Urban regeneration and stakeholder dynamics in the formation, growth and maintenance of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival in the 1990s

Abstract

This article presents a case study of the formation and growth of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF)-later renamed Sheffield Doc/Fest-in the 1990s. It uses archival sources to understand a crucial question: why was the festival located in a post-industrial city like Sheffield? By the end of the 1980s, the city was undergoing economic transformation, from 'steel city' to 'post-steel city', in the process suffering an identity crisis given its decades of dependence on its former steel industry. With a focus on the motivations of the political, industrial, cultural, and academic stakeholders that were central to the festival's formation and growth, the article demonstrates how an exploration of festival formation in a post-industrial city, using a political economic approach, can allow for a fuller understanding of the formation, growth, and maintenance of festivals in a post-industrial context.Across the three decades of its existence, the Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF)-or Sheffield Doc/Fest as it was renamed in 2006 1 -has had a conflicting relationship with its host city of Sheffield. Together, the city and the festival have grown, developing a cultural and economic confidence by the late

BSkyB and the 1991 World Student Games: The Transformation of Live Sports Television Acquisition and Coverage in the UK in the Early 1990s

“…The report stated that sponsorship would eventually fund the costs of setting up the independent in-house company and argued that establishing that company had the advantage of not being exclusively contracted to any one distributor or television organization, enabling them to “maximise on our sales” (“Television Analysis for the World Student Games” 1989). But the recommendation of an in-house television company was never really an option given that Sheffield suffered from a lack of media infrastructure (Fenwick 2021, 841–842). A WSG impact report noted, “Sheffield is the largest city in England without any TV networked production capacity” (DEED 1990, 39).…”

“…The rapid deindustrialization of Sheffield intensified throughout the early-to-mid 1980s, as the steel industry moved overseas. Unemployment gripped Sheffield, with the loss of approximately 59,000 jobs between 1978 and 1984, and by the end of the 1980s it was estimated that 77 steel plants had closed in the city (Fenwick 2021, 841). The closure of these plants—massive factories that dominated the skyline and the landscape of the city’s East End—left swathes of empty land as the factories were demolished or left as derelict ruins.…”

Review of periodical literature for 2021

“…Their research on the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire and its commemoration notes that it came to serve as a community‐forming event, emphasizing the city's increasingly multicultural status. In Fenwick's study of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, another response to socioeconomic change in late twentieth‐century Yorkshire reveals how the art event configured a form of private and public sector cooperation which became a model for later urban regeneration. Beel and Jones detailed the inefficiencies on a persistent focus on the city centre in Swansea policymaking since the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government in the early 2010s, which has encouraged uneven development and brittle linkages.…”