Mary Street Micro-Cluster

Year | 2024

Location | City Centre, Sheffield

Client | 95 Mary Street Tenants Organisation

Connecting Communities Through Music: Amplifying The Vision for 95 Mary Street. The emerging concept of creative and cultural ‘micro-clusters’ expands on music accessibility and ‘peripheral participation’ by empowering communities through creative opportunities.

95 Mary Street is envisioned to become a new hub for music performance and community in Sheffield; opening the space to local and grassroots music organisations. The project aims to engage with local organisations to diversify audiences and to encourage wider community engagement; expanding the project to effectively contribute to the wider cultural strategy for Sheffield. A catalyst for the Live Projects team is the developing urgency to provide a design rationale stipulated by the risk presented by the Council’s new plan under consideration by the Government’s Planning Inspectorate. This plan seeks to support the development of housing on this site. Currently, this plan is not yet adopted, and therefore there is a window of opportunity to propel the community and cultural narrative as a driving force in rescuing this music hub from possible loss. The Live Project’s team identified three key components to this project: the creative and cultural ‘micro-clusters’ of Sheffield, the life of the building at 95 Mary Street, and finally, ‘leaving a trace’: a community outreach legacy.

Micro-clusters
‘Micro-clusters’, defined by the Live Project team as “networks of meaningful, self-sustained relationships between like-minded people and environments”, builds upon existing discourse of the UK’s creative and cultural clusters, and applies them within the boundaries of the Sheffield region. Through the exploration into these local creative clusters, a parallel was drawn between the spatialization of neighbourhood initiatives and their subtle networks.

The concept of ‘villages of meaningful relationships’ emerged as an interpretation of these connections, which, through their analysis, could provide answers to the challenges faced when connecting creative and cultural communities for the long-term.

Life of Building

The building then becomes a manifestation of the cultural strategy; spatialising the needs of these communities. To deal with the uncertainty of finance, funding and ownership, the Live Project team accommodated multiple options for the design of building, with incremental levels of ambition corresponding to the viable financial scenarios once funding is applied for.

With successful funding applications, 95 Mary Street will have the tools to bring alive their vision, establishing an inclusive, flexible, and sustainable space for communities to express their creativity; providing spaces for collaboration whilst ensuring provisions for revenue generating events.

Leaving a trace

The Live Project team aims to ensure lasting community engagement by developing an Engagement Pack to “leave a trace” and inspire continued involvement with music. This follows the community outreach footsteps of Dan Johnston – director of 95 Mary Street – who brings Samba to under-supported areas of Sheffield through workshops, parades, and festivals. In Dan’s words: "the idea of carnival is bringing the city together and start getting people in those communities to feel like they are being listened to". This outreach forms a network, offering advice, support, and training to community organisations to run samba workshops and events in the future.

Credits

Student Team: 

Josie Kassapian, Zoe West, Bryan Putra Parsada Sinaga, Nicole Johnson, Inga Andrzejewska, Rebecca Jilks, Sarah Chiu, Luke Hadley, Haohan Kong, Mihaela Constantinescu, Jiekai Zhang

Mentor:

Emre Akbil