Stories in the Sky: community groups and storytelling at Park Hill flats
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2021-02-07

Park Hill Flats have been controversial since construction in the 1950s, with their brutalist style influenced by Le Corbusier, Habitation housing principle, and an era of optimism for improved working-class housing, saw the slums (dubbed ‘Little Chicago’) cleared and replaced with utopian ‘Streets in the Sky’; design was meant to foster community building. The dream died with Thatcherism, and the flats bore the brunt of the ensuing deprivation and neglect in Sheffield (portrayed on screen in The Full Monty (1997) and This is England ‘90 (2015)), but demolition plans were halted when English Heritage ‘listed’ them in 1998. Regeneration is creating a diverse community in a building that embodies a strong sense of local identity in Sheffield and regional identity in Yorkshire.

Our AHRC project team interviewed the Residents’ Association about their responses to immersive experiences and aspirations for telling their own tales of Park Hill life; they are enthusiastic about contributing their stories to ongoing re-conceptualisation of Park Hill, even where presenting challenging narratives of unemployment, depression, crime and loss. The stories residents want to tell about the flats do not consider the tangible remains, but instead consider the building as a physical anchor to local and regional intangible heritages and Sheffield identity. They are starting to tell these stories through organised tours of the building for diverse audiences interested in photography, architecture or heritage as well as school groups. We argue that through storytelling this community is advocating for itself its own notions of identity and culture heritage in this place.

CATRIONA COOPER, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE / UNIVERSITY OF YORK