Media, film & Education in Sheffield

The films The Full Monty, Threads, When Saturday Comes and Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? were based in the city. F.i.S.T. also included several scenes filmed in Sheffield. Sheffield’s daily newspaper is the Sheffield Star, complemented by the weekly Sheffield Telegraph. The BBC’s Radio Sheffield and the independent Hallam FM and sister station Magic AM broadcast to the city. The Sheffield international Documentary Festival, the UK’s leading documentary festival, has been run annually since 1994 at the Showroom Cinema. A song by The Clash titled “This is England” features the lyric: “This is England / This knife of Sheffield steel / This is England / This is how we feel.”

Music

Sheffield has been the home of several well-known bands and musicians, with an unusually large number of synth pop and other electronic outfits hailing from there. These include the Human League, Heaven 17, the Thompson Twins, Wavestar and the more industrially inclined Cabaret Voltaire. This electronic tradition has continued: techno label Warp Records was a central pillar of the Yorkshire Bleeps and Bass scene of the early 1990s, and has gone on to become one of Britain’s oldest and best-loved dance music labels. Moloko and Autechre, one of the leading lights of so-called intelligent dance music, are also based in Sheffield. The city is also home to Gatecrasher One, one of the most popular nightclubs in the north of England.

Sheffield has also seen the birth of Pulp, Def Leppard, Joe Cocker, The Longpigs and the free improvisers Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. 1998 Mercury Music Prize award winners Gomez are also connected to Sheffield, as some of the founding members went to Sheffield Hallam University together. The Arctic Monkeys, who have recently exploded onto the UK music scene with the fastest selling debut album of all time,[32] the math rock band 65daysofstatic, classic rockers Firegarden and 21st century blues merchants Outroads are four of the most recent additions to the list.

The city’s ties with music were acknowledged in 1999, when the National Centre for Popular Music, a museum dedicated to the subject of popular music, was opened. it was not as successful as was hoped, however, and later evolved to become a live music venue; then in February 2005, the unusual steel-covered building became the students’ union for Sheffield Hallam University. Live music venues in the city include the Leadmill, Corporation, the Boardwalk, the City Hall, the University of Sheffield and the Studio Theatre at the Crucible Theatre. Smaller venues supporting the local scene include The Grapes, D ‘n’ R Live (formerly Under The Boardwalk) and The Cricketers.

Education

Sheffield has two universities, the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University. The two combined bring 45,000 students to the city every year, including many from the Far East. As a result of its large student population, Sheffield has many bars, cafes, clubs and shops as well as student housing to accommodate them.

Sheffield College is the city’s only college. it was created from the merger of six colleges around the city. These have been reduced to just three. Castle College in the city centre, Hillsborough College and Norton College. There are also 141 primary schools and 23 secondary schools, of which seven have sixth forms, most notably, Silverdale School, High Storrs School and King Edward School in the south of Sheffield. There are also seven private schools.