the team of 'skiprats'. And the whole process, from a skipmap of the city, through photos of salvaged shelving, to posts on inspirational projects and learning how to build such a construct, has been blogged along the way at http://www.arrivalszone.info/.
Operating as it does from the forecourt of Sheffield Station, the Arrivals Zone occupies this space with a purpose. Sheffield Publicity Department have taken the time to give real attention to their city, they care about aspects of Sheffield that evade even being noticed by many and don't shy away from showing off their passion. Through this interactive and inspirational construct, they'll point residents in new directions, open their eyes and ears to things they may somehow have missed, or perhaps they'll simply rekindle or recontextualise some Sheffielders' old love for the place. Visitors, they'll catch you soon after you’re off the train platforms. And beware: you may not ever want to leave.
From Misc., a publication produced by Article in association with the University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind, September 2012.
If a dubstep version of Top Trumps ever existed, there's a decent chance a majority of photos in the deck would be straight out of the lens of Shaun Bloodworth. In the public eye, he's identified first and foremost with electronic music, in particular with that aforementioned strand. It's a scene for which he essentially assumed the capacity of official photographer, with shots of such spearheads as Mary Anne Hobbs stepping into focus from shadowy recesses or against stark, grey concrete skylines. Perhaps less well known is that he's also been photographer for the University of Sheffield’s prospectus for the past six years, working with its marketing department to capture the colourful delight of students in their work and social environments.
Treading, as he does, with his tripod from department to department, Shaun has developed a unique relationship with the University. Few social sciences students will have seen what they've got photosynthesising up in the towers of plant sciences, and it’s doubtful that many humanities professors could imagine the trials that are carried out within the walls of aerospace engineering. Shaun gets to see it all, on the surface at least - things that most of the University's students and academics don't, let alone members of the public.
From this vantage point, the engineers, whose forward-thinking research is so far removed from the traditional 'grease and cogs' notion of what their field is, have filled him with a particular amazement and intrigue. This series of project-portraits taken across the whole of the engineering department for Festival of the Mind is, then, an extension of his work with the University, though with personal rather than commercial intent.
Shaun’s aim is to ‘get people to have pride about what's happening in the city again, to leave people with a sense of civic pride and to destroy cynicism.’ What he’s referring to in the latter is that ‘bloody students’ outlook, the one that sees some people in the city identifying university-goers with little more than body-painted crawls down West Street on a school night or over-zealous opponents at local pub quizzes - for the large part simply because they don’t know and don’t get to see much else of what they’re up to.
For many in Sheffield, a sense of civic pride was once located in what was dug out in the coalfields or oxidised in Bessemer converters across the city's industrial sites. But what with the decline in the coal and steel industries, since the late part of the twentieth century there's been no obvious replacement to which Sheffielders can attach themselves and feel a collective sense of ownership and pride.
But civic pride and some notion of collective identity clearly has a continuing importance to many of Sheffield's public. The recent dazzling scenes of a city springing to life in golden hues to celebrate the homecoming of Jessica Ennis are testament enough to this. The public collectively claimed ownership over their city's Olympian star, having shared in her every step, leap and toss at the Olympic Park, in front of big screens in the city, or at home from their settees. But when it comes to industry, Sheffield's public is more silent and, it seems, unsure of themselves today. By giving the hard work, trials and successes that are happening across the Faculty of Engineering a public platform, Shaun Bloodworth hopes this can change for the better.
It may seem that Sheffield has become distanced from its history of manufacturing and industry, but it’s a heritage that is very much breathing - just less conspicuously than it was in days of billowing furnaces and men blackened by coal returning home of an evening. On campus and off, in the sprawling out-of-city complexes at the Advanced Manufacturing Park and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, the University's engineering students rely on the expertise and skills of those who worked down pits and in foundries before redundancy came knocking. They may be tucked away, testing out how best to develop knife handles to assist the elderly in chopping up their potatoes, or carrying out large-scale experiments too secretive to unveil for massive companies like Boeing or Rolls Royce. Rather than being seen as belonging to the University, as though that is some entity disconnected to the public, their place in Sheffield’s industrial and manufacturing lineage should be embraced. After all, these are projects that have real, tangible effects on the future of lives, all of ours.
As for the identity of the engineers themselves, Shaun is keen to point out that traditional stereotypes are outdated. Yes, a large part of the faculty continues to be made up of men. But that’s changing, and there are now plenty of women, particularly working in additive manufacturing (that’s 3D printing). By asking us to rethink our conceptions of engineering, to bring them up to date, and to make room for them in our notions of civic pride, this project has the potential to widen our sense of the city we’re in.
Quite simply, Shaun Bloodworth wants to share his sense of awe, make seen what tends to be unseen, and visualise that which is, to most of us, unimaginable. As he puts it, this project in documentation is 'an opening of closed doors.’
‘It's just a case of letting people know what's going on and that they should be proud of all this research happening in their city.’
To see more of Shaun’s photography, go to http://www.shaunbloodworth.com/
From Misc., a publication produced by Article in association with the University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind, September 2012.
