Building & crafting Sheffield's reputation on a global scale.

‘Sheffield Inspires’ is a creative and unified way of talking about our city, and forms the brand positioning and proposition for the city of Sheffield, UK.

It is what we will stand for; it is how people will know us; it is our purpose as a place.

It has been developed working alongside partners across Sheffield, including academic institutions, key organisations and industry leaders.

As a city, we have a number of unique strengths - from our green spaces to our advanced manufacturing to culture and heritage - but none of them are enough on their own to drive Sheffield's reputation for a global, mass market audience. 

'Inspires' unites our key strengths by giving us an overarching theme that communicates what Sheffield stands for and what our purpose as a city is, whilst simultaneously focusing on our individual strengths.

Ultimately, if the world comes to know us as the city that inspires, it creates a halo effect and gives meaning to all our key strengths, together.

Economic value

If we can be as simple and single minded as possible about our purpose and the impact it has on the world, then it is more memorable, and people can understand whether or not we are relevant as a place to them. If we can make Sheffield relevant to as many people as possible, by defining how we impact the world outside of our boundary, then we are building a solid, meaningful and purposeful reputation. This in turn then makes it more likely for people to visit, live, or work here - all of which drive our economic value in an upwards direction.

Can you help?

It won't be a short term fix - think about the reputations of other cities around the world and how long and what it might take for that to change in your mind. So the more Sheffield organisations and people get behind this, the easier it will be - because our voice together is much stronger and more meaningful.

Below you will find a decision tree to work out whether what you're working on or thinking about will:

• fit under 'Inspires'
• use the core Sheffield visual identity
• need a bit of our help in raising awareness and shouting about

There's always shades of grey though, so if you have ideas for how 'Inspires' can benefit your community, organisation, the city, the sector you work in, the nation, continent or world, but you're not sure exactly what you need or whether it's right, then please get in touch using the form further down this page.

Starting the journey

To help bring this new way of storytelling for the city to life, we have utilised some of the city’s exceptional creative talent, across art, music and tech, to create an animation that weaves our initial 7 key themes together. You can read more about that on our 'how Sheffield Inspires was created' page. This is very much just the start, with the animation being just one creative example of how ‘Sheffield Inspires’ can be put into action. In doing so, we hope to ignite more ideas.

Hero, core, sub - or none?

It can be tricky to work out which aspect of Sheffield's city brand is right for your project, organisation, event, initiative, or campaign. We've tried to make it as simple as possible in this diagram, but do always get in touch if you have any questions. Please note this page is available in full in the 'Inspires Principles' document, which can be found in our Toolkits, guidelines & assets page.

Want to get in touch with an idea?

Please fill out the details in the form below. Please note we are not able to get back to every response we receive, but all submissions will be read and considered and we will get back in due course if relevant to do so.