A timeline produced by Live Works for the Castlegate Futures Urban Room in November 2022, showing how co-production has been developing in Castlegate since 2014. 

Castlegate is the historic birthplace of Sheffield, located at the confluence of the Rivers Don and Sheaf. This now dilapidated area of the city centre was once a bustling home to 800 years of market trading, theatres, industry and one of the largest mediaeval castles in England, demolished in 1650. 

Since 2014, students, graduates and academics from the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield have been co-producing design work and participatory research with community groups, local independent businesses, public-sector institutions, Sheffield City Council and colleagues from the City, Culture and Public Engagement office and the Departments of Archaeology and Computer Science, to develop an ambitious shared vision for the future development of the area. 

This co-production process is envisioning, campaigning for and supporting the development of a new neighbourhood, accessible to all, that celebrates the rich heritage and social history of Castlegate while creating a viable sustainable future.

The School of Architecture, through its project office Live Works, is acting as an effective mediator between grassroots and the local authority, helping to build capacity towards meaningful co-production at all scales. Our students’ creative engagement activities, research and design ideas have been instrumental in building a vision, shared by all partners, to deliver an ambitious, community-driven, socially, economically and environmentally sustainable new city quarter.

This digital index brings together for the first time all the work that students and academics at the School of Architecture have produced for Castlegate over the last decade.