Celebrate Sheffield's heritage in online festival this month

Portland Works has launched an online programme of virtual events as part of the national Heritage Open Days celebrations.

Organised virtual tours, volunteer interviews, photography exhibitions and historical education films have formed a week-long agenda for this historic community project.

All events are available online via a dedicated page on the Portland Works website from now until September 20.

Every September roughly 46,000 volunteers across England organise 5,500 events for the Heritage Open Days Festival, celebrating history and culture.

Sheffield’s Portland Works is using this opportunity to share the long and fascinating history behind the Grade II listed building.

Stella Howe, outreach and education officer at Portland Works, said: “For 2020 at Portland Works we are of course delighted to be taking part in the Heritage Open Days festival.

"It is a very good opportunity to view the progress of restoration and repair completed over the last seven years.”

Portland Works contains a collection of workspaces, after 50 years of neglect the building was bought by 500 people in one of the country’s biggest community share issues.

The building was designed by JH Jenkinson in the late 1870s and is often referred to as the birthplace of stainless-steel cutlery manufacturing.

It has now been reborn as a centre for small manufacturing, independent artists and craftspeople, with more than 30 small businesses including knife makers and sharpeners, metal engineering firms, cabinetmakers and joiners, jewellers and silver platers, artists, rug and guitar makers, photographers and even a Yorkshire-based gin distillery.

The heritage festival will include new features that all benefit from their online format.

A new virtual tour with historical commentary will be available as well as a photography exhibition exploring works from 2009 to now on the Portland Works website.

Furthermore, the festival will include a viewing of short films alongside interviews with volunteers and special guests.

For more information and to take part in the festival and its activities, visit www.portlandworks.co.uk.