Walking heritage: Mapping a city's hidden history
Dr Carmen Levick from the University's School of English has developed a new immersive walking app that transforms Sheffield’s streets into a historic trail. Discover how the app uses existing landmarks, images and music to recover the untold stories of the city’s past communities.
Many European cities like Sheffield are celebrated for their rich cultural heritage and diverse populations. However, the personal stories of communities that make up such inclusive and heterogenous spaces often disappear from official historical narratives, which tend to focus on common traits instead of lived realities.
When the emphasis is exclusively placed upon shared identity, the unique, personal voices of individual communities tend to fade. As a result, the histories, traditions, struggles, and triumphs of distinct groups risk becoming footnotes instead of central chapters in a city's overall history.
This disparity sparked an interest in Dr Carmen Levick, from the University of Sheffield’s School of English, whose research focuses on heritage, memory and identity. Her work explores how official histories shape individual identities and how a community's legacy can be found in a city's built environment, even when the community itself is no longer prominent. Her wider research, which includes studying the Holocaust in Eastern European, also looks into recovering the narratives of communities that have disappeared, and how the stories of a past community can be superimposed over remaining buildings and places that have often been repurposed or built over.
Building on this idea of memory, identity, citizenship, and how there seems to be a discrepancy in historical records, Dr Levick turned her attention to the untold stories of Sheffield, and the profound influence they have had on the region.
While researching these hidden narratives, a key moment occurred in May 2023. At the launch of the Sheffield Jewish Studies Research Network at the University, a discussion on heritage sites highlighted the general lack of documentation about the contributions of the city's communities within Sheffield's historical records. This marked the start of Dr Levick’s heritage project, which aimed to unearth and make visible the unique stories and music of Sheffield's Jewish communities, who had a determining influence on the city from as early as the 18th century.
Dr Levick’s vision was to create an interactive walking trail app and website, which would allow for a direct engagement with both the physical public space of the city and the more intimate narratives and music of the local Jewish communities, increasing the awareness and understanding of users in connection with local histories.
“If you go to Prague, they have an app that you can use - a walking app which basically pinpoints some of the things that you might want to see if you're interested in the past of the city that's connected to Jewish culture. They have one in Budapest as well - and this concept of walking gave me an idea about doing something similar in Sheffield” explains Dr Levick.
“At heart I’m a theatre scholar, and I was always interested in how walking in a city or in a space can be done more immersively. So not just as a map walking from A to B that you can use Google maps for, but actually providing some education or creating atmospheres as you go along”.
“I wanted something that makes people look up, take in the buildings, and think about the past of an area. So, having in mind what kind of people lived there, and where they lived. And I found that the best way of doing this is in places where you don't actually have a lot of existing sites that need to be visited. Where you can use these immersive technologies to almost recreate an area of a city with things like stories and music” adds Dr Levick.
First steps towards mapping our past histories
Funded through the University of Sheffield’s Knowledge Exchange grants, and with help from Llama Digital and the city’s Jewish communities, Dr Levick created the Sheffield Jewish Heritage Walking Trail app, a cross-disciplinary project, combining cultural, performance and heritage studies to unveil the city’s Jewish heritage.
The walking trail starts at the beginning of the 19th century and tells stories of the community up until the first world war. It explores locations associated with the community, using stories, images and soundscapes to offer an immersive experience. As users walk, stories and sounds are triggered through GPS technology to paint a picture of a time long past but one of crucial importance to the development of the Jewish community in Sheffield and of the city itself as a multicultural space.
Dr Levick developed the materials for the app by working closely with the Jewish community in Sheffield and visiting the Sheffield Archives to establish an understanding of the community's historical presence in the city. The aim was to move beyond conventional mapping, and to allow the public to engage with history by physically traversing the locations where these events occurred.
“I went to the Sheffield Archives and to the city library where they have quite a lot of unused documents that you can access. I wanted to tell stories that were both educational and humorous to show the atmosphere of the community - the ordinary, everyday stuff - what they were eating, what kind of songs they were singing, where the kids would go to school. Through doing this, I collected 100 years of stories and narratives with the help of Professor Judy Simons who is an Emeritus Professor of English and former Pro Vice Chancellor. I then asked a member of the community to read and record these narratives for the audio commentaries on the app” explains Dr Levick.
“I wanted to add in some music as well, so we got in touch with a new Klezmer community band, and we talked about what kind of music people would have listened to at the time. The band, the 7 Hills Kapelye produced by Phil Tomlinson, recorded seven songs for us and those pieces of music were placed over the top of the narratives to create a more authentic atmosphere of what the feel of that area would have been like in the 19th century” adds Dr Levick.
During her field work, Dr Levick found that the majority of the Jewish community in Sheffield during the 19th century lived behind the city’s Cathedral, but there was very little left that is recognisable from the past. Although many of the original buildings were gone, the surviving street names created an opportunity to demonstrate her idea that a place's stories can remain connected to a location, even after the physical structure has disappeared.
“I decided that the best way to do it was to have various phases for the app. It starts by focusing on the beginnings of the community, behind the Cathedral. The trail then weaves through the city centre, covering key areas from Figtree Lane to West Bar Green, via Campo Lane, North Church Street, Silver Street, and Lee Croft. But users really can start anywhere they’d like to and it takes around 30 minutes to complete” explains Dr Levick.
A new way of thinking about heritage and identity
Dr Levick’s app and connected website was launched as part of the Sheffield Jewish Heritage event at the Sheffield City Library in May 2024. Since its roll out, around 200 people have downloaded the app, helping to increase awareness among Sheffield locals and tourists about the impact Jewish communities have had on the city's development. Initial feedback from the event noted a powerful feeling of belonging, sense of place and greater connection with Sheffield as a city.
Dr Levick’s research and the resulting walking app has also prompted new ways of thinking about heritage through both physical and digital engagement. This has resulted in Dr Levick having conversations with Oliver Coppard, the South Yorkshire Mayor, and Sheffield City Council, about including the app in the city’s heritage strategy, and to make it more visible through the Welcome to Sheffield programme. It is hoped this will help to improve local cultural tourism.
“I had a conversation with Oliver Coppard about local heritage before the app was created. We’re now in talks to feature the app on their heritage tourist strategy that they have for South Yorkshire” explains Dr Levick.
“I think the possibilities and uses of the app are quite wide ranging. I’ve started to think about schools, especially secondary schools, so when students’ learn about citizenship and Sheffield, the app could be tied into the curriculum. I think it'd be a good way to teach history differently and to engage kids. So that's one avenue that I'm exploring at the moment” adds Dr Levick.
Looking ahead
In terms of future plans, Dr Levick aims to either produce another app for what happened after the first world war, or to do something similar for the other communities in Sheffield.
“I’d be interested to see how the technology itself can be translated to other communities. We had somebody from the Bangladeshi community who came to the launch, and they were very keen to have a conversation about the possibility of doing something similar for their community” explains Dr Levick.
Dr Levick is currently collaborating with Rhonda Allen, a PhD student in Health Sciences at the University who is researching the role of food in the community. Recognising their shared interests, the pair plan to apply for a grant to develop a new inclusive walking app for Sheffield. They’ll start by holding workshops to show the current app to local communities and gather their input on which community examples and stories would be best to include, ensuring the new app is diverse and representative of the many groups that make up Sheffield.
In addition, Dr Levick is also looking to launch a joint research project focused on the Sheffield Maccabi Players, a Jewish community theatre company who often performed at the Library Theatre in the city centre. Working in collaboration with the Sheffield City Archives and Library, members of the Jewish community, and local theatre companies, the project seeks to explore and document the important cultural legacy of this unique network.
