Three young student entrepreneurs from Sheffield Hallam University have launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund the rehabilitation of a homeless man. Their aim is to raise £3,000 to provide three months accommodation, clothing, personal and employment support. Sheffield Live! reporter Simon Thake spoke to James Radford and Jordan Smith.
Space explorers from Sheffield have delivered a pie to the edge of the earth’s atmosphere demonstrating space travel on a shoestring budget. The Sent Into Space team conduct high flying experiments with weather balloons and video cameras. Sheffield Live! reporter Azz Mohammed spoke to operations manager Ellie Hills.
Sheffield charity CADS, has taken over a former foundry, Eagle Works in Attercliffe, to provide low cost space for creative arts projects. The building was home to a steelworks firm which went in to administration. Now CADS is seeking to bring the building back to life. Sheffield Live! reporter Azz Mohammed spoke to Kieren Ancliffe.
Friends of the Old Town Hall, set up to rescue of Sheffield’s former Town Hall and Courthouse has been granted funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to find a way of acquiring the building and bringing it back into use. The money will enable the campaign, set up in 2014, to register a charitable trust and to seek professional advice on how to develop a funding plan and a business strategy. The Grade 2 listed building has been empty since 1996 and has been owned since 2004 by a London- based property development company. Baillor Jalloh reports for Sheffield Live!
Sheffield badminton and Team GB athlete Chloe Birch has spoken out against UK Sport’s decision to cut funding for badminton leading up to Tokyo 2020. Funding has been cut despite Marcus Ellis and Chris Langridge winning bronze to secure Britain’s first men’s doubles medal at Rio this year. Badminton had its funding cut from £7.4m to £5.9m after London 2012, after no players managed the minimum fourth-to-eighth-placed finish that had been targeted. Yet despite the surprise success of Ellis and Langridge, the sport will not get a slice of the £345m of national lottery and government funding which UK Sport has announced will be invested over the next four years. Badminton England are appealing the decision and have started a petition on their website which has over ten thousand signatures. Our reporter Simon Thake spoke with Chloe Birch and Badminton Sheffield Chairman Alan Barber at the English Institute for Sport.
Campaigners gathered on Devonshire Green on Saturday for the Sheffield Trades Union Council ‘Sheffield needs a pay rise campaign’ in support of the city’s low paid workers. The campaign, focussing on shop workers over the christmas period, is calling for the living wage to be raised to £10 an hour. Orgreave justice campaigner, Barbara Jackson, said “Low pay, zero hours contracts and uncertain work goes back to the defeat of the miners in 1985”.
Sheffield Eagles have spoken of their struggle to secure a stadium for professional rugby league in Sheffield following the demolition of the Don Valley Stadium. It is hoped the new community stadium at the Olympic Legacy Park in Don Valley will open in spring 2017. In the meantime, lacking a temporary location in Sheffield the Eagles have been playing their home matches in Wakefield. Sheffield Live! reporter Azz Mohammed spoke to head coach and acting chief executive Mark Aston.
Councillor Cate McDonald has defended Sheffield Council’s decision to close the Hurlfield View dementia respite care facility. A petition to save Hurlfield View has reached over five thousand signatures. Petitioners argue that this is the only day services and respite care facility in Sheffield for severely challenging individuals with dementia, including the most complex cases. The cabinet member for health and social care said the decision was “not a cost cutting exercise”. Sheffield City Council is ending the Sheffield Health and Social Trust’s contract to provide dementia services a year earlier than planned. Simon Thake reports for Sheffield Live!
Over a hundred people came out for a silent vigil outside Sheffield Town Hall, in solidarity for the fallen in Aleppo, Syria and those at risk as government forces retake rebel held areas. Many held up signs, some waved the Syrian flag, others lit candles but all had the same message. They called for an immediate ceasefire, peaceful evacuation for civilians and humanitarian aid by international organisations. Syrian activist Noor Barotchi lives in Sheffield and spoke to the crowd with updates from activists on the ground in Aleppo. Simon Thake reports for Sheffield Live!
Twelve months on from submitting a legal dossier to the Home Office, the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign have renewed their call for a full enquiry into the Battle of Orgreave. The campaign responded in December 2015 to a Home Office request for evidence concerning allegations of police brutality and wrongdoing against picketing miners at the Orgreave coking plant on 18 June 1984. The legal dossier included information relating to complaints of police fabrication of evidence, wrongful arrest, malicious prosecution and perjury. One year on members of the campaign made their way to London to protest current Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s decision not to hold a public inquiry into the events or Orgreave. The Home Office has said that it will additional files on the 1984 miners’ strike in early 2017, including information relating to Orgreave. Simon Thake reports for SheffieldLive!