In May 2017, the MAUD students from Sheffield University successfully held a public exhibition showing the possibilities of Community Land Trusts in Sheffield. The students formed as 12 groups, together with Sheffield CLT, have studied several under-used central sites throughout Sheffield, including Park Hill, Castlegate, and Kelham Island. The research was conducted for 6 weeks to explore the residents’ needs and to design a potential future for their chosen neighbourhood. At the mean time, the idea of a community-led housing scheme was utilised for achieving their goals at different phases.
Here are some examples of posters produced by the students.
Group 1 – Mount Pleasant
Mount Pleasant is an old mansion in the Sharrow area, which has more people suffering from chronic disease than other regions in Sheffield. Therefore, different with the other two examples drawn below, Mount Pleasant to some extend requires a different focus as it has residents with special needs. In this case, group 1 deigned this community-led housing plan to meet different needs at the same time as improving the living environment and the public space.
Group 2 – Lansdowne
The Lansdowne Estate is located at southwest of city centre, which is the 10% most deprived area in Sheffield. The residents are multi-cultural and mostly low-income. The public space is also underused, suffering from a lack of facilities. Therefore, after preliminary research interviewing and carrying out site visits, Group 2 decided to enhance community cohesion by improving public space and holding activities for local people to exchange their skills.
Group 8 – Castlegate
Castlegate lies in the city centre near the old Town Hall. This site has an importance in heritage and history as it’s the oldest part of Sheffield, and where the remains of Sheffield Castle are located. Sheffield City Council has just decided to invest almost £800,000 to redevelop this area (BBC, 2017). After detailed research, Group 8 categorised local residents by age, and focused on developing community-based housing to fulfil their needs. For instance, matching the single elder household with students to benefit each other. The right page of the poster shows that they also designed various types of housing plans for different groups.
These projects have explicitly explained how the local residents and wider society might benefit from forming a Community Land Trusts in Sheffield. Not only from the point of view of providing more affordable housing, but also by providing a more self-sustaining community structure.
We hope to be able to provide links to these projects shortly, but in the meantime, for more information about CLT and MUAD exhibition please follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
Sheffield Community Land Trust 