Sheffields very own 'NowThen' magazine has a double page spread in the current issue, 49
26 March ITV Calendar click here for video
26March Look North starts 10 mins in (its very short!)
Missed us on Heritage Heroes? - An excerpt is still on iPlayer
Together with the Look North / Calendar spots on 6 February, it's produced a lot of interest - we've had many enquiries from new supporters - we now have many new shareholders (over 300 total) and around £30,000 in new share sales, and over 2000+ hits on the website! Thank you!
Sheffield Telegraph
'Victory' story 1 April Yorks Post
27 March, Sheffield Star 26 March
Sheff Telegraph 2 Feb, Yorkshire Post 3 Feb Sheffield Star 3 Feb and Yorkshire Times 4 Feb and Look North + Calendar on 6 Feb and Heritage Heroes on BBC2 clip on iPlayer
NowThen issue 47 and 49 - the free arts magazine - features our project. Find it in Cafes and arts venues around Sheffield
BBC have featured us on their website, December 2011 - see it here.
Sheffield Star 24 Oct 2011 Sheffield Telegraph letters - 17 Nov 2011
Yorks Post 21 September 2011
Sheffield Telegraph
4 August 2011 and
17 March 2011
BBC Radio Sheffield Interview with Stuart Mitchell and Derek Morton - click to download the podcast - see their website BBC Radio Sheffield about the Share Offer, 16 June 2011
Newspaper articles... a selection of the best...
Sheffield Star 21 June 2011
Yorkshire Post 16 June 2011
Previous articles in the Yorkshire Post - full page story Feb 2010 and Feb 2009
Sheffield Telegraph 17 March 2011 and an excellent article from early days, 28 Jan 2010
and finally... BBC
WEBSITE UPDATED 26 March 2012
BBC website Portland works in pictures, April 2010
updated 4 April 2012
The lovely people at Exposed Magazine have written yet another article about the campaign ... thank you!
Stuart's staring out from behind that blade again!
Very good article about the project here
Good publicity for the campaign - read it here
Now Then magazine, Sheffield's own Arts and creative industries magazine. The October issue (download here, look for page 4 on the pdf) has an article about the share issue for the upcoming purchase of the works.
Radio Sheffield reported on Portland Works in April 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/sheffield/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8635000/8635300.stm Listen to the audio and flick through the photo essay- they're fab!
�On the corner of Hill Street and Randall Street in Sheffield,
not far from the Bramall Lane ground of Sheffield United (known,
for a reason, as the Blades) is a large brick building called the
Portland Works. Built in the 1870s, it is one of very few workshops
still used by the city's surviving Little Mesters - the highly
skilled, self-employed craftsmen who formed the backbone of what
was, back then, the cutlery and tool-making capital of the world.
Sometime in late 1913, a metallurgist called Harry Brearley showed
up at this building, hoping to interest a cutler who worked there,
RF Mosley, in a shiny, chromium-heavy steel alloy he had discovered
that seemed almost completely resistant to corrosion. Mosley was
indeed interested, and soon enough the first stainless steel
cutlery ever made left the Portland Works.
Next month, Sheffield city council's planning committee will
consider an application to turn Portland Works into 66 studio
apartments and some office space. The structure itself is Grade II*
listed, and the development looks sympathetic enough. But if it
goes ahead, the small group of present-day Little Mesters who
occupy the Portland's warren of workshops - a knifemaker, a tool
forger, a silver plater, an engraver, a die maker - will be gone,
probably for good.
"I'd estimate that more people in the world today eat with
stainless steel knives and forks than speak English," says Robin
Wood, chair of a newly formed lobby group, the Heritage Crafts
Association, which is being launched today at the Victoria &
Albert museum. "You could argue it's our biggest cultural export.
So it seems quite extraordinary that we can protect the bricks and
mortar of a place like this, but not care in the least about the
skills and craftsmanship that are so much of this city's culture
and identity."
Modern Britain, it seems, is not much fussed about the skills and
knowledge that exist only in the minds, eyes and hands of people
who make things - our living vernacular heritage. We like them, in
a rose-tinted, nostalgic kind of way, but we don't do much to
support them. Read the rest here�
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/22/heritage-crafts-at-risk
Andy Cole of Wigful Tools was on Radio Sheffield yesterday, 9th February- the link to the show is here if you would like to listen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0067r7q/The_Toby_Foster_Bigger_at_Breakfast_Show_09_02_2010/
Yorkshire Post full page article 8 Feb 2010