Sheffield Flourish competition shortlist

“We are living in challenging and uncertain times but we firmly believe that from adversity can come creativity. Our city is full of talented people and groups who care about building a better future.”

We launched our first ever competition in February, with the aim of finding shared ideas, values and projects to inspire change. The response was truly inspiring, 26 thoughtful, creative, impactful, humorous and moving ideas for how to make Sheffield more mental health friendly. Each submission demonstrated the value of sourcing community building ideas from within the community – the experts by experience.

Our judges had an incredibly difficult time deciding on which entries should be shortlisted. There was a lot of disagreement, and all of the entries were liked by different judges for different reasons. We’ll be blowing dandelions this spring, wishing all your ideas can become realities!

In advance of the competition prizegiving (a free event where anyone’s welcome!), we’d  like to announce the 10 shortlisted entrants:

Beverley Akcay

Chris Blackmore

Cicely Cox

Clare Rishbeth

Daisy Demack, Kate Wilkinson and Fabien Leigh (under 16s)

Jim Millns

Mia Tennant

Rachel Wilson

Sarah Burke

Sharon Tabberer

At Wednesday’s event we’ll be announcing the overall winner, and four runners up. More importantly, it’ll be an opportunity to talk about how we can work together to realise some of these brilliant ideas, whether they won or not. There’s a surprising amount of overlap in the things our community came up with! We’ll be giving out certificates to all participants, which include feedback from our superb independent panel of judges.

After the event we’ll start publishing the entries on the site – watch this space!

A huge thank you again to everyone who took part. We were truly humbled to see how much talent we have in this city.