Fifteen new community projects have been awarded Heritage Lottery funding with support from the University of Sheffield.
Researching Community Heritage was devised by the University to support the Heritage Lottery Fund’s All Our Stories grant scheme, which provides grants of between £3,000-£10,000 to groups who want to plan activities that help them explore, share and celebrate their heritage.
The team worked with over thirty community groups and organisations to develop proposals for the scheme, providing support for the application process and ongoing academic support for the proposed research.
Successful proposals ranged from a project researching Sheffield as the home of football to helping homeless and vulnerable young people in Sheffield research their family history. Academics from the University of Sheffield’s departments of history, archaeology and English will work with the projects throughout.
The Bengali Women’s Support group were helped to devise a project exploring the rich musical heritage of
South Yorkshire’s Bangladeshi and Indian communities through collecting songs and memories of these communities.
The Sheffield Irish Association will document the arrival of the Irish in Sheffield, particularly the area round St Vincent’s Church known as Little Ireland, with events and resources to celebrate the Irish community in the city. Digging Deep under the Cemetery will see Friends of Burngreave Cemetery explore the heritage of the site at Pitsmoor focussing on the lives of the mining community who lived around the cemetery.
St Mary’s Community Centre will train women from three different ethnic minorities to record, interpret and present their heritage using digital photography and audio s, producing a DVD and exhibition of their findings.
A project hoping to engage residents of all ages into researching the part played by JG Graves in their local area will focus on Four Greens. The land is well used by local children but it also subject to antisocial behaviour and it is hoped that the project will increase the community’s sense of pride and ownership of the area.
Homeless charity Roundabout will support homeless and vulnerable young people housed in St Barnabas Road, a row of large Georgian Houses in the Highfield area of Sheffield. The participants will explore the history of the houses they live in, research their own family history since the Eighteenth Century and find out how attitudes towards vulnerable people and minority groups have changed since then.
Manor Memories will unite different sections of Sheffield’s historic manor area to explore and record its past. Innovative when it was built; the estate became notorious in the 1980s and was described by Roy Hattersley as the worst in the UK. Regeneration programmes since then have worked to address this and now Manor Memories will work with around 100 local people to create relationships, materials and legacies creating a greater sense of cohesion and awareness.
The legacy of Mary Ann Rawson will be the centre of Wincobank School’s project looking at Wincobank Chapel and School, both donated by Mary Ann Rawson to the neighbourhood in 1880. They will also explore the work of Mary, a leading social reformer and tireless campaigner for the abolition of slavery.
Rawmarsh Youth Services will work with the children and young people of the area to investigate the linguistic and historical heritage of the area, culminating in a creative and transformative journey around Rosehill Park, offering magic windows to the past, giving participants the opportunity to create their own stories about their journey around historical Rawmarsh.
The recreational life of Heeley residents from the 1920s to present day will be explored in a project aiming to develop an archive of social life, including images and records of Working Men’s Clubs, Boy’s and Girl’s Brigades, churches, guilds and Co-ops. Meanwhile, the genuinely unique history of football in Sheffield will be the subject of The Home of Football, a project between All Saints Catholic High School and historians from the University.
Midhope at War will collect memories of those who remember the little-known vital contribution of Langsett and Midhope to the Allies’ success in World War II. Together with physical evidence on the moors surrounding the area, the project aims to create a valuable and poignant community archive.
Another part of Sheffield’s World War II heritage that few people know about will be the focus of a project exploring the lost history of Prisoner of War camps constructed in the Dearne Valley. Tracing the history of the people who came, settled and became members of the community, the project will train local people in archaeological skills and provide resources for schools.
Sheffield Asylum Voices will provide an opportunity for recent and long-term asylum seekers living in Sheffield to tell their stories through audio, photography and artwork. Asylum seekers will have the opportunity to work together to produce firsthand accounts of their move to Sheffield, their life here and Sheffield’s rich tradition of offering asylum, as well as reflecting what asylum seekers bring to the city.
Bob Johnston, Lecturer in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Sheffield, said: "We’re really excited that these projects are now beginning after successfully securing funding from All Our Stories. Creating lasting archives, resources and legacies in collaboration with the community is essential to retain this city’s history in the minds of everyone, for generations to come."
