Hands on our Heritage Conference at the Community History Research Room!

A big thank you to all our attendees who came to the launch of the Community History Research Room on Saturday 10^th May here at Manor Lodge. We held a conference around the question ‘Is Sheffield’s Heritage in Crisis?’ and, as you can imagine, we had a variety of ideas around the subject!

After hearing presentations from John Hamshere from the Cultural Consortium and Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust, Richard Motley from Integreat Plus, Sam Smith from the South Yorkshire Through Time Project and Brian Holmshaw from the Regather cooperative, we had a roundtable discussion on the issue. While the recession and austerity have created increasingly difficult conditions for heritage groups and sites in Sheffield, there is still a lot of grassroots support for community history projects, which go to make up the thriving civic and social landscape of the city. 

A full set of notes on the roundtable discussion will be made available soon, elaborating on these issues (once I’ve finished writing them up!) and there is the possibility that there will be more meetings based around creating a vision for steering the future of heritage planning in Sheffield.

About the Community History Research Room.

The CHRR has a reference library of local history books and helpful how-to guides to help any individuals or local heritage researchers with their work. Sarah, the Access to History officer, will be on site on Saturdays for face-to-face advice on all things heritage. Saturday is also family day at the Community Heritage Research Room, with an exciting activity to take part in each week, which will use the objects, pictures and maps in our collections. Handle objects people used to have in their homes and shops, see what Sheffield looked like in the past and how it has changed, and learn about creating your own archive of memories!

Check the Manor Lodge events page for details of when the CHRR will be open to the public on Saturdays.