Studio Work

Year: 2022-23

Tutor: Carolyn Butterworth

In partnership with: CG Partnership, Ritetrax, Yorkshire Artspace   

This year Studio in Residence worked in Castlegate - Sheffield’s original city centre and once home to markets, steelworks, theatres, slaughterhouses, and one of the largest castles in mediaeval England. At the heart of Castlegate is a large demolition site scattered with the crushed remnants of the 1950s Castle Markets.

Below these fragments of concrete, tile, terrazzo, glass and formica lies 7m of deposits that read, layer by layer, as a cross-section of the story of Sheffield - the rise and fall of the Castle; the shift from agrarian to industrial production, first driven by water, then by coal; the 19th century densification of the city; the optimism of 20th century modernism. Yet, missing from this record are the complex stories of diverse communities trading,socialising, working, protesting, playing and shopping together - against a backdrop of social upheaval, industrial revolution, migrancy, empire and environmental depletion. 

Castlegate is changing again, a new chapter is being written - according to the masterplan a new public space will soon be created, revealing the Castle remains, opening up the river, welcoming community use and hosting cultural events. And then, new buildings will be developed and existing buildings will be repurposed, their functions yet unknown. And yet, if, as Hilary Mantel states, history is not the past, this masterplan is not the future.

This studio worked collaboratively with an aim to tell richer stories of Castlegate’s past, present and future - raising hidden voices, valorising everyday lived experiences and creating new social and environmental imaginaries. For the last two years Live Works has been facilitating a co-production process with Sheffield City Council, community groups, independent businesses and arts organisations to build local capacity and raise aspirations towards an inclusive, vibrant and sustainable future for Castlegate. This Studio worked ‘in-residence’ with these stakeholders to develop speculative design proposals that informed this process directly. We used this ‘live’ context to stand against gentrification and be active campaigners for zero-carbon design,regenerative landscapes, collective governance and a decolonial approach to art, architecture and heritage.   

Year: 2020-21

Tutor: Carolyn Butterworth

In partnership with:  Sheffield Climate Alliance

Sheffield is a city that loves to tell stories of itself: ‘The Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire’, ‘Music City’, ‘DIY City’, ‘City on the Move’, ‘City of Makers’ and, of course, ‘Steel City’. Sometimes utopian dreams, sometimes marketing messages, often a bit of both, these stories are mythologies that can bring citizens together with a sense of purpose and identity. This year Studio in Residence worked with local people to co-create a new collective story of Sheffield as it moves away from its carbon-centred past and faces the challenges of the climate emergency.

Drawing on the radical history of Sheffield and more contemporary campaigns for equality and systemic change, the studio’s work embodies an ethos of climate justice and explores how our city can respond to the climate emergency through care, creativity and hope. The projects range from temporary to permanent, grass-roots to civic and offer facilities for inclusive arts, life-long education, story-telling, care services, local economies, food production, protest and citizens’ assembly. Together the 11 speculative projects form a collective studio vision for a distributed network of Climate Action Centres across Sheffield city centre, all focussed on creating new knowledge and mobilising action towards a zero-carbon future.

Year: 2019-20

Tutor: Carolyn Butterworth

In collaboration with: Aalfy, Brightbox

Sheffield was built on industry and craft, it has ‘making’ in its blood. This industrial legacy, along with cheap studio space and a strong DIY culture have, for decades, sustained a large community of makers and craftspeople in Sheffield. After many years on the sidelines, Sheffield makers are now back at the heart of the Sheffield story, as the city brands itself the ‘City of Makers’ and draws deeply on its heritage of industry and craft to sell itself to visitors, new residents and investors.

This year Studio in Residence explored the capacity of ‘making’ in Sheffield to engage, empower and collectivise citizens, of all ages, genders and ethnicities, in the production of their city. The emergent projects critiqued how ‘making’ has been co-opted as a tool for urban gentrification and proposed alternate visions that celebrate ‘making’ as a social practice that can transform our city from the bottom up. In residence at Live Works, we collaborated on-site with community makerspaces and arts organisations to explore the creative potential of making simultaneously at 1:1 and at city scale.

Year: 2018-19

Tutor: Carolyn Butterworth

In partnership with:  Pitsmoor Adventure Playground

This year Studio in Residence explored the capacity of play in Sheffield to engage, educate and empower citizens, of all ages, in the future of their city.

Play is an essential part of the human experience, a form of expression that engages the imagination, brings people together and fosters a healthy society. Play, however, is under threat – technology, traffic and lack of urban space limit children in the free, open-ended play that is so important for their development. For adults also, the growing precarity of employment, the blurred lines between work and leisure and, not least, the societal expectations of being a ‘grown-up’ make it increasingly difficult to play.

These projects explored the opportunities that play brings to architecture as an activist design research method, imbuing socially engaged projects with the experimentation, fun and risk-taking that playfulness demands. Projects were exhibited in Burngreave Library, in Dessau as part of the Bauhaus 100 celebrations, and in Spital Hill Tesco. 

Year: 2016-17

Tutor: Carolyn Butterworth

In partnership with:  Yorkshire Artspace

This year’s studio focussed on developing the outputs of the ‘Revealing the Castle’ Live Project with the Friends of Sheffield Castle into complex and ambitious design proposals for the whole of Castlegate with connections to the rest of the city beyond. 

Projects ranged from ‘simple’ pop-ups, to temporary event structures, adaptable architectures and large permanent buildings. They explored the social, cultural and economic possibilities of arts-led regeneration, collaborating with Yorkshire Artspace, key stakeholders in the area, to face the challenges of the future with optimism, playfulness and ingenuity. 

Year: 2015-16

Tutor: Carolyn Butterworth

In partnership with: Poly-technic Arts

Through the year the studio collaborated with artists on site, using techniques from installation and relational art, to reveal potentialities of place and dream up challenging, site-specific projects. Our main collaborators, artists ‘The Poly-Technic’, state “the simple stories they tell us don’t make sense anymore” – we agree, and with them, aimed to tell much richer and more diverse stories. 

Our premise for this year was to reimagine Castlegate as a city within a city. Using China Mieville’s weird fiction masterpiece ‘The City and the City’ as a touchstone, we conceived of Castlegate as an-‘other’ city centre for Sheffield, countering the intentions of the official City Centre Masterplan. This new city will serve specifically the northern diverse communities of Burngreave and Pitsmoor, currently disconnected from Sheffield’s existing city centre. Themes of hybridity, liminality, edges and thresholds will be explored through cultural, civic, residential, industrial, retail and infrastructure projects.

Year: 2014-15

Tutor: Carolyn Butterworth and Ellen Page

In partnership with:  Ruskin in Sheffield

In 2014-15 the studio partnered with Ruskin in Sheffield, an arts programme celebrating the work of John Ruskin, the hugely influential Victorian artist, writer and social reformer. Students were asked to explore the contemporary relevance of Ruskin’s theories of art, craft and society to imagine sustainable social, environmental and economic futures. 

Ruskin left Sheffield a valuable legacy through his work with the craftsmen and artists of the city and the studio formed a similar intimate relationship with Castlegate, a part of the city centre undergoing drastic change that has become epitomised by the demolition of its largest and best known building, Castle Market.