Community radio station to move into derelict pub

A disused public house in Sheffield city centre is set to be renovated and transformed into a new community radio, tv studio and live arts space.

The team behind Sheffield Live radio and TV bought the former Tap and Barrel pub on Castlegate with help from social investment lender, The Key Fund.

They now aim to raise further funds from a community shares issue to refurbish the bar and performance spaces with the final project expected to cost £500,000.

The move is part of wider regeneration of the area with the building situated at the corner of the former site of Sheffield's medieval castle where a new urban park is being developed.

Sheffield Live originally formed in 2000 for a short-term broadcast in Mount Pleasant Park for the Sharrow Festival.

After securing an FM license they moved to a home at the former National Centre for Popular Music in 2002 and, after Sheffield Hallam University took over the site in 2009, the station moved across the road to the Workstation on Paternoster Row.

Steve Buckley of Sheffield Community Media said acquiring the pub would meet their "ambition to find a space for live performance, community arts and social enterprise that can integrate with our broadcast media facilities".

He said they aimed to do two things: "One is to provide a platform for content that you don't hear very much of on mainstream media and the other is to represent the diversity of our communities."

The pub went through several name changes over the years including the Boulogne Mouth which became the Bull and Mouth.

African Voices Radio who've held a DAB license since 2023 broadcast from the Workstation alongside Sheffield Live and will follow them to the new site.

Tchiyiwe Chihana, director of African Voices Platform, said they were "delighted" to have the opportunity to work with Sheffield Live and to be involved in a new space for community arts which would "showcase our city's diverse talent and enterprise".

"Where we're moving to is very exciting because we're moving into a period of growth where we've had lots of engagement and will be closer to the community".

The finished building on Castlegate will also include podcast studios, a public cafe and bar, and performance space for local artists and promoters.

The aim is for the old pub function room on the first floor to become a TV studio and bedrooms above the bar to become radio studios.

Buckley is confident that the first phase of the renovation work will be "relatively straightforward".

"We're putting in the basic stuff to make the building habitable, installing some electrics and lighting, checking all sort of fire safety and other health and safety issues and so on so that we can move our studios over here."

The second phase of the project will see members of the public invited to invest with the launch of a community shares issue later this year.

That aims to raise £150,000 to enable the bar and function room to reopen and to host performances by Spring 2027.

"Overall, we're probably going to have to invest about half a million to bring this building back into its optimal state and to develop it in ways that make use of some of the land and the footprint that it covers" he said.

Sangita Basudev, co-founder of Sheffield Live, said it was the "last bit of the jigsaw".

"It's the dream that we had for Sheffield Live to have its own building and so now the sky's the limit."

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