ChopShop Studios Tour: Inside Sheffield's Maker Spaces
Where Making Happens
ChopShop is one of Sheffield’s more characterful maker spaces — a converted workshop in the city’s industrial quarter where jewellers, metalworkers and product designers share tools, space and ideas. The studio tour during Sheffield Design Week 2015 offered a rare glimpse behind the doors of a working creative space.
The tour was led by one of the resident makers, who walked the group through the space with an enthusiasm grounded in daily familiarity. They pointed out the shared laser cutter — a significant investment that no individual maker could justify alone — and explained how the sharing of equipment creates a community of practice as much as a community of convenience.
A Working Space
What struck me most about ChopShop was how unselfconsciously productive it was. This was not a co-working space designed to photograph well on social media. The surfaces were marked, the shelves were full, and the air carried the faint metallic scent of cut steel. Makers were at their benches during the tour, and the sound of their work formed a constant backdrop.
One resident maker paused her work to show us the ring she was finishing — a silver band with a hand-engraved pattern inspired by Sheffield’s grid-iron street plan. It was a small piece, but it connected the maker’s practice directly to the city’s character. That kind of local reference runs through much of the work produced at ChopShop.
Sheffield’s Studio Ecosystem
ChopShop exists within a broader network of maker spaces across the city. Persistence Works offers studio space for visual artists and designers, while the Heeley Shed provides community workshop access. Together, these spaces form an infrastructure that supports making at every level — from amateur to professional, from community to commercial.
The tour complemented the Open Studios programme, which invited visitors into studios across the city. For anyone interested in where Sheffield’s creative culture physically exists, ChopShop and spaces like it are the answer — modest, purposeful and deeply embedded in the city’s making tradition.
