A public stamp of approval can take different forms. For a popular performer, it often involves a grand prizegiving staged in front of an audience of fellow artists. But for the singer and composer Richard Hawley, the tribute just paid by his home city is an accolade that aces all the others.
“I am immensely proud and so are my family,” Hawley told the Observer this weekend, responding to news that the hit musical based on his songs, Standing at the Sky’s Edge, has been awarded the Made in Sheffield trademark. “It’s mind-blowing,” he said.
It is a first for the internationally recognised symbol, a maker’s mark that dates from the area’s steel and cutlery manufacturing history.
“I’m still trying to get my head around it, although I’m generally not arsed about awards,” said Hawley, 56, going on to recall a very sweary acceptance speech he made last spring at a prestigious theatrical ceremony. “I usually make a buffoon of myself at those events, like I did at the Oliviers. But getting a maker’s mark from Sheffield is different. I’ll allow myself five minutes of pride.”
The tribute is a recognition of the show’s depiction of the hopes, dreams and realities of the residents of a well-known city landmark, the Park Hill estate. Time and economic forces have changed its ethnic makeup and altered the values of each generation.
And Hawley himself is now something of a Sheffield landmark. Before his successful solo career he played guitar in two bands, Treebound Story and Longpigs. He also briefly joined his good friend Jarvis Cocker’s band, Pulp. An acknowledged inspiration to Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, Hawley has played and recorded with many other famous stars, including Paul Weller and Nancy Sinatra.
The musical project was close to his heart from the first. “I was quite definite when I got involved, I said I’d walk if I detected the vaguest whiff of standing on a soapbox. You don’t need to do that to audiences. The story tells itself,” Hawley said. The final show brought together both older and newer residents on the estate, groups who previously did not talk, he added.
“We invited both of them to a preview. They sat together and I heard one old resident go up to some of the newer ones and tell them they’d be welcome to join them when they meet in a pub in Hillsborough,” he said.
The Olivier winner for best new musical, which was developed in Sheffield before premiering at the Crucible Theatre in 2019, will now open at the Gillian Lynne theatre in the West End in February, following an acclaimed run at London’s National Theatre earlier this year.
Robert Hastie, artistic director of Sheffield Theatres, directed the production and said it is both “an expression and an explanation of the city”.
“It’s meant an awful lot to a lot of people,” he added. “Finding the universal in the specific is something theatre does really well. So if you had set out to do a show about postwar Britain, you might be in trouble. But if you set a show inside one flat on a housing estate in a post-industrial northern city over 70 years, then you find yourself telling a national story.”
The Made in Sheffield mark was created to protect the city’s unique reputation for steel manufacturing and has not been given to a stage show before. “Standing at the Sky’s Edge is as Made in Sheffield as my knives, it’s created here, its music comes from here, it’s about the heart and soul of Sheffield and tells the story of Sheffield to the world,” said Charles Turner, master cutler.
The musical’s book was written by Sheffield playwright Chris Bush, who said the new endorsement reflects the way the city’s population has backed the show, something she admits she and Hawley did not take for granted during rehearsals, which were conducted in sight of the Park Hill estate.
“If you can win the city over great, but if not, you have really mucked up,” said Bush. “But making things is a big part of our history. Wherever I am in the world, I always look on the other side of my fork to check where it’s made. The idea that art is also a made thing, and is as much a product of this city, is important.”
As talk of a film version of the musical progresses, Hawley is pleased to think the maker’s mark will protect the story. “It’s legally binding,” he said, adding that he is even considering having a Made in Sheffield tattoo. “That is a boss idea,” he said.
