Creative spark giving artists the chance to show the world

The Sheffield Millennium Galleries are a cultural touchstone.

At the heart of the city, the impressive buildings opened in April 2001 and have been a key component in transforming Sheffield.

With the advent of shoppers' paradise Meadowhall, there were concerns that the heart would be ripped out of the city. However, the city, instead of complaining just began to redefine itself.

Today, within a five-minute walk, visitors to the town can go from the Sheffield Crucible to the Millennium Galleries, the Graves Gallery, the Winter Gardens and the Peace Gardens – the final three of these were key in the Heart of the City Project that aimed to transform Sheffield.

Kim Streets, director of learning and knowledge at Museums Sheffield, was the museum representative on the panel which presented Sheffield's bid to become UK City of Culture.

The galleries plan their exhibitions three years in advance, so with the announcement next week, if Sheffield is selected as the UK's first ever City of Culture, will it have much of an impact?

"We have some really great exhibitions being planned and much of the programme has been worked out," says Street. "But if we were to get the title, then one of the big events would be, in the autumn of that year, hosting the Turner Prize. That would be a major attraction, we would give our largest gallery space to the exhibition, and we would build a programme round it.

"Being named the City of Culture would help us raise our game in the city. The title would push us to the next level. It would bring even more international quality work to Sheffield."

Streets says that, during the process of pulling the bid together, the cultural organisations of the city have found common threads between their work.

"It means, regardless of the decision next week, we have found lots of ways in which we all dovetail," she says.

"It has given us all an impetus to look at how we can collaborate and share ideas and resources."

The Millennium Galleries, impressive as they are, are only the start of the story of art in Sheffield.

Last month, Sheffield Hallam University staged its graduation show. Normally these shows are small scale and involve proud parents and a warm glass of wine.

What happened this year is emblematic of the attitude of Sheffielders. Rather than a regular graduation show, the university staged Creative Spark, a city-wide exhibition which took place in three of the university's venues and featured thousands of works by hundreds of students across different disciplines.

These young artists at the very beginning of their careers will have been encouraged that they can stay in the city, thanks to the level of expertise and networking opportunities provided by Creative Spark.

They will also have been encouraged by simply looking around and witnessing all the other art created – and given a platform to be shown – in the city. Site Gallery last year celebrated 30 years of being at the forefront of contemporary art in Sheffield.

The gallery, which was initially set up to display photographic artwork, has begun showing more experimental work in recent years. An Arts Council Regularly Funded Organisation, the independent gallery commissions new work and brings work by international artists to Sheffield – a pre-requisite being that they have not shown the work elsewhere in the UK.

Jeanine Griffin is deputy director of Site Gallery and manager of the Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum (SCAF). "Nicholas Serota (then director of the Tate) came up to see the biennial SCAF art festival a couple of years ago," says Griffin.

"He was amazed by what was happening in Sheffield, that there were so many galleries and studios and so many showing spaces, all working together and so close to the city centre.

"The point was that something like that couldn't happen somewhere like London because the rents would be sky high which would mean galleries having to move out further afield, which makes collaboration a lot harder."

Griffin says the collaboration comes from the fact that each of the city's spaces serves a slightly different purpose, which means no competitive element between the artists.

With other galleries and spaces including S1, bloc, Yorkshire Artspace, Bank Street Arts and a wealth of small independent galleries showing work, the visual arts in Sheffield are a key component in what makes it a city of culture.