Place, Craft, and Alcohol in Historical Perspective is a new Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, fronted by Professor Phil Withington and Dr Nick Groat at the University of Sheffield. Setting out to explore how the emergence of ‘craft’ alcohol is understood, characterised, and defined, the project investigates how this new practice and form of production has influenced urban spaces.
Place, Craft, and Alcohol builds on ideas developed within Intoxicating Spaces. Following this vital historical perspective on contemporary questions surrounding the position of intoxicating substances within everyday life, Place, Craft, and Alcohol examines the influence that a new ‘tradition’ of alcohol production tied to the so-called ‘craft revolution’ is having on towns, cities, and regions. Here, values representing ‘craft’ – independence, authenticity, locality, community, sustainability, artisanal work, and more – are often seen to differentiate craft producers against the large-scale economic production that is commonplace in contemporary society.
Sheffield is the unique setting for the project: a northern English city with a long history associated with the manufacture and consumption of alcohol. On the back of the steel and cutlery industries, Sheffield’s urban population ballooned from the eighteenth century. With a significant uptake in pubs, breweries, and beerhouses as centres of daily life for the industrial population, the city eventually became a target of the Temperance Movement due to the sheer number of places where alcohol could be bought and consumed.
Now in a stage of post-industrial reimagination, Sheffield has been recognised as the ‘real ale capital of the world’, where its thriving brewing industry is tied to the origins of the craft beer movement. Equally, the emergence of ‘micro-breweries’ and more recently artisanal distilleries have contributed to a thriving craft alcohol scene that is seen to reflect the industrial and craft heritage of the city. The concept of ‘craft alcohol’ has, however, become somewhat ill-defined. Indeed, it is a contentious topic of debate, where multinational corporations now produce alcohol under the label of ‘craft’, and the new breed of intoxicating spaces are the subject of discussions on social change, mobility, and class culture.
Place, Craft, and Alcohol centralises the question ‘what does ‘craft’, in all its understandings, even mean?’, but engages with those at the heart of this issue to help understand and shape the debate. Working with a wide spectrum of partners, contributors, and participants, from the historical expertise of Sheffield City Archives to the in-depth manufacturing knowledge of gin pioneers Locksley Distilling, the project explores how the contemporary ‘craft alcohol revolution’ might be as significant for the production and experience of urban space today as those processes that transformed Britain’s intoxicant economy from the seventeenth century onwards. Culminating in a multidimensional picture of how ‘craft’ is shaping Sheffield, the project compares the craft alcohol movement with other historical moments when the production and consumption of psychoactive substances underwent transformations.
In future blog posts over on the project website, we’ll be outlining the individual components, outputs, and methods central to the project – historical mapping, alcohol trails, craft characterisations, oral histories, artistic responses, podcasts – and putting the spotlight on our project partners. In the meantime, feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or ideas: n.groat@sheffield.ac.uk.