In our monthly spotlight on on the entepreneurial stories behind South Yorkshire companies, we spoke to Lexy Webster of Burton Street Foundation. Originally Langsett Road School, Burton Street faced demolition in 1995 but was saved by community leader, Jim Taylor, forming the Burton Street Foundation.
Now a bustling community hub, it serves around 2,500 people weekly, hosting numerous events and activities. Providing disability services to 250 clients and housing 14 local businesses along with 35 charities and community groups, Burton Street maintains four buildings and delivers services across three sites, including the largest indoor community space in the area. Mostly based in Hillsborough, these sites include rooms for arts and crafts, music, sports and much more.
Who uses Burton Street Foundation?
Burton Street Foundation serves primarily as a community centre as well as a leading provider of disability day services in Sheffield. We have a really good reputation for our disability services; I’d heard about it long before working here just because of the quality of care it provides. We also have a lot of social enterprise businesses that work from our site as well, so it’s a community hub too.
I’ve heard a bit about the Art Skills and Articulate Sessions that Burton Street provides, and how that recently has helped your client, Adnarn, to create ‘Solo’, his upcoming exhibition. Could you tell me a little bit more about these sessions?
These sessions are designed around the pillars of wellbeing from the NHS, focusing on physical, emotional and social wellbeing. All of our sessions have targets to help all of our clients in exploring independence and advocacy in their own way. This could be anything like doing a catwalk fashion show for fun and learning to put the garments together. We also have a radio group where they interview people – for example, we’ve had Human League’s Phil Oakey in the past. Our YouTube is full of the different video editing they’ve done.
And how are these activities tailored to meet the diverse needs of your clients?
Adult activities fall within the following departments: Building Independence, Promoting Independence, Focused Support, Individual Support, and Complex Needs. So, when somebody comes to us, we will assess which team is the right team for them and we can focus on how they want to thrive. We also have a children and young person service, which operates in the school holidays and Saturdays during term time.
Can you talk us through some of the positive impacts this support can have?
As we’ve mentioned, Adnarn’s ‘Solo’ show is a perfect example. Just by being given complete creative freedom, and having people to encourage and support him, he has been able to completely develop his own art style to the point where he can now do a solo show. There’s also a story about another one of our clients, Craig.
We’d taken Craig to one of our events – we’d had a pop-up cinema to celebrate another one of our guys going to the Special Olympics – and on the way out of the event they went down to the train station Craig said, “I’ve never been on a train” and we were like “What? Craig’s never been on a train!” From that moment, his support workers made it their mission to take Craig on this big day out. Bit by bit they took him on little trips all through the countryside until one day in summer, his support workers took him on a big trip to Cleethorpes. He absolutely loved it; he was in his element!
Are there any upcoming events that you are excited about?
Yes! A big one for us is “Burton’s Got Talent’, which we put on every year in our Bamford Park building – which is huge, with a big stage, and its own bar. People from all over the community gather to see the great level of talent we have here. There’s everything from dancing, singing, magic acts, drag acts – all sorts! We also have the Christmas fair every year, which is the biggest fundraiser we do. All of the money we raise for that goes back into Burton Street.
Finally, what is the most rewarding thing about working with The Burton Street Foundation?
There’s so much joy in Burton Street! I’ve never worked somewhere where I can feel such a connection with all my colleagues as well as clients. I don’t do any client-facing work and every single one of them knows me, they all come to see me regularly and it’s an amazing feeling. It’s definitely got a vibe about it that’s completely different to anywhere else I’ve been. It’s not a workplace, it’s a community.
