JUHS gets the message across at developer event

JUHS core group members attended the Sheffield Property Association event ‘How to galvanise a city and other stories’, held on 17 July 2019 at Kollider in Castle House, the former Co-operative store on Angel Street. This was a superb opportunity to give our message to well over a hundred representatives from the developer community. S-PA have positioned themselves as the collective voice of property in Sheffield, but they have a strong commitment to collaboration. As they say in their literature, which acknowledges the partnership with JUHS, “We know that we do not have all the answers, nor should our view dominate others. We welcome a dialogue with all those who share our ambition to make Sheffield greater, better, and more beautiful.”

Presenters spoke in front of a backdrop with this quotation from Buckminster Fuller (architect of geodesic dome fame): “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” We agree: valuable, sustainable change comes from working with what exists, the inherited city. The buildings are not obsolete, but the old model of seeing the city only as land to build on certainly is, and we made these points in the Q&A following the presentations. If S-PA will challenge outdated attitudes to heritage and promote it as the asset that sets Sheffield apart from any other city, then we should enjoy working with them to persuade others.

We were in a listed building, and its developer was one of the keynote speakers: there is no doubt that heritage is on S-PA’s agenda. Our job is to keep it there.