Harmony Works +

Harmony Works will be the home of inspirational music education, enriching the lives and futures of young people and their communities across the Sheffield City Region. It will repurpose Canada House, a listed building in the heart of Sheffield, located in the southeast corner of Castlegate. Sheffield Music Hub and Sheffield Music Academy, the two leading music organisations in Sheffield, will be operating out of Canada House.

Harmony Works was previously the subject of a Live Project in 2017, a speculative study which led to a £2 million grant, the appointment of an architect, and a planning application being submitted in July 2022. However, new constraints on funding have impacted key aspects of the original vision. The 2022 Live Projects team was tasked with exploring how Harmony Works’ social, cultural and spatial programme could be developed through alternative methods to complement conventional architectural services and contribute to a revised funding bid in November 2022.

It is estimated that Canada House will be purchased in 2024, but funding to refurbish the building won’t be in place for a further 12 months. We explored ideas for performance-related meanwhile use within the ground floor spaces of Canada House, focusing on activities that would build strong ties with youth and young adult groups already in the area. We produced a series of images showing the grand main hall in use by music students in various configurations, and also in collaboration with theatre, dance and film groups. We envision the cafe as a community hub and catalyst, growing alongside the community. These images will be key in approaching new stakeholders and individual funders.

Another strand of work was creating a vision for how Canada House can link into the public realm beyond the building. Currently, Harmony Works forms the cornerstone of Sheffield City Council’s Gateway Levelling Up Fund bid, and will be a vital contributor to the recovery of the city region with its focus on children, education and wellbeing that comes from engagement through music. We sought to tie into existing initiatives by the Castlegate Festival, the Grey-to-Green scheme, and the new park on the Castle site by designing a strategy for a musical, playful city quarter. The document produced is primarily aimed at the local council, allowing them to make a case for extra funding by influencing the ongoing regeneration of Castlegate and connecting to the council’s plans for the Castle site.

Credits

Student Team: 

Fatehah Amirah Binti Shairan Huzani, Jingjing Chen, Barnaby Dulley, Louis Dunphy, Borui Feng, Veronica Ihrfors, Razvan Ivanov, Wangyang Liu, Yoana Todorova, Yuan Wang, Alicia Wong, Qianting Yu, Jingxiao Zhu

Mentor:

Adriana Massidda