RAAC and ruin

Good afternoon readers — and welcome to our Monday briefing.

We’re a music city. From ABC to Arctic Monkeys, and The Limit to The Leadmill, the sense that this city is buzzing with live music has long been part of its appeal. But for the last nine months the city has been missing one of its key music venues, the O2 Academy, and there’s been talk that the biggest acts are giving Sheffield Arena a swerve. Are our claims to be a big music city looking a bit threadbare? That’s our big story today.

As well as that, we have the first ever Sheffield Wine Week, and a spectacular apartment comes up for sale in what was one of Kelham Island’s first residential developments.

Catch up and coming up

For our weekend read, we met Robert Hastie to talk about his time as Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres, as he prepares to leave the role after eight years. Hastie guided the three theatres through the upheaval of Covid, still managing to put on a string of award-winning shows and cement their reputation as some of the best outside London. You can read that piece here.

Last week we sent out two great newsletters to our 2,206 paying members. In the first, Dan travelled to the former “Red Wall” seat of Penistone and Stocksbridge to find out how popular current Conservative MP Miriam Cates still is and how Labour’s candidate Dr Marie Tidball hopes to win it back. And in the second, Victoria investigated a series of Sheffield-based companies that change their name every year and have been accused of exploiting their youthful workforce. An extract from that second piece is below.

Every day, at ACI Associates’ rented office space in Devonshire Works in the city centre, the entire workforce — who worked selling broadband packages door-to-door — would attend a two-hour “atmosphere session”. From 10am until noon, over blasting music, they learned high-pressure sales techniques, practised their pitch and got pumped up for the long slog ahead, occasionally playing games like Hangman or Duck, Duck, Goose. Once that was over, they’d split into teams and travel to wherever they were selling that day, which could be anywhere in South Yorkshire. The cost of travel, like every other expense, was not covered by the company, so people often carshared to save money. “If the car was full somebody would be expected to get into the boot,” says John. “And that would often be me because I was smaller.”

This week we’ll send out two more including our latest election preview from Victoria in Rotherham, where — extraordinarily — the Conservatives aren’t fielding a candidate. Will that give Reform a chance? And we’ll have a piece by Dan about how a convicted racist was treated in Sheffield cricket — and what that tells us about how seriously the sport is taking the problem. 

Editor’s note: As Victoria wrote yesterday, to pull off stories like her investigation into House of Sales last Friday, we need your support. “Whereas other sites churn out shallow reporting that only takes an hour or two, our biggest investigations are measured in months,” she continued. “That includes some of the stories I’ve most enjoyed working on: like my long-read about the Leadmill, or my investigation into strange goings on at Kommune. Those stories only ever saw the light of day because good Sheffield folk put their hands in their pockets.” At The Tribune we think our city thrives when it has rigorous and searching journalism, but we can only do it with your backing.

The big picture: Digging for victory 🌳

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey visited Sheffield Hallam last week as the race for the hotly contested seat reached its final two weeks. While here, instead of skydiving or paddleboarding, he went to Whinfell Quarry Gardens to do some gardening with Lib Dem candidate Shaffaq Mohammed. And on Sunday, London Mayor Sadiq Khan also came to the constituency to campaign for Labour candidate Olivia Blake. Spotting such big hitters is a sure sign both sides think it’s on a knife edge, with one party insider telling The Tribune that the race is currently “too close to call”. Our recent piece on the constituency was recently featured on the Unherd website while BBC Radio Sheffield broadcast a hustings with the candidates last Friday.

This week’s weather ☀️

Our weather forecast comes from dedicated Sheffield weather service Steel City Skies, who say high pressure will initially keep our weather settled and very warm. Increasingly muggy, with a breakdown to fresher weather by the end of the week.

Monday 🌥 Bright spells and variable cloud amounts turning the sunshine hazy. Gentle southerly winds and highs of 26°C with a humid night following.

Tuesday ⛅️  Very warm with sunny spells and a humid feel to the day. Light southeast winds and highs possibly touching 27°C. Isolated shower risk.

Wednesday 🌥 Further spells of humid, hazy sunshine with easterly breezes mainly light. Very warm with highs around 25°C. Isolated shower risk.

Thursday 🌦 A heightening risk of a shower or thunderstorm, though many likely staying dry. Still very warm, but it may turn fresher overnight. Highs of 24°C.

Friday 🌦 It is expected to be fresher with a lot of dry and bright weather on offer. A few showers are possible from the west, with highs of 22°C.

Outlook: Low confidence, but the trends are for a more changeable period with bright spells and a scattering of showers, perhaps heavy. Temperatures closer to average.

To see the full forecast and keep up to date with any changes to the outlook, follow Steel City Skies on Facebook.

The big story: RAAC and ruin

Top line: The O2 Academy on Arundel Gate has been closed now for almost nine months. The closure, due to dangerous RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) being found at the 1960s built venue, seems no closer to being remedied than it was last September. But has the venue’s extended absence exposed a deeper problem for Sheffield? Can we really claim to be a great music city if we don't actually have that many live music venues?

The building was first opened in 1968 as the Top Rank Suite, which in its heyday was reportedly Europe’s largest nightclub. In 1985 it became the legendary Roxy disco, but by the 2000s was empty and unloved. In 2008 it reopened as the 02 Academy after a £3 million refurbishment, and has since welcomed huge bands including The Killers and The Prodigy.

• Since the original closure announcement in late September last year, there have been no updates at all from the building’s owners. The Star reported that contractors were surveying the building in October last year, but further enquiries made by The Tribune to Academy Music Group have gone unanswered.
• RAAC concrete is of course a serious problem, but it isn’t insurmountable. One of the other Sheffield buildings which was found with it, Abbey Lane Primary School, never fully closed and earlier this month passed its Ofsted inspection with flying colours. It did reportedly cost the council more than £600,000 to put right though.

The long-standing closure has highlighted the lack of mid-sized music venues in Sheffield. The O2 (capacity 2,150) was one of only two mid-sized venues in Sheffield (the other is the University of Sheffield’s Octagon Centre, capacity 1,500, where many of the gigs that were due to have taken place at the O2 Academy have been moved).

• Sheffield City Hall can hold 2,271 people, but it is better suited to classical music and comedy rather than gigs. The Leadmill is one of the city’s bigger small venues, but can only accommodate 900 people, and as we have reported on, has issues of its own.
• The newly refurbished Bethel Chapel on Cambridge Street could potentially provide another venue, but doesn’t yet have a tenant. And, as great as they are, places like Delicious Clam and Sidney and Matilda are tiny (both have capacities of just 80).

Some have complained that this dearth of medium and large live music venues has led to bands simply not scheduling a Sheffield stop on their tour itinerary. Some of the bands that were meant to play the O2 Academy have moved their gigs to The Leadmill, the Octagon or Network, but others have pulled their concerts entirely. Sheffield Arena often seems to miss out on the very biggest acts (something that could get even worse now Manchester’s huge Coop Live arena has opened, despite its widely reported teething troubles). One Sheffield music lover commenting on Reddit complained they had been “spending more money on train tickets than gigs” in the last year from travelling to Manchester and Leeds to see their favourite bands.

Our take: For a city with a musical heritage as storied as Sheffield’s, it’s pretty embarrassing that one of our main music venues has been closed for so long. Live music is beginning to look like another area where we lag behind our northern neighbours, Leeds and Manchester. We need answers from Academy Music Group, and if they aren’t willing to put the work in then someone else should get to take on the venue.

The Weekly Whitworth ✍️

Cartoonist James Whitworth with his take on this week’s big story.

Our media picks

‘For 14 years it’s been despicable. Enough’s enough’ 🌹 An excellent report from the Guardian from the constituency of Penistone and Stocksbridge, where I went last week. As Dan did, reporter Josh Halliday finds Tory support crumbling in the former “Red Wall” seat they unexpectedly won from Labour last time. However, he doesn’t detect much hope that anyone can fix the problems facing the country, and activists say there is a deep cynicism towards all parties on the doorstep.

Cabaret Voltaire, The Octagon Centre, 19th November 1983 🎸 Sheffield music blogger Roger Quail’s mission to document every gig he’s ever been to continues with this great piece on “the Cabs” at Sheffield University. Quail is a friend of the band, so gets a free, advance copy of their new album The Crackdown given to him by Richard Kirk at The Washington. He’s also on the guest list for the show where the boundary-pushing band is accompanied by twenty five TV sets on stage.

We need to stop building new homes in Sheffield 🏡 This provocative piece in Now Then argues that rather than solving the housing crisis by building new homes, what we need to be doing is retrofitting older buildings. While the piece accepts we need new places for people to live, it says building this many homes is environmentally unsustainable. Instead, we should adopt the idea that “the greenest building is the one that already exists”, and turn existing buildings — including old factories and offices — into livable homes.

Home of the week 🏡

On that theme — Cornish Works in Kelham Island was one of the first factories in the former industrial area to be turned into residential accommodation in the 2000s. This spectacular three-bedroom penthouse apartment has vaulted ceilings and tons of original features. It is on the market for £335,000.

Tribune Tips: If you want to tell us about a story or give us some information, please email editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first poll instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity.

Things to do

Art 🖼️ This is the last week art hunters can join in the search for hidden characters across the city centre on the Urban Dwellers digital art and animation trail. Urban Dwellers is a free interactive digital art experience primarily aimed at children aged 5-12 and their families, but can be enjoyed by people of any age. Go to the website and download the map, find the hidden characters, and have fun bringing them to life in augmented reality (AR) on your phone.

Food and drink 🍷 We all know about Sheffield’s beer heritage, but in recent years, some have been making the case that the city should be considered a top wine destination as well. Taking place from Wednesday 26 to Sunday 30 June, the first Sheffield Wine Week will include events at The Old Shoe on Orchard Square and Tenaya in Crookes, as well as Bench in Nether Edge, The Harritt wine bar on Ecclesall Road and Pangolin in Hillsborough. A full list is on the website.

Jewellery 💍 On Thursday at the Sykes Gallery Metalwork Collection at the Millennium Gallery, get the chance to handle contemporary silverware designs with industry expert Katherine Payne of Goldsmiths North. On the day you’ll see a selection of objects up close, representing a range of disciplines and techniques, and hear about some of the most interesting and highest quality work being made in the industry today. The two-hour session is free and starts at 12pm.