Rotherham: we need to talk about something happening right under our noses … and it isn’t what you’re thinking

Mia Hollingsworth-Smith is Children’s Capital of Culture Heritage Producer, working for Rotherham Council. She also happens to be a University of Oxford graduate and an MA alumni of the University of York. Crucially to this particular story, Mia is not from New York City, she’s from Rov’rum, and it was a single word she used in describing her upbringing in South Yorkshire that floored me: escape.

The borough into which the now 23-year-old was born, she reflects, was a trap; a hindrance. A postcode purgatory that suspended her potential in perpetual stagnation. A canary in a cage, without even a coalmine, now they’d all been closed, to be dropped into in order to prove herself useful. It is to her eternal credit that she knew she’d have to find her wings and fly in order to fulfil her potential. In truth, she will not be the only twenty-something who hails from Rotherham who felt the need to fly the nest. To escape. There was a generation born into that same intractable life maze, and not everyone made it out.

So where did I bump into her today? You guessed it. Rotherham. More specifically, a little-known venture called Skills Street, tucked neatly into the foreground of Gulliver’s Valley Theme Park. In short, Skills Street is an immersive learning facility that wraps creative spaces around children in order to show them future career possibilities. To broaden their horizons and elevate ambitions. Not to give them a better chance of getting out but to give them compelling, fulfilling, meaningful reasons to stay. Connecting their curiosity to careers. From AI robotics to arts and culture; construction and engineering to health and social care. These aren’t classrooms, they’re class rooms. Brilliantly designed, intuitive to access and use and thoughtfully furnished to make young people feel as safe as they are stimulated. If you’re a teacher or you run a youth group, get in touch with Skills Street. You simply have to.

So, the light-bulb moment: to understand why Ms Hollingsworth-Smith’s story flicked a switch in me, it is critical to remember and reflect upon Rotherham’s macro-picture. That isn’t going to go away. To say it has been a place of hard knocks is an understatement. It is vital to understand why people like Mia wanted to escape. We must also acknowledge that men and women in senior public-facing roles, for far too long, let down a generation of canaries who, in the end, found themselves unable to flee the purgatory, and through no fault of their own succumbed to predators of the worst kind. Those failings are now known, acknowledged and in the process of healing. Some wounds will never heal; I will not for a moment suggest as much. But Rotherham cannot flee itself, and so repair, rejuvenate and regenerate it must. If it has been a cage unto its residents of late, it must now broaden those bars until they can be broken, in fact, until they are banished forever. That way more Mias will fly home, as has she, to be part of a new chapter. Not a character, bit-part or main protagonist in said chapter, but a proud co-author of that which is to come.

What I’m saying is this: today I saw an inspirational young woman. I saw several, in fact. I also saw a roomful of people dedicated to a mission and a cause who do not quite know how to be proud of themselves. Pride comes before a fall, you see, and Rotherhamers remain battered and bruised from falls past. Compere for the event, Bob Kirton, Managing Director for Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, put it best: “For northerners, people from Rotherham, banging our drum doesn’t come naturally.”

Step forwards Chris Read, the Leader of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. He defiantly reminded the naysayers (few, if any, were in the room today, of course) of the times they’d said ‘it’ll never happen!’ The Forge Island cinema; the business hub at Maltby Academy; Wentworth Woodhouse; the tram-train. He went on:

• Clifton Park splash park - a £900,000 refurbishment for the biggest free water park in the country;
• Rotherham Show - the biggest free festival in the north of England - attracted 95,000 visitors;
• Children’s Capital of Culture: unlocked £10m of new investment to Rotherham. 697 events in 2025 so far with 147,763 participants;
• Works commenced on Thrybergh Country Park and Rother Valley;
• The next stage of £4m of public realm improvements are under way;
• Unveiled 730th new council home;
• Major high street investment and improvements planned for Maltby, Dinnington, Wath and Swinton with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of grant funding available to support shops and businesses
• Health agencies are upgrading nine GP surgeries

Over the summer, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, led by Henri Murison, calculated Rotherham to be the fastest-growing economy in the north of England over the course of the last decade, taking productivity as the measure. Not so much a canary, then, as a phoenix; quietly rising from ashes that have for too long starved its flame of oxygen.

I’ll leave this one cryptic, for it is dedicated to those people in the room at Skills Street today and they will almost certainly get the reference: Can You Feel My Heart? Yes. I could, today. Genuinely. And with more of your collective will, skill, passion and creativity, I am quite sure that you will bring the horizon, a much broader one at that, to the young people of Rotherham.