Threads Through Sheffield

Whilst in Edinburgh I also visited The Storytelling Centre on the Royal Mile, designed by Malcom Fraser Architects. Sat inside I found myself eating a very spicy pumpkin and chickpea soup and reading an article in the Guardian Saturday Newspaper entitled: ‘London Fields’ by Robert Macfarlane. Fortunately I have not got a ’storytelling’ voice so I wasn’t sat in any circle, just simply at a solid hardwood table away from the slushy weather outside.The article is about the London 2012 Olympics, or more specifically about the fields it is in the process of devouring. The article is accompanied by a page of blurry and eery photographs taken by Stephen Gill, on a camera he bought for 50p in Hackney 3 years ago. The article is worth a read and that is why I have attached it to this entry. London Fields - Arts Review, Saturday Guardian, 08.12.07My personal interest is the similarities faced by my site in Sheffield. The Tinsley Cooling Towers site is about to be sentenced back to being a powerstation by its landowners Eon (Powergen). The natural wildlife habitat that has been allowed to grow due to the site’s relative inactivity has flourished in a city that is still licking its environmental and economical wounds from the departure of it’s steel industry. What also seems quite cruel and careless is that the communities of Tinsley, Carbrook, Brightside and Wincobank, who already suffer from some of the lowest health standards in the country, let alone Sheffield are to be sentenced to inhaling further toxins from the new powerstation. With the busy M1 motorway on their doorstep, more and more children are being diagnosed with breathing difficulties, so the proposal of a new powerstation is not going to exactly ease the situation.Rather than filling the site once again (see Meadowhall!!!) why not leave these as green lungs for the surrounding communities. Firstly make them accesible, (suspended bridges, cycle paths, waterways) rather than filling them once again and then secondly give them some extra reasons/activity for people to walk through (a circus school perhaps, a carboot, a festival?, a campsite, a rose field? maybe all of the above?)The site needs more than just a single occupation, and the same applies for the London fields that will be filled with Olympic themed ‘things’. Anything less and the site will all too easily become static and stagnant, essentially boring, or even worse dejected by the local community who need it most.