Multigenerational Places: Sheffield

Our spaces for connection across generations can help us shape more confident, productive and collaborative communities. Yet we find surprisingly few opportunities to connect with people of different ages outside our family circles. Instead, we generally find ourselves studying, working and socialising within our own age group.

What role might the buildings, spaces, homes, neighbourhoods and high streets of the city of Sheffield play in creating more multigenerational environments? How can those designing, curating and using these spaces make a difference to how they serve people of all ages?

Join us for Multigenerational Places: Sheffield, where we’ll explore these questions through discussion and playful making activities, working together to co-design ideas and recommendations for how we can create more multigenerational cities, towns and neighbourhoods.

Multigenerational Places: Sheffield is a collaboration between The Glass-House Community Led Design, The University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture and Landscape, Live Works and ISRAAC Somali Community Association. The event’s co-design activities will be co-facilitated with University of Sheffield students involved in the WEdesign Student Programme. The event will take place at the Israac Centre, home to a myriad of activities and services serving the local community, and a place where different generations come together through their programmes.

We encourage people of all ages and from all walks of life to join this creative space for collaborative blue-sky thinking on how we might do things better in the future.

This is a free event but places are limited.

About WEdesign 2025/26: Contributing to a National Conversation

Multigenerational Places: Sheffield is part of the 2025/26 Glass-House WEdesign programme, which brings people together across communities, ages, sectors and disciplines to explore how we can create more spaces to connect with people of other ages, and how this might benefit us as a society.

Through a series of free public co-design events, think pieces and a student design competition, this year’s WEdesign series will be a space to co-produce a national Multigenerational Places Manifesto, collecting voices, ideas and recommendations for shaping more multigenerational places across the UK.

Find out more about the full 2025/26 Multigenerational Places programme here.

Find out more about The Glass-House WEdesign programme (past and present) and how we work with partners and students here.

Multigenerational Places is a collaboration between The Glass-House Community Led Design and: Glasgow School of Art & Missing in Architecture (Glasgow); University of Sheffield, Live Works & Israac Somali Community Association(Sheffield); UCL Bartlett (London), Newcastle University & The Farrell Centre (Newcastle); Arup (Practice); and Intergenerational National Network (Think Pieces).