Place, Craft, and Alcohol in Historical Perspective
Exploring Artisanal Brewing and Distilling in Sheffield, Past and Present
Alcohol has played a unique role in the life of cites, shaping their development, growth, and identity. The recent emergence of ‘craft’ to describe commercial alcohol enterprises outside or against large-scale economic production is no different.
Place, Craft, and Alcohol, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is exploring what ‘craft’ has done for the history and future of the northern, post-industrial city of Sheffield. As a key centre of the ‘craft revolution’ since the 1990s, the relationship between Sheffield and alcohol goes back much further, setting the stage for a new ethos of alcohol production that’s flourishing today.
We're exploring how the creation of ‘micro-breweries’, artisanal distilleries, and places of alcohol consumption as important fixtures in urban environments and economies, along with a burgeoning taste for 'craft' alcohol among consumers, is changing Sheffield. Understanding how this trend fits within the deeper story of Sheffield is key to thinking about how the city can, or should, align itself with such an asset.
Key questions 🔎
'Craft’ is a notoriously slippery and contested concept. We're comparing how different individuals and groups with an interest in urban intoxicant economies – as producers, retailers, consumers, regulators, and planners – understand ‘craft’ in relation to the production, retail, and consumption of alcohol.
We're identifying and mapping the history and current topography of craft alcohol, from when Sheffield came to prominence, to the recent explosion of ‘craft’ as a self-identifying term for producers and retailers. This will be used to provide a resource for assessing its impact, for marketing craft alcohol to current and potential consumers, and for linking to programmes of regional regeneration and growth.
By adopting a long historical perspective, we're comparing the craft alcohol movement with other historical moments when the production and consumption of psychoactive substances underwent transformations, not least with the industrialization of beer and gin production from the seventeenth century onwards. The ramifications of the contemporary ‘craft revolution’ might be as significant for urban space today as those processes that transformed Britain’s intoxicant economy in this earlier era, previously explored by our sister project Intoxicating Spaces.
Component projects
We're pursuing these questions through four approches designed to create resources for producers and consumers, opinion and policy makers, and the general public. Outputs will be freely and publicly available via this website and other related platforms.
Maps and trails 🗺️
Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and methods from the digital humanities, we're mapping the topography of craft alcohol production, retail, and consumption in contemporary Sheffield, working with specialists in the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, and relating this informaion to the city’s complex social demography and highly variegated neighbourhoods. In tandem, we're visualising the historical geography of fermented and distilled alcohols in the city, utilising the rich resources of Sheffield City Archives, to create interactive maps and digital trails.
Oral testimonies 🎤
Via a series of in-depth interviews with producers, retailers, publicans, consumers, and enthusiasts involved in Sheffield’s craft alcohol movement, as well as residents and locals, we're working with the University of Sheffield’s Witness Project to survey views, ideas, and opinions on the city’s artisan brewing and distilling scene.
Artistic responses 🎨
Just as the painter William Hogarth provided one of the most memorable responses to changes in the alcohol economy during the eighteenth century (in the 1751 prints Gin Lane and Beer Street), so we've commissioned three young Sheffield artists – Jessica Heywood, Maria Marinou, and Wemmy Ogunyankin – to create pieces of work inspired by the city’s craft alcohol movement. Rather than offering pastiches of Hogarth, their contemporary interpretations will offer unique and original responses through different media and forms. These will be shown as a digital exhibition online, but also at several alcohol-related establishments across Sheffield in 2025.
Podcasts 🎧
We're working with audio producer Julia Letts of Letts Talk to create a series of podcasts on moments that alcohol changed the world. Reflecting on the ways in which alcohol has transformed society over time, the series will touch on questions of community, commerce, globalisation, industrialisation, and health, amongst other themes. Podcasts will be available online via several platforms.
Core team
Professor Phil Withington
Phil is a historian at the University of Sheffield with research interests in the history of intoxicants and intoxication and the history of urbanism and urbanisation. He is also committed to bringing the past into dialogue with the present to address contemporary social challenges, and is interested in historical and anthropological methods that integrate the voices and perspectives of different social actors into interpretations of societies both past and present.
Dr Nick Groat
Nick is an archaeologist at the University of Sheffield researching the impact of technolgical practices and systems on society, with a focus on alcohol in prehistory and the ancient world. He also studies the values of the craft alcohol movement, with expertise in historical and contemporary alcohol production. His research combines established archaeological methods in material analysis and surveying, with approaches adopted from anthropology and ethnography.
Partners
We're proud to be working with a large number of external partners from the public, private, and third sectors.
Get involved!
If you have a perspective to share or would like to get involved in the project in any way, please contact us at
