Holmes Wood plan set to increase visits to Sheffield gallery

The gallery hopes the scheme will increase visitor numbers and persuade people to linger in the building, which features a pedestrian avenue between Sheffield train station and the city centre.

’Every year the volume of traffic using the building and the avenue increases, but conversion into gallery visitors hasn’t matched it,’ says Museums Sheffield head of marketing and communications Eric Hildrew.

Holmes Wood director Alex Wood says, ’The gallery is in a fantastic location in the city centre, but does not particularly look like an art gallery.’

The consultancy’s recommendations include introducing colour and ’striking’ physical interventions to entrances, bold graphics, different light levels and repositioning the shop.

Graphics and wayfinding would attempt to explain to passers-by what happens in the gallery, while Museums Sheffield’s Jane Wentworth Association-designed logo could be used more extensively ’to inject personality’, says Wood.

The gallery hopes to implement elements of the consultancy’s scheme over the next two to three years. Entrance improvements are first on the list of priorities for the gallery, which Hildrew hopes to complete this year.