Pride of Yorkshire: The Sheffield factory and artist creating 300 lions and cubs for special charity trail through the city
In a busy industrial workshop in Attercliffe, the noise hits you first. There’s the clanking of tools and the constant whirring of sanders and machinery. Sparks fly overhead, and dust hangs in the air. Lions stand in rows - raw and pale, sanded smooth, and waiting to move on. This is Simpson Patterns, the specialist moulding and fabrication company responsible for making 300 lions for the Pride of Yorkshire sculpture trail.
Next summer, South Yorkshire will be home to the 150 life-sized lion sculptures and 150 lion cubs, as the Pride of Yorkshire sculpture trail takes over streets, parks and city centres to celebrate 150 years of Sheffield Children’s Hospital. Each lion is being designed and painted by artists, with schools and community groups decorating the cubs. The trail will stretch across Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, before the large lions are auctioned to raise funds for the hospital.
Simpson Patterns also made the Bears of Sheffield in 2021 – but this new project is almost twice the size.
According to Director Alex Goddard, who began at Simpson Patterns as an apprentice a decade ago, the Pride of Yorkshire is on “another level”. The team has expanded to meet demand, and long hours are the norm, but Alex says the whole team is behind it. “The number one thing is the story behind it - Sheffield Children’s Hospital. A lot of us here are Sheffield people. So it’s close to everyone. It’s something we’re all proud of.”
Each lion begins as mesh pattern, before being coated with resin and layered in fibreglass so it can withstand display, even on the busiest of Saturday nights.
Project Lead Connor Walsh gestures to a lion head on the factory floor. “The head’s a nightmare,” he laughs. “You’ve got to get right inside it to smooth the surface. You get covered in resin. It’s hard hard work. But once they’re painted and you see them, it’s unbelievable. I’ve got a three-year-old daughter - and I can’t wait for her to see what her dad’s made.”
From here, the lions travel a short distance across the city to a newly opened Pride of Yorkshire painting studio, where the first batch of artists have begun bringing them to life. At one end of the painting space, artist James Brunt is lying flat on his back on the studio floor, brush held above him as he works on the underside of his lioness. He paints slowly and carefully, following the curve of the belly with leaf shapes that build, one by one, into a pattern.
James is known for creating temporary artworks in nature - spirals of leaves on woodland paths, stones arranged in patterns on beaches, sticks woven into circles that return slowly to the landscape, and this is the first time he’s ever painted a sculpture.
“Most of my work is outdoors, working with natural materials and with what the seasons give me. Repeated shapes occur in nature all the time- like spirals, and they appear in my work again and again. The spiral is usually very precise - you know exactly where the next piece goes. But on a 3D shape the spiral moves. You have to respond to the form. When you step back, it works. And it’s been good fun.”
James, who has a huge social media following, spends much of the year working in schools across the country, encouraging children to create artworks outdoors and to pay attention to the natural world.
“A lot of my work is just for me - I’ll make something in the woods, and by the time I walk away nature starts reclaiming it. But when I work in schools, children get to show their grown ups at the end of the day, which I love.”
The Pride of Yorkshire trail feels like a natural continuation of that intention - art made to be encountered, not hidden away.
For Sheffield artist Emma Barnsley, she’s done this all before. She painted Peaky the Bear for the Bears of Sheffield - inspired by her dad, who worked as a ward clerk at the Sheffield Children’s Hospital.
“He absolutely loved his job. He would write quotes and jokes of the day, get involved in charity events… everyone knew him. A big part of me is doing this for him. I think he’d be really proud.” Today is Emma’s first day in the studio and she’s wasted no time in getting the paint on – using spray cans to flood the lion’s body with colour.
When finished, Emma’s lion will celebrate African wildlife - including a pangolin, chosen because of its endangered status. “Last time, taking my children to see the bears was just pure joy. My eldest has already told me where certain animals should go!”
Sheffield painter Nick Aspin is working with a very different palette - deep oranges, golds and greens, inspired by the Terminator Line, the boundary where night meets day. “I’m using that as the basis - that space between night and day, life and death. I use a lot of sunset colours in my work anyway, so it all came together naturally.”
Nick usually paints alone in his studio, and the shared environment has surprised him.
“I do prefer working on my own, but it’s been nice being around people who are also doing it. That takes away the first-day-of-school nerves. Everyone’s just getting on.”
His reason for joining the trail is straightforward. “It’s the charity. It’s Sheffield Children’s Hospital. And it’s also just more art in public - more people seeing art who might not go to galleries. I think that’s great - getting art out into the world where people are.”
For artist Judy Randle, Pride of Yorkshire marks a return to the thing she always wanted to do. She originally hoped to go to art school, but became an accountant instead. Only after retiring did she begin painting again - and rediscovered her love for it.
“I still have to pinch myself that I’m actually here. This is something I always wanted to do.” Her lion and lioness imagine the pair walking through Sheffield’s ancient woodlands, across the changing seasons.
“Sheffield has so many ancient woodlands. They’ve been there for hundreds of years. Calm, quiet, full of meaning.” She is looking forward to walking the trail with her grandchildren:
Cheryl Davidson, Project Lead for Pride of Yorkshire at Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity, says seeing the first painted lions appear has been a fantastic milestone.
“We’re so excited to be welcoming artists into the Pride of Yorkshire studio space, and it’s brilliant to see the Pride beginning to take shape. It will be ten years since the Herd of Sheffield in 2016, and the Bears of Sheffield in 2021. Together they helped raise more than £1.5m for Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity. Now we’re going even bigger, and want to raise £2.8m to celebrate Sheffield Children’s Hospital’s 150th year. This will be a trail for the whole region - not just Sheffield. The lions will appear in Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley too, and we can’t wait to see people from right across South Yorkshire coming together to find them all.”
Back in the studio, James Brunt reflects on the wider meaning behind the project. “Being part of something high profile but shared is fantastic. If this encourages children and adults to express themselves creatively, that’s brilliant.”
The trail runs from June to September 2026, before the large lions are auctioned to raise funds for Sheffield Children’s Hospital. The charity is now looking for businesses to come forward to sponsor them for the trail, as well as schools to get involved by designing and painting their very own cubs.
prideofyorkshire.org