ReMake Castlegate

A public engagement project as part of Festival of the Mind, based at Yorkshire Artspace Exchange Place Studios. Visitors were invited to build their own ‘dream Castlegate’ and share their memories, stories and hopes for the future of the area. 

September 2014 / Sheffield / in partnership with Yorkshire Artspace and Festival of the Mind

ReMake Castlegate was a project about Castlegate…in Castlegate. Visitors, local residents, shoppers, students and artists worked together over the 10 days of the Festival of the Mind to produce a ‘dream’ model of a future Castlegate. 

In 2014 Castlegate was changing rapidly. The markets had closed and were soon to be demolished, revealing the Castle and making way for a new city quarter. The project engaged directly with the people that this transition will affect, the people who live and work in Castlegate and its surrounding neighbourhoods, and also attracted a wider audience interested in the transformation of this area of the city.

Based at Yorkshire Artspace’s Exchange Studios, we worked together on a 1:200 base model that stretched from The Wicker to the High Street, with Castlegate at its centre. Through the course of the Festival of the Mind we worked with people to make models of existing and future buildings for the model, while collecting stories, memories and opinions about the area.

The model accumulated a collage of many different materials, proposals and ideas, including, a Wicker Arch made of wicker, a day-glo Park Hill, the ghost of Castle Market and an eternal playground. Castlegate, and the city around, was remade by many hands to reveal its diversity, idiosyncrasies and rich layers of meaning…capturing what has been lost, what is there now and what might be…

This project became instrumental in visualising possible futures for Castlegate that are created, debated and shared by many people; local citizens, artists and academics. ReMake Castlegate kickstarted a co-production process between Live Works, Castlegate and its communities that lasts to this day. 

See more Castlegate Co-production projects here