How 7 spectacular days in Sheffield have changed people's perceptions of the city centre

It’s England’s fifth biggest city but Sheffield hasn’t always registered in the national or global consciousness as strongly as smaller cities like Leeds and Liverpool.

The city centre is being reinvented before our eyes, however, and the huge transformation is beginning to pay dividends and show the rest of the world why it needs to sit up and pay attention.

Now a spectacular seven days in the Steel City have provided a real shift in momentum and gone a long way to changing perceptions.

Three big festivals brought huge crowds and many famous faces to the city centre, the vast new Cambridge Street Collective food hall continued to prove the doubters wrong, and Sheffield celebrated its heritage as the home of football.

Celebrity visitors and new festivals

The new Crossed Wires podcast festival proved a huge success, with big names from comedians Katherine Ryan and Romesh Ranganathan to DJs Greg James and Alice Levine performing to sold-out crowds at some of Sheffield’s best venues, including the newly opened Bethel Chapel events space.

The Sheffield Food Festival again attracted thousands of visitors to the city centre, showcasing how the city is forging a new reputation as a culinary hotspot. Europe’s largest purpose-built food hall, Cambridge Street Collective, was packed once again, showing how the public’s appetite for great grub in a spectacular setting is just as big as the vision behind the new venue.

Just outside the city centre, the first ever Kelham Pride event attracted more than 4,000 people to Sheffield’s trendiest neighbourhood for the rainbow-coloured celebrations.

And a blue plaque was unveiled at the site where the Sheffield Rules, the blueprint for the beautiful game as we know it, were written more than 160 years ago.

All this while a filming for an exciting new BBC drama is taking place around the city.

These were just some of the events which brought a buzz to the city centre unlike any experienced for some time, silencing the naysayers who claim it will never again experience the so-called glory days it enjoyed before Meadowhall supposedly sucked the life from it for good.

More to come in Sheffield city centre

There’s plenty more to come, including a new-look Fargate complete with a five-storey cultural hub and live performance venue, and the soon-to-open Leah’s Yard, where the characterful old Little Mesters’ workshops have been transformed into a creative hub with shops, cafes and galleries.

Lots of Sheffielders who have become relative strangers to the city centre were drawn in by the events taking place there over the May half-term holiday, and were pleasantly surprised by its rebirth.

For those who have been shouting from the rooftops about the regeneration, often to a disbelieving public, it felt like vindication.

Sharing a video of the heaving new food hall, Adam Murray, CEO of the Sheffield-based development consultancy Urbana, tweeted: “Hang on. The city is dead and Sheffield folk don’t like nice things. Expect the units to fill up around fast. This place is maybe even a little too busy.”

There’s a long way to go but Sheffield is finally proving to the world that it’s so much more than the post-industrial wasteland depicted in The Full Monty, or the place where every 12 months the world’s best snooker players gather to compete for glory while occasionally grumbling about the fantastic theatre which is the cradle of the sport.