Deputy Lord Mayor officially opens new sensory garden at Graves Park for local sight loss charity In July, Councillor Safiya Saeed, The Deputy Lord Mayor of Sheffield, officially opened the SRSB Heritage and Sensory Garden at Graves Park. She was joined by staff, clients and volunteers from the charity, funders and representatives from Sheffield Parks, to unveil a sign that explains about the garden and Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind’s long history in Sheffield.

Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind or SRSB is one of Sheffield’s oldest charities and was founded in 1860. It has been at the forefront of sight loss services for visually impaired people in Sheffield for over 163 years. When the charity was due to celebrate its 160 year anniversary in September 2020, it couldn’t, because of the pandemic. However, not to be put off, they successfully applied late in 2021 to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for funding to help them celebrate their delayed anniversary. They were able to do this during 2022 and part of 2023.

Steve Loane, SRSB Fundraising Manager, said, “The Lottery funding allowed us to capture, preserve and raise awareness about SRSB and our heritage. It also helped us promote the History of Blindness in the Sheffield City Region demonstrating the impact of SRSB’s work through the same period. The overall aim was to share our unique heritage with the wider community through a series of outputs produced during the project which would raise awareness and create a lasting legacy for the future.”

One of those outputs was an SRSB sensory & heritage garden at Graves Park. In addition to the Heritage Lottery, the charity received a sizeable donation from the JG Graves Charitable Trust to help them enhance the garden and a further donation from the Sheffield Covid-19 Memorial Fund. The latter was a sculpture commissioned from Jason Turpin Thomson to reflect the visually impaired community’s experience of the pandemic. The Mappin Writers, SRSB’s client creative writing group, who meet every Friday morning at their Centre, wrote a poem which has been engraved on the stones along with some carvings which reflect visual impairment and our heritage.

Carol, from the group, read out the poem, before handing over to The Deputy Lord Mayor to officially open the garden.

Steve added, “The SRSB sensory & heritage garden in Graves Park provides a new resource for the people of Sheffield. We are very grateful to the National Heritage Lottery, JG Graves Trust, The Covid Memorial Fund, Graves Park, Mappin Writers and all the volunteers who made this project happen. I’m sure anyone who visits in the future will agree that the garden has enhanced the existing Rose Garden and is a great addition to this already well visited area of the park.”

For further information please about SRSB and our local sight loss services please call 0114 272 2757, email info@srsb.org.uk