Paul Scriven former Leader of Sheffield City Council was today granted the title Lord Scriven of Hunters Bar in the City of Sheffield. He made the announcement at a gathering of Liberal Democrats from the Asian community last night here is Sheffield. He was joined by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg who reminded him what his job would be in the house of Lords.
Sangita Basudev and Jonny Harold report for Sheffield Live! TV
Gas safety week was launched today at The Moor Markets in Sheffield. The Road Show promotes gas and appliance safety awareness to the people of Sheffield.
Gas Safety Week is a national event which highlights the importance of checking gas appliances and making sure that people are safe in their homes.
Russell Kramer, CEO of Gas Safe Register, talks about why holding events like this are important.
Rachel Vine and David Richards report.
Sheffield’s Liberian community walked through town this weekend to raise awareness of Ebola. Akai Bazzie, who is the Senior Pastor of Christ Abiding Ministry for UK said they were marching for three things. To raise awareness of the disease itself, to raise funds for people who are affected and to ask for donations of materials such as gloves and hand sanitisers . The Ebola virus has killed about 1,000 people altogether in West Africa over the last few weeks. The Liberian people have been the worst hit by the outbreak so far.
Sangita Basudev filmed the events for Sheffield Live.
Jane Tomlinson’s Run For All has entered into a partnership with Sheffield City Council and have gathered at the Peace Gardens to announce their involvement in the new Plusnet Yorkshire Half Marathon.
This follows from the previous disappointment of the marathon that fell through earlier this year due to lack of water supplies on the day.
Cabinet Member Isobel Bowler said: ‘I am confident that the race organisers will be well placed to make sure that all aspects of the race will operate with great professionalism.’
The half marathon takes place on 12th April 2015 with a new route that starts and finishes in the city centre.
Reporting by Rachel Vine and Kathryn Smiles.
Sheffield Live! Joined thousands of people in Millhouses Park for the EID Festival in the Park.
The cross cultural event celebrates the end of the month long festival of Ramadan, when millions of Muslims around the world go on a month long fast in which they do not eat or drink during daylight hours. MC Nige compared the main stage, with other entertainment including fun fair rides and stalls.
Sheffield Live! had its own stall with presenter Jawwad Janjua headlining both days, providing entertainment for those at the event and interviewing people who were attending the festival, including the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Peter Rippon and Local MP Paul Bloomfield. Jawwad was joined by fellow Sheffield Live! presenters Jawaid Qazi, Shafaqat Mohammed and Wajdi Raweh.
Television programmes in production for Sheffield Live! TV were enthusiastically applauded by a public audience including shareholders and supporters at a Showroom Cinema screening last week.
The first Sheffield Live! TV showreel has now been published online to view and comment. Sheffield Live! TV, the digital local TV channel for Sheffield, will launch in autumn on Freeview, Virgin cable and the internet. The showreel provides a taster of the range of content planned for the new channel including music, film, outdoors, sport, comedy and experimental work.
Sheffield Live! TV is locally owned and run for community benefit. Sheffielders have been invited to invest in the project to help get it off to a flying start and to join a growing band of community shareholders. The Sheffield Community Media Ltd Pioneer and Community Share Offer is open until 14 August, with full details available online at: www.sheffieldlive.org/shares
Sheffield Live! is hosting an exclusive preview of programmes under development for Sheffield’s new local TV channel.
Join us for a breakfast screening with an eclectic selection of showreels from our independent producers. Sheffield Live! TV will carry a diverse mix of news and current affairs, music, culture, sport, community and alternative programming, featuring Sheffield talent and creativity.
Join us for breakfast, with refreshments, light snacks, a chance to talk to some of our programme makers and a screening at the Showroom Cinema on 24 July 2014 – a taste of things to come.
Please book early – places will be limited! Further details here.
The inaugural SheffEX business exhibition took place on Monday 3rd June at Ponds Forge, designed “as a place to do business by Sheffield City Region businesses people for Sheffield City Region businesses people.”
And it was a great success – with exhibition stands sold out, over 1000 delegates, and, in the words of co-organiser Tony Carroll, the venue “absolutely buzzing with people making contacts, doing deals and forming new partnerships.”
Sheffield Live interviewed Tony Carroll on our Business Live radio programme on Friday 2nd May to talk about the plans for the event.
And we went along to SheffEX on the 2nd of June to interview exhibitors, delegates and speakers. We broadcast these interviews on the Business Live radio programme on Sheffield Live on Friday 6th June.
You can listen to the interviews here:
SheffEX – 1:
SheffEX – 2:
Who is in the interviews?
In the first set of interviews (SheffEX 1) you can hear:
1. David Watkins, FORTAY Media
2. Faye Smith, Keep Your Fork
3. David Robinson BDO Accountants
4. Amanda Drake, Sheffield Chamber
5. Nic Rotton, Sterling Capital Reserve
6. Joel Kruithof, Osborne Translation Services
7. Austin Macauley, Real Ale Trails
8. Mick Heard, Business Crime Reduction Centre
9. Jess Culbert, You Say Social
10. Sam Cook, Cathedral Archer Project
11. Mark McCormick, SheffEX & Cafe Moco
In the second set of interviews (SheffEX 2) you can hear:
1. Becky, Magna
2. David Toft, Westfield Health
3. Andy Hanselman
4. Claire Thompson, Mercury Taxis
5. Kiley Tan, Wosskow Brown
6. Carla Davis, Hart Shaw (in an extended interview with advice on international trade)
7. Nigel Short, VOOT
8. Donna Wingell, Accountability
9. Martin Abonyi, Sugarcane
10. Martin Ross, HR Media
11. Catherine Beatty, Aizlewood Business Centre
12. John Baddeley, Wake Smith Solicitors
13. Sarah Brown Inspire2Aspire
14. Tony Carroll, SheffEX (in an extended interview talking about the organisation of the event)
The SheffEX organisers and their partners Fortay Media and Fish Eagle Films have also recently released a film with interviews with a number of SheffEX exhibitors:
The Avenue Q cast with Sheffield Live presenter Vicky Oag
What do you get when you cross a meaning of life story, with sesame street, the muppet show and some distinctly adult humour? No, its not the start of a really bad joke but it does sum up the plot line of musical comedy Avenue Q about to hit the stage of The Lantern Theatre in Sheffield by new amateur theatre company, Cutting Edge.
And Sheffield Live 93.2FM has an interview with the cast – on today’s Communities Live show at noon.
Set on a Avenue Q in New York’s southernmost neighbourhood, the show follows new graduate, Princeton as he works out exactly what is his purpose in life. Supported by a small cast of humans, monsters and puppets, Princeton and his new neighbours take a comedic journey through “the real issues in modern life – employment, love, politics and exactly why the internet was invented.”
Avenue Q is the first performance project of Sal Foster-Major and Gavin Usher, the people behind Cutting Edge.
Director of the show Sal says: “We set up Cutting Edge to focus on new, innovative and unusual dramatic and musical theatre productions. Often, amateur musical performers miss out on shows that only require a small cast and we wanted to create somewhere they would give them the opportunity to perform some of the smaller but just as interesting and exciting shows.”
Musical Director Gavin adds: “We wanted to make an impact with our first show so we chose Avenue Q for the visual spectacle of the puppets, the great music and the sheer comedy of the script. Although it is most definitely aimed at adults, it is a real feel good show with a modern twist. Whether you love or hate musicals, you cant help but enjoy this show.”
Cast member and puppeteer Chris Hanlon is in charge of one of the colourful cast of puppets that makes this particular show so unique. “There are only 11 of us in the cast and none of us have ever done anything like this before. Singing, dancing, acting and operating a ‘muppet’ puppet has been quite a challenge but as a cast we have laughed all though the rehearsals, the show is just so funny! We cant wait to get on stage and share it with an audience.”
As well as being the first show produced by the team at Cutting Edge, the small cast also have the kudos of claiming to be the first full scale musical to be staged at the 84 seater Lantern Theatre. The 120 year old venue located in Nether Edge has been home to a wide variety of performances including Tony and Olivier award nominated acts but has yet to host anything like this singing and dancing line up of 2 humans, 6 puppets, 2 monsters and 2 very cute but slightly misguided teddy bears.
What next?
Orgreave anniversary documentary wins Audience Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest
Doc/Fest’s Audience Awards were announced this week. Now in it’s eighth year, the Sheffield Doc/Fest Audience Award gives Sheffield’s public audience and delegates the chance to honour their favourite film of the festival.
The Audience Award winner for the 21st edition of Sheffield Doc/Fest is STILL THE ENEMY WITHIN directed by Owen Gower and produced by Sinead Kirwan and Mark Lacey. This archive-rich film looks back to Margaret Thatcher’s battle with the unions and specifically the 1984 miners strike. Told primarily from the retrospective of the mining communities the Doc/Fest screenings received a standing-ovation from Sheffield audiences and delegates. This World Premiere screening at Doc/Fest was one of a number of films at the festival that marked the 30th anniversary on 18th June of the “Battle of Orgreave.”
The Short Film audience award goes to OUR CURSE directed by Tomasz Sliwinski, produced by Maciej Slesicki, an intimate and moving self-portrait about a young couple whose newborn child has been diagnosed with Ondine’s curse meaning he must be attached to a ventilator when he sleeps. Our Curse also won the Student Doc Award.
The Interactive audience award goes ASSENTdirected and produced by Oscar Raby which enables the user to witness the execution of a group of prisoners by the military regime in Chile in 1973, as witnessed by the filmmaker’s father.
This year’s first ever In The Dark Sheffield Audio Award, which recognises a new golden age of radio and audio documentary storytelling both in podcasting and traditional radio, was awarded to Pejk Malinovski’s EVERYTHING, NOTHING, HARVEY KEITEL about a man who struggles to meditate when he realises he’s sitting next to the actor Harvey Keitel.
The awards for 2014 announced today were: Special Jury Award, Sheffield Innovation Award, Sheffield Green Award, Sheffield Youth Jury Award, Sheffield Student Doc Award, Sheffield Short Doc Award, The Tim Hetherington Award and the first ever Peter Wintonick Award which celebrates activist filmmaking,in honour of the late Canadian documentary filmmaker and friend of the festival Peter Wintonick.
This year the Inspiration Award was awarded to Laura Poitras. Poitras sent a message dedicating her award to Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Jacob Appelbaum, William Binney, Julian Assange and Sarah Harrison.
The Sheffield Doc/Fest 2014 award for Lifetime Achievement was presented to Roger Graef. Accepting the award Roger said “it’s true that when we take people’s pictures, we capture their souls and that is a great responsibility” and paid tribute to “those souls who have been brave enough to let us capture them.”
Roger also praised Sheffield Doc/Fest and the community spirit of the documentary festival, commenting that the loneliness that can come with documentary filmmaking is “mitigated by the chance to come to together at a festival like this.” He dedicated his award to CEO and Festival Director Heather Croall.
Sheffield Doc/Fest’s Special Jury prize was awarded to Attacking The Devil: Harold Evans and the Last Nazi War Crime (directors Jacqui Morris & David Morris, United Kingdon/Canada, 2014, 99mins).
The Sheffield Innovation Award was awarded to A Short History of the Highrise (Dir. Katerina Cizek, Canada/United States, 2013, 17mins).
The Sheffield Youth Jury Award was awarded to The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (Dir. Brian Knappenberger, United States, 2014, 105mins).
The Sheffield Green Award was awarded to Unearthed (Dir. Jolynn Minnaar, South Africa, 2014, 90mins).
The Sheffield Student Doc Award was awarded to Our Curse (Dir. Tomasz Sliwinski, Poland, 2013, 28mins).
The Sheffield Short Doc Award, sponsored by the London Short Film Festival, was awarded to Amanda F***ing Palmer on the Rocks(Dir. Ondi Timoner, United States, 2014, 18mins).
The first ever Peter Wintonick Award, celebrating activist filmmaking, was awarded to Vessel (Dir. Diana Whitten, United States, 2014, 88mins).