An annual programme of events and activities to rediscover the legacy of John Ruskin in Sheffield, from 2014 - 2019, produced by the Guild of St George.
Welcome to the website of Ruskin in Sheffield, a programme of creative events and activities across the city inspired by the Ruskin Collection at the Millennium Gallery, which ran from 2014 to 2019, John Ruskin’s bicentenary year.
The programme has now ended, and we’d like to thank everyone who has taken part and helped to revitalise the heritage and legacy of John Ruskin in Sheffield for today. Over 25,000 audiences and prticipants, 150 artists and volunteers, and 30 community and culture partners have engaged with their local Ruskin heritage, craftsmanship, drawing, good livelihoods, utopian thinking, nature, social justice and their local community.
The Guild of St George has published a new community engagement handbook for arts, heritage and community practitioners offering stories to inspire and socially engaged practice, based on the Ruskin in Sheffied programme. Paradise is Here: Building Community Around Things That Matter by Ruth Nutter, the Guild's creative producer, is available from 5th November 2020 at the Millennium Gallery, Weston Park Museum and La Biblioteka at Kommune in Sheffield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and from the Guild's online bookshop.
The handbook is based on an external evaluation of the impact of the Ruskin in Sheffield programme. You can download a summary here.
The Guild’s work in Sheffield continues through closely working with Museums Sheffield to care for and engage people with the Ruskin Collection. We will also continue to develop our collaboration with Heeley Trust to explore ways of increasing wellbeing in the local neighbourhood, using Ruskin’s ideas, from the Guild’s base at Meersbrook Hall.
For further information, please contact Ruth Nutter, Creative Producer, Guild of St George, via [email protected] or 07951 578208.
For details of the Guild of St George’s activities around the UK and internationally, please visit www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk.
RUSKIN
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John Ruskin was a renowned thinker, writer, artist and social reformer. He founded the Guild of St George in 1871 to help make the world a better place to live in.
Ruskin’s main connection with Sheffield is the Ruskin Collection at the Millennium Gallery, which is owned and supported by the Guild of St George and cared for and displayed by Museums Sheffield. In 1875, Ruskin chose Walkley as the neighbourhood for St George’s Museum to house a remarkable collection of paintings, drawings, architectural cases, books and minerals. Its purpose was to educate and inspire the metal-workers of Sheffield. From 1890 - 1953, the collection was displayed at the Ruskin Museum at Meersbrook Park, and then at the Ruskin Gallery on Norfolk Street throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Ruskin also purchased St George’s Farm in Totley in the late 1800s to set up a utopian communal land project for the workers of Sheffield.
We are grateful for a number of funding awards that made Ruskin in Sheffield possible:
National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, Being Human Festival of Humanities, Catalyst Festival of Creativity (Sheffield Hallam University), Sheffield Year of Making, University of Sheffield, Church Burgesses Educational Foundation, Sheffield Grammar School Exhibition Foundation, and Mount Pleasant Educational Foundation.
