Citybooks Sheffield
Citybooks Sheffield is an exciting EU-sponsored project in which the University of Sheffield works closely with the Flemish-Dutch House deBuren in Brussels. Five authors, a photographer and a video artist will create a unique portrait of the city of Sheffield, an alternative travel guide, which will be available in three languages: English, French and Dutch. Sheffield is the UK representative in this web-based project coordinated for Sheffield by Henriette Louwerse, Germanic Studies/SOMLAL.
The artists involved are a mix of Sheffield-grown and out-of-town contributors. Our three guests will take up residence in Sheffield for a period of two weeks spread out over 2011. The other two writers are local artists, as is our photographer.
The authors will write a citybook. This can be a prose or poetry contribution in which Sheffield will play an important role. The five citybooks will appear as a text on the citybook site, as a free e-book and as a pod-cast read by the authors themselves or by a professional narrator. The e-books will be made available in Dutch, English and French.
The photographer records his impression of Sheffield in twenty-four photographs.
In addition a video portrait will be made for the City One Minutes series. The idea is simple: a short one-minute film is made of every hour on a certain day. This will result in twenty-four short videos to represent twenty-four hours of one day in Sheffield.
More than a finished product
Sheffield citybooks will run until Spring 2012. Until then there will be a number of activities and events associated with citybooks because citybooks is not just about the finished product, it is also about the (creative) process. Citybooks events will often involve Sheffield students, but Sheffielders outside of the university will be involved too.
Our Diary of Events has a number of scheduled activities, but it will remain flexible and leave open the opportunity for additional activities.
Together with fourteen other European, citybooks Sheffield is both a presentation of our city and a celebration of Sheffield as a place to study, to live, to visit but above all as our home.
