It was fascinating to be invited to an informal meeting at the Sheffield City Archives recently, based below the Showroom cinema in between BBC Radio Sheffield and the Red Tape Studios. This block used to be occupied by Kennings garage and car showroom many years ago. SCA have been looking at what SMA are doing and felt there might be some way we could co-operate and build on the work the site has done.

In turn it was good to see SCA has been generously offered local concert poster designer Martin Bedford’s extensive archive by his son, mostly done for The Leadmill, and seeing this brought back a lot of gig memories, particularly for Nick whose various local bands turn up on some of the posters. SCA hope to build on this remarkable collection and while sadly The Leadmill as a venue seems destined for oblivion (and let’s not forget it was a famous local pop venue back in the Sixties as well), at least some of the last 45 years or so of gig memories will be preserved. We both remember going to gigs there during the grand opening fortnight, and Simon still has the poster for that somewhere in his own collection.

The SCA side of things pop and rock wise is being ably curated by Cheryl (I can add surnames but usually don’t for privacy) and as Simon and Nick have been pondering what to do with physical memorabilia (as have other music fans in the city – get in touch!), a tie up with the City Archives seems a really good move. Our thanks to Cheryl for the invite and giving us a behind the scenes tour (where we spotted the old Leadmill venue sign from the doorway – amazingly Martin Bedford rescued this before it shut!). Hopefully more to follow on this story.