City's winning creations
Mark Pearce is a man who combines his Yorkshire roots with an eye for some of the finer things in life. He champions Sheffield as the centre for creative talent in the UK and is proud to call the city home.
As one of four directors of The Workshop, a creative agency based in Kenwood Park Road, Nether Edge, Mark spearheads the company's e-learning arm, which designs websites and other learning tools for clients, including the Houses of Parliament education service, the Royal Institution of Great Britain and learndirect.
His career in e-learning and web design seems a million miles away from his early career as a buyer for British Coal, where he worked at the height of the miners' strikes in the 1980s.
Seeking a more creative outlet for his interests, Mark went back to college in Psalter Lane to study a four-year BEd course with the intention of teaching design and technology. But he was soon lured into the commercial sector, where he saw opportunities for using fast-improving video and digital technologies to help other teachers teach.
The Workshop was founded 16 years ago, employs 55 people and this year featured at number 50 in Design Week magazine's top 100 UK design companies.
PARK HILL FLATS
I grew up on the Park Hill estate in the Sixties and Seventies and I absolutely loved it there.
We lived in what would possibly be described today as a penthouse duplex apartment. It had a balcony and a fitted kitchen with waste disposal, which was pure luxury in those days.
Our flat was very spacious and represented the pinnacle of modern living. Park Hill has probably the best view of the entire city but one of the best things about it was the sense of community – it was much more than just a space to live in.
The Park Hill estate is now an iconic piece of architecture – something all of Sheffield should be proud of. I was pleased when English Heritage granted it a Grade-II* listing. I just hope its current developers can restore it back to its former glory so that future generations can see Park Hill in the way I do.
THE ART OF JONNY WILKINSON
My love for great architecture is one of the reasons I rank Sheffield-based artist Jonny Wilkinson among my favourite living artists. While most people will know more about his famous rugby-playing namesake, many will have seen Jonny's art, as it has appeared all over Sheffield.
Jonny specialises in capturing the modernist architecture of the recent past, much of which has regrettably now been lost – but his images of buildings like the Wedding Cake, the Egg Box, the Cooling Towers and the Baltic Flour Mills will remain iconic pieces for years to come.
My favourite work by Jonny, unsurprisingly, is a painting I have of the Park Hill flats. It has pride of place in my living room.
THE SHEFFIELD DANCE SCENE
The reason I started dancing about seven years ago was because one of my co-directors, Tiina Carr, tried to get some of us to go dancing at Cubana, in Trippet Lane.
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Letters She’d picked up the buzz while living for a while in Madrid.
Another director, Colin Scott, and I agreed to meet there on Saturday afternoons to secretly learn Salsa in order to impress Tiina at the company Christmas party. But Colin never turned up for that first lesson!
I, on the other hand, did. I loved it and decided to carry on. The dance scene in Sheffield is really vibrant at the moment. It’s not just salsa, there are other kinds of dance forms that have come on in recent years, like the Bachata, from the Dominican Republic, and the Kizomba, from Angola.
Every Sunday evening I go to Platillos, in Leopold Square, where there’s a fantastic global mix of people aged 16 to 60-plus.
BLUE MOON CAFE CARROT CAKE
What can I say? The carrot cake at the Blue Moon Cafe, just by the Cathedral, is simply the best carrot cake in the world – bar none. And that’s not really doing it justice. It is unbelievable.
I don’t really need an excuse to go there, as any sane person would surely forgive me if they knew why I was going, but I often find myself making excuses to walk in that general direction.
I can’t explain why this particular carrot cake is so good but I would recommend that everyone tries it at least once. Perfect!
PSALTER LANE ART COLLEGE
Although the Psalter Lane building recently closed down, marking the end of an era, much of its spirit is still evident in the modern campus buildings and classrooms in Sheffield that have now replaced it.
When I was at Psalter Lane it was an incredibly creative environment, a unique community for artists of all disciplines, from photographers, designers and jewellery makers to sculptors, painters and potters. It was a truly inspirational place to work and learn and I believe this spirit helped to spawn the many thousands of people that have made Sheffield arguably the most creative city in the UK.
SHEFFIELD TRAIN STATION
I love the new Sheffield train station. As a gateway to the city it’s a wonderful advertisement for people visiting here for the first time. But even for me, it fills me with a sense of excitement every time I start a journey there. And I always look forward to returning to such a diverse and vibrant piece of ‘living’ architecture.
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Saturday 04 February 2012
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