A CITY’S CULTURE OF CHANGE
With Sheffield’s arts and culture scene enjoying something of a renaissance, Richard Blackledge caught up with the head of Museums Sheffield to find out more.
AT JUST after two o’clock on a chilly midweek afternoon, Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery is filled with scores of visitors who have come to see a collection of artistic wonders – intricate sketches by the great Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci.
Kim Streets, who runs the venue as chief executive of Museums Sheffield, looks thrilled as she surveys the scene while being photographed.
The free exhibition, A Life In Drawing, has had the best opening week of any show in the city for the past 10 years – if this sets a pattern, the attendance figure could be the museums’ highest ever, beating the likes of Andy Warhol and Eric Ravilious.
2019, then, should be a very good year, thinks Kim. “We’ve got extraordinary things, I’m feeling really positive,” she says, pointing out that Museums Sheffield’s reach is spreading far and wide – a new exhibition at Two Temple Place in London has drawn heavily on its John Ruskin archive, while the da Vinci show is one of 12 happening around the country courtesy of the Royal Collection.
“It’s great to be part of something that’s national,” says Kim of the Leonardo events, which come 500 years after his death.
“That’s important, that we’re part of a national sector that’s doing good stuff. It’s good in terms of that benchmarking and being part of a groundswell of civic museums that are all making a difference in their respective places.”
In April she will have been chief executive for seven years. There have been ‘‘challenges along the way’’, she admits, but her role still offers much excitement.
“I do love this job. I love it because of the people – we’ve got a really great team and I think the work museums do in the city, in the city region and across the UK is about making this a better place to live.
“There’s a feelgood quality to the work we do and that’s what drives me. No day’s ever the same. Seven years in, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing it for that long – the seven-year itch thing, I don’t feel like that. There’s so much more we can do.”
Her interest was piqued by a report published last week by the Centre for London think tank, which called on the capital and the North to forge a stronger relationship, following research which showed London had an image problem with the rest of the country.
One proposal was for museums in the capital to send their treasures on tour more often. Kim talks of ‘‘challenging that North-South divide’’, and is magnanimous about the success of neighbouring city Manchester, which managed to secure £80m of funding from central Government for its Factory arts centre.
“You have to see it as a network. It’s not just about one city over another. If we’re performing well in the north we’re performing well in the south. I’m not into the partisan ‘we was robbed’ thing.
“I don’t think it works like that, you have to see it in the round, we’re all part of UK plc. It’s certainly how I feel about culture. All of our cities have got something to bring and we need to be supportive of each other.”
Greater Manchester, of course, satisfied the Government by putting its devolution deal into action, something the Sheffield City Region has so far failed to do.
Streets won’t be drawn on politics, but believes there is no reason Sheffield could not win similar funding for a cultural landmark if it takes the right approach.
“I’d like us to be in a position to be able to secure some substantial investment from government for the city in, for example, the Graves Gallery in the future.”
The investment, she stresses, is ‘‘not for now’’. “It’s really for the next 50 years. We need to be thinking ‘What will the next three generations of Sheffield people see? What skills will we need to live in a mid-21st century world?’
“Our population will need to be super-creative, to be able to adapt and be flexible. To think, imagine and draw – a bit like Leonardo.”
Kim showed the Graves Gallery to Sir Nicholas Serota, chair of potential funder Arts Council England, when he visited Sheffield for a tour last year. Serota, it turned out, had worked with Sheffield’s former galleries director, the late Frank Constantine, as a young curator. However, it wasn’t the time to ask for money, Streets says.
“We need to be clear about what the vision for the building might be and then be able to go knocking on the door of the Arts Council and others.
“The Arts Council aren’t in the business of stomping into cities and dictating what shall happen. They very much want to work with.”
Kim, who grew up in Selby, North Yorkshire, came to Sheffield in 1986 to study history at the polytechnic. After graduating, she began volunteering at Kelham Island Museum, which showed her for the first time how a venue was managed.
“I’d gone on the odd trip as a kid with school, but we’re not big museumgoers in the family,” she says. “I remember going with my little sister to the railway museum in York and to York Castle museum. I would have been seven or eight. I remember being absolutely enthralled.”
She credits former Kelham Island curator David Bostwick, who looked after the social history collection, with showing her the importance of the stories behind exhibits.
Sheffield’s rich heritage ‘‘triggered something’’ in her, she says. Her first paid job was as a documentation assistant with Lincolnshire’s museums – then, in 1991, she returned to Sheffield to be the assistant keeper of social history. “It was a good place to be,” she remembers.
In 1998, Museums Sheffield was formed as an independent charity, taking over from the city council, and during the 2000s the organisation was much more generously funded.
In 2011, Museums Sheffield had to make major job cuts, shedding
45 posts, when Arts Council England refused £4.2m in grants. The tough experience hasn’t been forgotten.
“In terms of what we’re delivering, we’ve recovered, we’re in good shape. It’s kind of institutional memory – for the people who went through that, came out the other end and survived it, it’s always there. That uncertainty, the way you feel, it never entirely leaves you.”
In the short term, the museums are getting a boost from Ambulo, the stylish new cafés at Weston Park and the Millennium Gallery, run by Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders and the Rockingham Group, the firm behind Public, The Great Gatsby and other city bars.
Kim says these will be a destination in their own right. “What’s not to love? It does feel really exciting to have great coffee, cocktails and food alongside great art and heritage.”
We need to be thinking, ‘What will the next three generations of Sheffield people see? What skills will we need to live in a mid-21st century world?... Kim Streets, chief executive of Museums Sheffield.