"This won't stop us" - messages left in ashes of Sheffield art installation destroyed by arsonists

An art installation created to help raise awareness of women’s safety in Sheffield has itself been burned to the ground, less than a month after it opened.

The piece, located in Ponderosa park, lit up at night and featured cut out poems written by Sheffield women based on their experiences of street harassment as well as an engraved Experience Map - a map of locations in the city where victims have experienced catcalling and street harassment.

Important messages, you might agree.

Perhaps these messages struck too close to home for some who could not bear to see a physical representation of their own wrongdoing or mindset, and so took matters into their own hands?

Or was it the mindless act of a group of vandals who would have attacked anything that happened to be in front of them on a Saturday night?

Answers on a postcard, please.

It’s likely we will never know who set fire to the installation, the work of many weeks to create, although the police have been informed.

But it’s not difficult to see why many women don’t feel safe being out in Sheffield public spaces, particularly at night, when art can be set on fire and nobody will face any consequences.

Now messages from campaign group Our Bodies Our Streets have been left on the ashes of the sculpture.

They read ‘this won’t stop us’ and ask people to share how the destruction made them feel.

Student Kai Damani said he hoped the conversation about women’s safety in Sheffield would continue, adding: “Maybe it (the sculpture) will not have died in vain.”

It is sad that it had to come to arson but perhaps this incident will press home the issue with even more urgency.

Read the full story on page 28.